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Looking for the Right Kind of Person:Recruitment in Nature TourismGuidingJarno Valkonen a , Heikki Huilaja a & Saara Koikkalainen aa Faculty of Social Sciences , University of Lapland ,Rovaniemi , FinlandPublished online: 23 Sep 2013.

To cite this article: Jarno Valkonen , Heikki Huilaja & Saara Koikkalainen (2013) Looking for theRight Kind of Person: Recruitment in Nature Tourism Guiding, Scandinavian Journal of Hospitalityand Tourism, 13:3, 228-241, DOI: 10.1080/15022250.2013.837602

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Looking for the Right Kind of Person:Recruitment in Nature Tourism Guiding

JARNO VALKONEN, HEIKKI HUILAJA & SAARA KOIKKALAINEN

Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland

ABSTRACT Discussions about the working life have focused on the increasing centrality ofemployees’ personality as a job skill. The importance of recruiting the right kinds of personshas been noted also in the hospitality and tourism sector. We examine the nature ofqualifications necessary in interactive service work by studying the recruitment of safariguides in the commercial nature tourism sector in Finnish Lapland. We argue that tounderstand the nature and significance of the soft and technical skills in this field it isnecessary to analyse the continuum of the long recruitment process. The process does notstop at signing the work contract, but lasts for the entirety of the first winter season.Selection, training and control are also parts of recruitment as means with which employeesare socialized as part of the company product. Even though companies prefer employeeswho are willing to work with their personality, they go to great lengths in trying to ensurethat that employee’s personality aligns with company goals and policy. Yet as safari servicesare produced and consumed outdoors in the wild in an interactive relationship between theguide and the customer group, employees enjoy some relative autonomy at work.

KEYWORDS: recruitment, personality, service work, tourism work, skills, nature guide

Introduction

Employees’ personality as a job skill has been highlighted in recent discussions on theworking life. This article examines the nature of skills and qualifications necessary ininteractive service work by studying the recruitment of safari guides in the commercialnature tourism sector in Finnish Lapland. In the safari business, employee suitability islinked to the nature of the guiding work as a versatile type of customer service. Custo-mer service is understood as something that comes naturally to certain types of person-alities, as they have important innate attributes that are imperative in this line of work. Itis assumed that certain types do better than others in customer-service situations as thehabitus of the guide generates positive feedback, and the guide’s personality can com-pensate for the lack of other skills. This article asks what the skills are that interactiveservice-sector employees such as safari guides are expected to master and how do com-panies make sure that applicants possess the relevant skills.

Correspondence Address: Jarno Valkonen, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Lapland, PO Box 122,96101 Rovaniemi, Finland. E-mail: jarno.valkonen@ulapland.fi

Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism, 2013Vol. 13, No. 3, 228–241, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15022250.2013.837602

# 2013 Taylor & Francis

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In this article we argue that the nature of the skills required cannot be understoodwithout taking into account the recruitment process. We also argue that recruitmentshould be seen as a continuum of stages during which the safari companies try tofind employees who are willing to work with their personality but are yet able toadapt to the company style and embody the safari product. Recruitment has been tra-ditionally seen as a simple event where the skills and qualities of applicants are assessedin relation to the demands of the job in question. Yet our case demonstrates that in inter-active service work also selection and training are internal parts of the recruitmentprocess (see Barber, 1998, pp. 3–6; Callaghan & Thompson, 2002). We focus onthe ways in which the expectations on the nature of the work steer recruitment andhow the understanding of what good safari guides are like is built during the differentphases of the process.

Bolton (2004) argues that the question of work qualifications has been brought oncentre stage in the sociology of work in recent years, as the interpersonal and technicalskills that are required from applicants have changed. The change is visible particularlyin how the weight put on technical and professional skills in personnel recruitmenthas diminished while the importance of personal skills and qualities has increased(Korczynski & Macdonald, 2009). As Bolton (2004) argues, when “suitability” hasbecome a major qualification in recruitment, the whole understanding of the necessaryskills required in the labour market must be reconsidered. Centrality of personality as askill requirement is especially important in the service sector, where the interactionbetween the provider and the consumer is part of the package and forms a major partof service quality (Leidner, 1993; McDowell, 2009.).

