Hello there! I would like to talk a bit more about the topics you brought forward a few days ago to provide a bit better insight internally, as well as hopefully address concerns you brought forward as best as possible. Bear with me because this will be a long message.
Recruitment
Two things were pointed out here, requirements and understanding the English language. Requirements are there to filter out applicants who will 100% get denied anyway. As Drew said, it saves the recruitment team from handling dozens of applications and ultimately saves us time to focus on those who do have a decent chance. These requirements are not designed to give the applicant straight-up green light to move on to the interview phase. In the end, not all who even meet the requirements get an instant free ticket to the helper trial. This is just the phase that is a lot more hidden to the public eye and thus is a bit harder to see how lower requirements are not necessarily bad.
In terms of the English language, we do strive to ensure they can speak it well enough to communicate with us in calls and in messaging. Mistakes will always happen, which is why we work to help them during the trial if we notice these issues. Keep in mind staff-help is a lot faster than other media as well and a lot of quick thinking is required. All in all, while we don’t set basic standards like C1 or C2, we do set our own. How someone has written their application and how fluent they are during the interview is our main baseline.
Staff-help
Staff-help is a difficult channel to consistently keep up with, especially with consideration to timezones and helper wave sizes. Keeping up with dozens of questions becomes exhausting after a while, and missing questions can happen in turn. We encourage users to just resend the question if it accidentally got lost. We acknowledge that this is not a foolproof system, but it is what we have at this time, while we look to improve it. That being said, activity within it, and getting helpers to respond, is hard if they worry they will be constantly judged by everyone - not just their mentors who they expect to do so. It can be a lot of pressure and makes it a lot more difficult to remain motivated to do so.
Helper Training
In general, with training, we have always been a bit vague on how all of it works. However, I might have been a bit too vague myself with what I meant with training them for staff-help. They do get conversations about how staff-help works and they have guides ready for them in case they need to double-check something. However, being mistaken about something is a part of the training. They need to learn, and in turn, they are bound to make mistakes. These will always be corrected immediately afterwards, receiving the correct information from their mentors and how they were incorrect. If they repeat the mistake, that is when we have concerns and will handle it differently.
Ultimately, we do not have the tools and space to write every possible answer down, to every potential question, and expect them to find it in the catalogue before they respond based on what it says. In the end, their training deals with the overall workings of staff-help. It does not go into detail about which questions are easy and should always be answered correctly, but rather their mentors help them with better understanding. We encourage them to ask questions when they aren’t sure, but there is the catch to that of saying “when you aren’t sure”. They could be 100% positive they have the right answer when they don’t, so they will not ask and make a mistake. Making these mistakes can be frustrating for a community member, and lead to a misdirect or confusion, but we strive to resolve that as soon as possible. Those helpers do get notified about wrong answers in staff-help, and are reminded about asking when they are unsure. It allows our helpers to learn and grow, and not feel pressured to be perfect to the point that they never learn confidence in their knowledge and ultimately would never pass the helper phase.
Not Helping People
I agree that the helper should have handled this a bit differently, though not in the sense of not warning the user. They definitely should have added a message telling them how to properly execute that command and include a brief thing about spamming not being allowed.
We will definitely make sure we are reminding and encouraging our team to focus on helping first, punishing second, while in lobbies or interacting with the community.
Keep in mind that helpers cannot punish users, they can only give verbal warnings and report them afterwards, as they are in a trial process. However, while they could definitely have handled this better, I do not think it is fair to put a blanket definition over all of the Helpers because of this one instance.
Inconsistency
With a big team comes big communication. All important updates and changes always get shared, though sometimes it may happen that some people are unaware. Whether they went to staff-help first before checking the announcement, or simply missed it, instances like this can happen. We do as much as we can to avoid them, however, if it does happen, it’s best to either seek confirmation with the responsible admin or just double-check with someone else.
We encourage staff to always double-check if they are uncertain about something. This falls into a hard balance between ensuring our team members have the confidence to answer questions and also ensuring they check that the information they are presenting is right.
Double-checking takes more time, but is always necessary, especially if we are wanting to encourage the removal of incorrect responses. I think this staff member handled that well overall, especially when it comes to a rule change and how difficult it can be overall to change your mindset from the muscle memory of the old rules to the new ones.
What Should Happen?
In the end, I think we should remember two things: being a helper is a trial period and recruitment keeps fluctuating no matter what.
As the name suggests, this is a helper trial. A trial is meant to learn, make mistakes, and most importantly for people to prove their knowledge and abilities. They are trained through an internal process and tested on their knowledge. It is the only way to slowly adjust to all the information and learn how to effectively handle situations. Helper used to not be as much of a trial process, so requirements were a lot higher, but we have changed the process of training a lot (and are constantly still adjusting it as we work with the new changes), allowing us to make it a trial. Some helpers will not make it, which is perfectly fine. We desire to be training users and help them see a hands-on experience with more behind-the-scenes knowledge, rather than letting them spend years learning on their own in the community. It allows us to truly teach people how to be a mod, rather than expect them to be mod-ready right when they get out of the interview.
I must admit, months ago I was in the same tunnel vision of only focussing on those who have made their presence known within the community. Yet, those who stayed a little bit in the background and didn’t make a huge community impression are currently doing an outstanding job. I’m proud of every single one who worked hard for their position. They all deserved it for a reason, some might move on, some might fall, that’s the charm of being a trial.
Since recruitment is an important part of the team, it’s hard to constantly make big changes to it. We will never be able to predict what might happen in the next wave. It could be a quiet month with very few applicants, or it could be a busy month leading to a bigger wave. Consequently, it could be a month with a lot of bedrock players or a month with a lot of java. No matter how you twist or turn it, we can’t predict nor control the amount and types of people that apply.
Finally, I do want to emphasize that even with all I have said, it does not mean we’ll never change recruitment or that I’m not open to feedback. There will always be mini changes or improvements made where needed. Especially with feedback given, or even just noticing trends that are occurring. It allows us to continue to strengthen recruiting while working towards the best way to train and prepare the helpers. Sometimes when you can't see something, it does not mean it's not there. Recruitment is constantly being worked on. In fact, some points that were brought up here were either already being discussed or will be in the near future. Ultimately, recruitment has not reached its full potential yet, and over the upcoming months/years we will continue to strive towards what’s best. Thank you for understanding!