Learning patterns/How to find the right person for a specific task

A learning pattern forproject management

Learning Pattern Library

How to find the right person for a given task

problemThere is a given task has to be done. How can you find the right person? Should it be a volunteer or a contractor? How to motivate?

solutionTry to find someone who is interested in the task, who feels intrinsically motivated to do it, regardless of external motivating factors.

creator• Samat

created on14:29, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

What problem does this solve?

People contribute to the movement for all kinds of reasons. Most of them are intrinsically motivated and do not expect any recognition (moral or financial). On the other hand, there are others, who do expect some kind of recognition, while not wanting to be told what to do with their time within Wikimedia. However, what about tasks that need to be done within a community, should it be a Wikimedia project or a Wikimedia affiliate? How can these be achieved, what is the most efficient way to achieve them?

What is the solution?

Things to consider

• It's best if you can find a volunteer willing to do the work. This can be helped by making the task interesting, attractive or convincing people of its importance. Some form of recognition for completing the task may be worthwhile, but financial recognition is often rejected. A few good words and make sure people of the usefulness of the completed work can be more effective. When choosing volunteers, there is a greater risk that something will come up (work, family or other reasons) and the task will not be completed within the deadline.
• If it is not possible to find a volunteer, it is a good idea to engage someone who is likely to become an active contributor in the future, so that the experience gained in the course of the work will be of benefit to the community. It may be an advantage if you have previous experience of open-content projects or you are a regular user of them.
• It may be worth considering looking for an inexperienced person, who could be trained to do the job in the longer term. The disadvantage of this solution is that it requires an experienced person who can pass on their knowledge to the new candidate, and in the short term it would take more time and effort to train than if the given tasks were done by an experienced person. (In many cases, the availability of an experienced trainer is not met either, since a person has to be found to do the task because no one else can do it or has the time to do it.) A further risk is that it is not certain at all that the person being trained will eventually be able to do the task independently in the long term, or that they intend to do it in the future.
• In case of failure of the previous points, if the task requires a specialist (and such a specialist cannot be found as mentioned in the previous points), or if the task is critical and failure to complete it could have serious consequences, it is worth looking for a contract on market terms. With the right choice and a careful contract, a good result can be expected. The disadvantage is that it is clearly more expensive and the contractor is unlikely to remain in the service of the community (at most returning for another similar job).
• If there is someone who used to do a great job as a volunteer, but now can no longer volunteer because of a change in their life circumstances, and another volunteer can't or doesn't want to do it, then hire the person who has been proven to do the job. People with this background will usually take on the task on more favorable terms than the market, will do it independently and reliably based on previous experience, and will often volunteer part of the task or continue to maintain it because of their intrinsic interest and previous volunteering.
• Take into account that a significant amount of time will be needed to find the right person (application and selection process), the contractual and related administrative tasks, onboarding the selected person, and coordinating and controlling the implementation of the tasks. If you think on the time you need for these processes, multiple it by 2 or 3 (best case scenario).

When to use

• If you are looking for someone to do a specific job.
• Examples (experience) from the last (extended) project year of the editor retention program of the Hungarian chapter:
  • One of the former volunteer developers is now working as a programmer and has developed the project's statistics portal. Despite his limited free time, he worked on it with great enthusiasm, adding several ideas and features that were not part of his contract, and improving and modifying it several times even after the contract was closed.
  • The tasks for the junior programmer were contracted to a programming student who was interested in free projects. The time needed to complete the tasks (both on the client and contractor side) was many times the originally planned time frame, and some of the tasks ended up being solved by a WMF developer instead. However, the student has been active contributor on Wikipedia and its sister projects ever since.
  • An active Wikipedia editor has been contracted to work as an experienced programmer. Although he has decades of programming experience, he had no previous experience in MediaWiki development. The project team had the regular task of assisting and orienting him for 3-4 months, and he made several attempts to complete some of the tasks, but for reasons outside of our scope (mainly private life and work-related), he did not make significant progress on any of them, despite the higher salary agreement. Fortunately, he remained active as Wikipedia editor, which shows the lack of internal motivation related to project tasks and the low effectiveness of external motivation (potential high payment).
  • We were looking for a programmer to study and prepare the development of Matrix, and found a community member who had been interested in this issue before. He took on the task and completed it. Although there was a possibility of financial recognition for the work, he declined it after several offers.
  • The project involved a large amount of translation work for which we were looking for someone. An external translator applied for the job, saying that she would like to volunteer as a translator to support the Wikimedia movement. We wanted to support her in the form of vouchers for her high volume, reliable, enthusiastic and extremely fast work, but she refused this too, saying that she was only willing to do this on a voluntary basis.

See also

• Volunteer Supporters Network/Motivation

Related patterns

• Learning patterns/Contest prizes that motivate
• Learning patterns/Supporting volunteers in administration
• Learning patterns/Communities of Interest to Recruit Volunteers
• Learning patterns/Find volunteers to support a program
• Learning patterns/When staff work with volunteers
• Learning patterns/Guide for involving new volunteers
• Learning patterns/Project roles