Marasigan, Jon Karl I.

Maine Media Workshop is an educational organization that offers workshops or seminars for
artists in media such as photographers and filmmakers. The video discusses about their hiring
process such as what they want to see in an instructor aside from the skills, talent, and the
achievements they have done, but most importantly, they want their instructors to be great
teachers. Furthermore, the main issue they brought out was that there is a conflict of interest
between the instructors and the organization. This is because these instructors find it more
beneficial to work somewhere else than the workshop. When they do bring in new staff, they
prepare them with what it’s like working there and show them the structure of the organization
and how the classes work yet they do research on looking for leaders within different fields to be
there.

1. What is the primary problem that education directors face when recruiting instructors to
teach at Maine Media Workshops?

2. What sources of conflict are hampering recruitment at Maine Media Workshops?

3. What might Maine Media Workshops do to help resolve its ongoing staffing conflicts?

1. According to Mimi Edmunds, the director of the film program at the workshop,
the problem when recruiting instructors is a lack of commitment to teach at the workshop.
The instructors they hire are more influenced and interested on other work simply because
there is higher income to make than working at Maine Media Workshop. The nature of
their business is that since they are recruiting professionals, there are aware that there is
always a chance that an instructor will not be able to come to the workshop and do their
job cause better opportunities and work are more important to them.

2. What Maine Media Workshops want when hiring instructors is that they want someone
who are not only skilled, professional, and up to date in their field, but they want to have
someone who are capable of teaching their skills to other people. The problem is that there
is a lack of commitment from instructors because they find other opportunities and
obligations more valuable than them. This means that they have a conflict of interest
because competition over these recruits are definitely lured away by more satisfying
interests. There could also be a lack of structure with the organization as well.

3. Perhaps what Main Media Workshops can do to resolve their issues against staff conflicts
would be to offer them more wages or more benefits when working there. They could
resort to having a flexible schedule that would allow instructors to fulfill their obligation
and go to work so that they won’t have to resort to cancelling or saying that they can’t
come to work. Another idea maybe is to enforce stricter contracts that would enforce
consequences for not fulfilling their obligations to the workshop although this idea seems
more vague so I’m not so confident on this particular idea.