The interactive service economy exploits employees’ physical and mental capacities– looks, personality and emotions – more than other types of employment, as they forma key part of the service and its monetary value. In the service economy the employeemust sell his/her personality in the course of selling services (Baerenholdt & Jensen,2009, pp. 350–351; Hochschild, 1983), since the physical and intellectual capital ofthe employee is turned into economic capital by the service organizations, and madeto serve their interests (Veijola, 2009; Warhurst & Nickson, 2009). It is feared thatthis in turn may have negative impacts on the employee, through increased personalinsecurity (Beck, 2000) and instrumentalization of human relationships (Casey,1995), for example.

Yet, personality as a “service work skill” has to be taken with a grain of salt. Lloyd(2008, pp. 175–179) notes that employers stress the social skills and personalcapacities of the employees, but tell very little of how these qualities are identifiedduring the recruitment process. Placing emphasis on personal qualities has not necess-arily meant overlooking the so-called technical skills as selection criteria. From thepoint of view of recruitment practices and defining necessary qualifications, the perso-nification of service work skills is all but clear (see Warhurst & Nickson, 2009).Lundberg and Mossberg (2008, pp. 49–50) identified three types of skills that hospi-tality work in tourism depends upon: “hard” technical skills, “soft” social skills and aes-thetic skills. The key question is how companies operate in practice when they aretrying to find, select and mould personalities that possess all these skills and fit thecompany environment. Even though the importance of employee suitability has beenascertained many times as an important employee selection criterion, research focusing

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on the different phases and practices of employee recruitment has still been in shortsupply (Breaugh & Starke, 2000, pp. 405–407; Devins & Hogart, 2005).

The focus of this article is the recruitment of commercial nature tourism safari guidesin Finnish Lapland. The safari guiding is, in many ways, so-called interactive servicework: it is mainly seasonal low-income work that requires multiple skills, high respon-sibility and simultaneously flexibility and intensive commitment. The work is oftenindependent and the personal qualities of employees are a crucial factor (Rantala,2010; Valkonen, 2009). Examining the service work skills in the tourism context isinteresting both empirically and theoretically. Empirically, because tourism is one ofthe largest employment sectors globally (Zillinger, Johansson, & Adolfsson, 2012)the direct and indirect jobs in this field are estimated at around 200 million. Theshare of tourism in the global labour force is approximately 8.4% (World Travel &Tourism Council, 2008). Focusing on this sector is relevant also theoretically,because many of the dominant sociological conceptualizations on the nature of workare based on research done with tourism and leisure sector employees: flight attendants(Hochschild, 1983), restaurant workers (Leidner, 1993), waitresses (Warhurst &Nickson, 2001) and hotel receptionists (Adkins, 1995). These studies have claimedthat as the new forms of work have become more common, the demands and rulesof working life have become more severe, personalized and risky. This in itself testifiesto the important influence of tourism on work, working life and rules by which employ-ers and companies operate locally and globally.

In our analysis we aim at opening horizons to the skills required in service work anddiscussing the extent to which these skills are linked to employees’ personality. We payattention to the selection and on-the-job training activities of commercial nature tourismsafari companies as well as the mechanisms of control that the companies use tomonitor and train their guides to fit the company style. Drawing on sociology ofwork we ask what are the technical and interpersonal skills required in safari guidingand how do service organizations find suitable employees. In this particular servicesector a prolonged recruitment process is used to accomplish a difficult task: how tofind, train and keep employees that can embody the company spirit and use their per-sonality as a part of a safari product.

Research Materials and Method

A safari guide works in customer service implementing different types of nature-basedtourism activities for a tourism service company. Typical commercial winter naturetourism programmes are wilderness safaris by snowmobile, reindeer and sledgedogs. The wilderness safari is a constellation of social interaction, customer service,production of experience, being in nature and operating technical gear (such as snow-mobiles). A typical wilderness safari lasts from a couple of hours to a day and consistsof a group of 5–10 customers who have come individually or together with others todrive snowmobiles. On safaris, the role of the guide is essential. She/he is responsiblefor the whole event, its functionality, purpose, customer satisfaction and safety. There-fore, the guide is a “frontline” employee (Baerenholdt & Jensen, 2009, p. 354), whorepresents both the company that offers the services and the area with its local

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inhabitants and culture, where the service takes place – with his/her whole personalityand self (Rantala & Valkonen, 2011; Valkonen, 2009).

