Julian Emery has 7 times now, recruited and managed the volunteers for The Australian Open Golf. For each of these events, he had to recruit over 400 volunteers and manage them over the 5 days of the event.
So I sat down with Julian last week because I wanted to share his wealth of experience with the rest of the volunteering community especially those who are tasked with recruiting and managing the volunteers.
Last weekend I went with my 13-year old son, to the Australian Open Golf here in Sydney at the Australian Golf Course – about 20 minutes south of Sydney CBD on the way to the airport.
I was so impressed with how well the event was run and when I knew that the event was run by volunteers… I couldn’t believe it! All the staff was so professional, positive and drive… and so I wanted to find out how all this happen – how do you recruit and manage about 400 people for an event like this? I mean I’ve been associated with the recruitment industry for 12 years now and I have worked with 100s of clients though the MyRecruitment+ experience but I never knew anything about volunteering although so many of our not-for-profit clients actually use our platform to recruit volunteers. I’ve decided to learn how volunteer recruitment works for an event like this.
I asked one of the volunteers who suggested that I’d talk to the Chief Marshal who runs all the volunteers and told me that his name is Julian and he works from the big white tent.
I went into the tent and asked for Julian – I introduced myself and said to Julian, I’m so impressed that all this event is run by volunteers! Then I said, it must be a huge job recruiting and managing such a huge number of people.
So Julian started telling me how it works and started telling me about challenges he faces in his job.
He starts the recruitment drive in July to make sure he has the 400 or so volunteers needs for the Open which is held in late November – about 5 months prior.
He said registration forms, quick communications, and induction is critical for recruiting and managing volunteers and so I couldn’t help it but thinking that MyRecruitment+ would be perfect for Julian. So I said I would like to offer you to use MyRecruitment+ at no cost because you’re doing a great job for Golf and I would like to help too. Julian appreciated my offer and agreed to sit down and learn about the platform in a couple of weeks after the Open – once the dust had settled and he recovered from the high-pressure event.
As you listen to Julian you just feel the passion he has for what he does, and you start to realize how much experience he has in this space and so, this is where the idea of the interview came from. I know that we have lots of clients who use our platform for recruiting volunteers and so I thought to myself, wouldn’t be amazing if I can catch all this amazing energy and wealth of experience in a video and share it with the volunteering community both within and outside our platform.
One doesn’t realise how much volunteering work is being done out there – whether its event-based such as the Australian Open Golf or The Tennis Australian Open, The Olympics… or for those who work for not for profit organisations such as our great clients CPL, The Benevolent Society, Salvation Army, schools and many many others out there. Incredible really to the extent that some can argue that so many things that we take for granted in our society wouldn’t be possible without the good men and women who are volunteering – they are invaluable driver in of our society!
So from me and my team, good on you volunteers and keep up the great work!
Until next time!