At the beginning of this summer, following the first 2 years of developing Kloodle from scratch, we reached the stage where the work load was becoming too great for our founding team. We needed someone who was high calibre and had high energy. We needed an Apprentice!
Since Kloodle is a Social Network for early stage careers and employability, and since the students on our Social Network are largely of Apprentice age, we were confident that we knew where to go to source our own Apprenticeship talent. We used Kloodle!
We posted our vacancy to Kloodles own Kloodle profile and, by doing so, our career opportunity found its way to a host of relevant students Kloodle newsfeeds. The vacancy also appeared when students searched for relevant terms through their Kloodle job searches.
We were excited to see the applications and were delighted with the quality of applicants.
We chose to use a number of criteria to determine that applicants could evidence a number of skills, via their Kloodle profile (we chose 4 core evidencing criteria: attention to detail, negotiation skills, teamwork and tenacity). This immediately narrowed the field of candidates, leaving us with a number of keen-eyed individuals who worked well in teams and didnt give up easily!
We looked through the resulting Kloodle profiles with delight. The overall quality of candidate was tremendous. We saw blog posts demonstrating teamwork during college football, photos of charity fundraisers, and videos of music performances. Students had clearly put time and effort into their profiles, and, as the potential employer, Kloodle had a window through which we could assess not only students academic achievements, but also see evidence of their claimed skills and achievements.
We were able to narrow down our interview process to a short shortlist (we sadly didnt have time to meet everyone whom we liked the look of, we were very focused on those required skills that are absolutely essential to Kloodle).
The result of the process was the appointment of Will Hughes, who had recently completed sixth form at Aquinas College in Stockport. Will is proving to be fantastic! His Kloodle profile was a treasure trove of surprises; Ill say this up top (sorry Will), his A Level results were not record breaking, (he got the same grades as I did and, a First Class Honours Chemistry degree later, I think I turned out OK), however, Wills Kloodle profile was full of evidence of exactly the type of young talent that we knew we needed. It demonstrated strong numeracy and written skills, but also, essentially for us, it evidenced creativity, tenacity, courage and a (much needed at Kloodle) good old fashioned sense of humour!
https://www.youtube.com/embed/QJHtWerJIbI
He had just returned from a month long InterRail trip, traveling the continent via the vagaries of the European rail system (on a very tight budget!). He had visited a large number ofEuropean cities (both the grand and the humble). His photo uploads and video blogs allowed us to ascertain a sense of his personality. We decided he possessed the maturity and ability to operate independently. We needed our Apprentice to have a mature and can do approach to the challenges of working at Kloodle. Pragmatism and proactivity were also important factors for us. His travelling exploits reassured us that he could sort himself out!
Lastly for us,Will (bless him) plays a lot of hockey. Now then, three of our team are BIG cricketers. We place high value on the tenacity and attitude that team sport generates. Will understood the culture of the team dressing room ..albeit hockey and not our beloved cricket! We had every confidence that Will would get the Kloodle mentality. He would understand just how massive our vision is, matched only by our commitment to create a meaningful Kloodle product and deliver a fantastic Kloodle service??we believe that our first Apprentice is up to the challenge.
Since joining the team in August, Will has continued to demonstrate that he has bought into our ethos and is determined to make us proud of him and his contribution to Kloodle. He is well placed to support our students, understanding that academic grades do often matter, but that students must ensure they evidence the full range of skills they possess. It has been a pleasure having Will join our team. I continue to be impressed with his commitment and contribution levels.
Would we have interviewed him on the basis of an old fashioned hard copy CV? Probably not Wills Kloodle profile provided him with the opportunity to showcase the person as well as his achievements. We saw something that we thought might work for us .and weve loved him since working day one.
Keep up the great work, young man. Oh, and take up a proper sport!