The research material consists of 19 thematic interviews of nature tourism guidesworking in Finnish Lapland. Interviews were performed by Jarno Valkonen and hisresearch assistant Antti Pakkanen in 2006–2009. The material was collected for thewilderness guiding as work project, which is part of the larger Tourism as Workproject funded by the Academy of Finland. Interviewees have worked in all of thebiggest tourist sites in Finnish Lapland: Rovaniemi, Yllas, Levi, Saariselka,Pyha-Luosto and Muonio. They have diverse backgrounds and extensive experienceof the commercial safari business. Seven of the interviewees were women and 12men. Twelve of them were aged 20–30 at the time of the interview, and five wereaged 30–40. Two interviewees were in their 50s. Seven of the interviewees had a per-manent job, six were freelance workers and six of them were in part-time employment.All of the interviewees had performed more than one task during their careers in thenature tourism business (Valkonen, 2011.)

The same questions were posed to each informant, but in a fashion that enabled themto speak freely and emphasize the issues they felt were important. Selection of employ-ees, training new employees and learning on the job emerged as central themes that theinterviewees wanted to discuss and thus were selected for a closer analysis. For thisarticle the interview data were read from the recruitment perspective with a combi-nation of two methods: close reading techniques (Moisander & Valtonen, 2006,pp. 114–119) and discourse analysis (Alasuutari, 2000). We draw from literature onsociology of work and on service-sector employment, and utilize the three-phasemodel of recruitment, stemming from previous research (Breagh & Starke, 2000;Devins & Hogart, 2005; Huilaja, 2009). We focus on recruitment practices andsearch for linkages: how do the different phases of recruitment operate and how areemployee qualifications produced in the recruitment processes? The results of thestudy are presented in the next four sections that follow our interpretation of the pro-longed recruitment process in operation in the safari business: creation of a labourreserve, employee selection and suitability, employee training and monitoring andcontrol.

Creation of a Labour Reserve

A male guide recounts how he entered the field several years ago. He had been ice-fishing for leisure and assisted a safari group in trouble. The director of the safaricompany was on the lake with a group of clients and noting his behaviour invitedhim to work for the company. “He told me to come along tomorrow and that’s whatI’ve been doing ever since.” Another male guide in his forties was offered a jobbecause the entrepreneur knew him from before to be “a resourceful person”. Afemale interviewee was welcomed to the company already during the job interviewas she and the interviewer “had a real good, you know, chemistry together”. The vari-ation in these stories testifies to the diverse backgrounds of the safari guides but is alsorelated to the practices, through which the companies create a labour reserve. Recruit-ment researcher Bills (1999, p. 585) has concluded that there are no pre-existing labour

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reserves, but organizations must create them through screening individuals in the labourmarket and creating a pool of potential employees (see also Fevre, 1992, pp. 10–13).

Recruitment can use either formal and informal channels or internal and externalcalls (Marsden, 1994, p. 288; Mencken & Winfield, 1998; Windolf, 1986, pp. 237–239). The formal channels are typically used in external recruitment, where newspaperannouncements, employment office services and company websites are used. Thesechannels are characterized by a fairly clear understanding of what kind of job openingsare being filled. The informal channels utilize internal company newsletters and currentemployee networks, for example. In many cases it is, in fact, difficult to pinpoint theexact time when recruitment starts and what kind of expertise and person thecompany seeks. Through the unofficial contacts the company keeps track of potentiallyemployable persons and creates a labour reserve for times when new employees areneeded.

There are also societal factors that can create specific labour reserves. Education isone such factor, as it directs individuals to certain sectors of the labour market(Windolf & Wood, 1988). The safari business is specific, as opposed to many otherservice-sector occupations; there is no formal education or career path that wouldqualify you to work as a safari guide. Many interviewees stated that education is some-what useless, as the potential of previous training to increase competence is limited. Theinterviewees stressed the importance of the company’s own training and learning on thejob: “you cannot learn this on a correspondence course, in the nature guide training, oranywhere else for that matter, you learn it on the job”.

The safari business uses three kinds of practices to build a labour reserve. The mostestablished practice is posting advertisements to newspapers and distributing infor-mation on job openings at the employment office. The majority of our intervieweesoriginally entered the business via this route. The second practice is recruiting studentsin different recruitment and education fairs that bring together a large group of youngpeople potentially interested in the field. Many companies also have good contacts tothe vocational schools that offer nature tourism degrees as well as to other institutionsthat offer tourism-related education. The third practice is using informal recruitmentchannels (see Mencken & Winfield, 1998).

