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On Mon, Apr 5, 2010 at 9:33 AM, Richard Freeman <rich0@g.o> wrote: |
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> What I was getting at is trying to identify what aspects of the whole |
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> recruitment process added the most value and which added the least, and |
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> adjusting accordingly. I think that assessing attitude and maturity, and |
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> providing the tools and education needed are the most critical aspects of |
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> recruitment. |
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Agreed. Although the education part should come from the mentor. |
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Recruiters are only supposed to fill in the gaps because there's only |
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so much they can do. Nowadays most mentors only really care about |
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making sure their mentee gets the quiz answers right. That's a big |
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mistake. I've been mentoring somebody to help me with sci-electronics |
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for months now (hi Rafael!), and the quizzes are less than 5% of what |
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we spend time on. So what is it then? English and how to communicate |
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was the big thing at first but he's doing much better now, then |
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working on a lot of ebuilds in and outside of bugzilla, but also how |
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to efficiently deal with people, why things happen in a volunteer |
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project and most importantly why they don't, how to not get |
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discouraged by many little annoying things, etc... That's the kind of |
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things a mentor and thus every gentoo developer should invest time in |
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because it pays back big time. |
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I've been toying with a project about training mentors but can't find |
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the time to set it up. The idea was to have interactive sessions on |
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irc with a few interested devs. |
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> That's why I'm all for changing the approach to quizzes - from my experience |
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> it wasn't the quizzes themselves that really added the most value for me. |
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> The interaction that they triggered and getting me to consider some of the |
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> more critical issues that come up in ebuild maintenance added far more value |
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> than getting every detail of the answers 100% correct. |
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I do make sure that answers are 100% correct since I consider that |
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part of the necessary paperwork to be recruited. However during the |
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review I use the quizzes mostly as a way to engage conversation on a |
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lot of topics, not only technical. That's the reason a review with me |
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lasts anywhere from 5 to 12 hours. |
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So in a sense what you're thinking of is already happening. |
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Denis. |