Huilaja (2009) argues that using the informal channels is largely based on utilizingthe social networks of the existing employees. This is the case in the safari business:many interviewees had been offered a job practically by just “walking through thecompany door” either by first being recommended by someone or by showing one’ssuitability in some other way as the guide in the beginning of this section. Huilaja(2009) concludes that the advantage of using these informal channels lies in its lowcosts and potential effectiveness. If the employer knows the applicant beforehand,she/he can be employed without official interviews or suitability tests. In addition,part of the responsibility for the success of the recruitment can be passed on to theperson recommending the new employee. Companies have to rely on informal channelsespecially at times when formal channels cannot reach enough suitable candidates(Hermelin, 2005, p. 228). Companies may even pay rewards to employees who rec-ommended a potential applicant who was recruited (see Mencken & Winfield, 1998,p. 139). As every sixth interviewee of this study had been recruited to the field via infor-mal channels, this form of recruitment is clearly used by safari companies as well.

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Employee Selection and Suitability

If the safari companies have a diverse set of practices on how to build their labourreserve, the actual selection of employees follows a fairly uniform pattern. In recruit-ment research employee selection is usually understood as a phase that identifies themost suitable candidate(s) from among a pool of potential applicants (see Bills,1988, 1999; Huilaja, 2009; Windolf, 1986). If we utilize the terms of Bills (1999,p. 585), the building of a labour reserve described above equals the screening phasewhere the employer selects, by using different channels, a group of applicants thatproceed to the final selection phase. Windolf (1986, p. 238) describes the selectionas a process where the applicants must pass certain phases of filtering. These caninclude, for example, evaluation of their application package, writing tasks, personalityevaluations, interviews and meetings with company representatives. From the appli-cant’s point of view this is the stage when she/he has to present his/her skills and per-sonality in a favourable light to negotiate the best possible value for his/her skills andqualifications (see, e.g. Koikkalainen, 2009).

The selection phase differs from the screening phase in one critical aspect: now thepersonal qualities of the applicant are under scrutiny as the suitability of a particularapplicant to the job and the workplace community is evaluated. For safari companies,employee selection is typically the responsibility of a few key persons who interview,observe and study the skills and competence of the applicants in different situations.The selection process has three phases: the interview phase, where suitable applicantsare selected and invited to take part in training, the training phase and the Christmashigh-season phase that defines which of the guides continue also during the springseason. A majority of safari guides enter the business through this route. In eachphase the individual’s characteristics and suitability for the job are observed andsome applicants are let go. It is customary to invite a larger group of applicants tothe training than the company plans to employ, as the training phase reveals whichapplicants are, in the company’s opinion, “not suitable for the field”. Similarly, alarger group is selected to work during the few weeks of the Christmas season thanwhat the actual long-term labour demand is envisioned to be.

Suitability is an abstract attribute; it is vague and difficult to objectively measure. It isqualitatively different, for example, if an employee is hired because of “suitability” orbecause they are “qualified” (Wood, 1988). Suitability can also have many forms(Mencken & Winfield, 1998). At first glance it may thus appear that the employmentpractices of the safari companies are fairly unorganized and include many aspectsthat outsiders find difficult to understand. However, there is nothing remarkable inthis. Companies in the tourism and leisure services sector favour unofficial and unsys-tematic “ad-hoc” forms of recruitment (Baerenholdt & Jensen, 2009, p. 350; Jameson,2000; Nickson, 2007, p. 111).

The different interpretations of suitability are visible in the stories of the intervie-wees. One was employed because “she got along well with the interviewer”, anotherbecause he “fit in the group”, the third was known to be “resourceful”. Many agreethat it is vital to “be good with small talk”, have “the right kind of sense ofhumour”, “interest in the field” and “attitude”. In the safari business suitabilitymeans certain factors and qualities that the employer observes during the prolonged,

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three-phase selection period. First, suitability means possessing such qualities and skillsthat the work of a safari guide specifically requires. For the actors involved in this study,safari guide work means first and foremost working with customers, and thereforeemployees are required to have good customer service skills: performance, interactiveand social skills. As noted by the interviewees who had taken part in measuring appli-cant suitability: being responsible, independent and innovative are importantcharacteristics.

The suitability of the guide in training is finally measured during the actual work. It isa widely held notion in the field that only taking part in real safari work will reveal ifyou are suitable for this business. A male interviewee with a long history in the fieldexplains: “each applicant has to experience this for themselves” only then can it be“known if that person is suitable or not”. The selection of employees cannot be out-sourced to a third party, as it is difficult for outsiders to evaluate the necessary skillsas “each company has their own way of doing things”. The talk of “company ways”shows that suitability is linked to something more than just the nature of the workitself. The above-cited male interviewee explains that considerable attention is paidto who fits in the team: “Assessments are kind of made already during the trainingperiod, like who immediately seem like those types that fit in. This work requiresteam-spirit.”

The interviewees place a high value on the fact that employees can work as membersof the workplace community, meeting their peers’ expectations. The guides speak abouta certain “chemistry” and “having the right kind of sense of humour”. The suitability ofapplicants is tested in comparison to how well they are expected to fit in the community.The above-cited interviewee continues to explain that fitting in is even more importantthan knowing how to operate a snowmobile, a daily means of transport during theactual safaris. A technical skill, such as driving a snowmobile, can be learned, whileone either does or does not have the soft skills required to become a good memberof the team or the aesthetic skills to embody the role of a safari guide.

The selection of a suitable employee is thus about finding certain personality types,choosing employees that embody the values and chemistry of the workplace and thecompany itself. Ultimately it is also about service production. This emphasis on“soft skills” and personalities over “hard skills” and education has been noted also inprevious research on recruitment in the hospitality and tourism sector (e.g. Nickson,2007, p. 94). The interviewees repeatedly return to the topic of how the interpersonalrelationships between the employees should never affect the quality of the service.For a female interviewee in her 30s a good guide needs to “have an eye for good cus-tomer service”. She continues to explain:

If you are having a bad day, you can never show it. We can shout our faces redwhen we are together, but the customers cannot see it. And a sort of relaxedatmosphere is of course one prerequisite; if you are uptight you are not toleratedlong.

It is a central principle in the safari business that the customers can never see themundane nature of the work itself; neither can personal disputes between employeesaffect service delivery. One aim of selecting suitable employees is thus to prevent

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troublesome situations beforehand. The internal dynamics of the workplace is managedby selecting employees, who fit in and share the norms, culture, work ethic and attitudesof the community. The interviewees assume that what defines suitability can largely befound in the personal characteristics of the applicants. For example, the skills requiredin customer service, such as social skills and flexibility, are seen to be “pretty naturalcharacteristics” and innate in some people: “if you do not care, you just do not care”.

What has been said before does not signify that the qualifications and organizationaland technical skills of the job applicants would be irrelevant for the companies.Language skills, work experience and education in tourism play a part in recruitment,but they are not the main focus. The reason for this is that those already working in thefield believe that they can teach the necessary skills to any suitable applicant. The inter-viewees that took part in recruiting new workers stated that they are not even particu-larly interested in the technical skills of the applicants. One male interviewee, forexample, said that for him the value of a completed vocational nature tourism degreesignifies that “the applicant is serious about working in this field, nothing more”.According to him the educational background of the applicant tells him about theperson’s motivation, and this is more important than the possible formal skillsrelated to the actual work.

Employee Training

The current models of the phases of the recruitment process typically end withemployee selection (Bills, 1999; Callaghan & Thompson, 2002; Wood, 1988). Afterselection the new employee is familiarized with his/her job, the workplace and theorganization. It is common that a separate training period is included, where the newemployee is introduced to the company policies, rules and values (Callaghan &Thompson, 2002, pp. 243–244). In the safari business this company-specific trainingperiod is, however, clearly still a part of employee recruitment. Suitable applicantsare invited to take part in the training, which is a prerequisite for working during theChristmas season. As employee selection continues through both the training and theChristmas season, these should also be understood as phases of the recruitment process.

Safari companies train their own personnel. The training period is in principle volun-tary but in practice compulsory, as the training has to be completed before a guide canbegin the actual work. The duration of the training varies but commonly it lasts for sixweeks, is organized during the weekends and is unpaid. There is also variation betweenthe companies on what the training entails, but most courses follow a basic pattern. Thetrainee guides are familiarized with the company, its goals and products, the job of asafari guide, the destinations of the safaris and logistics of how the customers are trans-ported, as well as issues related to employment in the company, such as job contracts,salaries, responsibilities and rules. According to the interviewees the main goal is thatguides know the company and its products; understand the service process and theirrole in creating the experience for the customer and “understand the significance ofselling complete service products”. The idea is that after the training all employeeshave a unitary vision of how the work process is organized and a model which canbe followed. Hence the training is an important part of standardizing the product bymaking the role performed by each guide as similar as possible.

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Standardizing the work aims at making sure that the product is of equal value andform regardless of which guide happens to be on duty. As Leidner (1993) argues,when the product is hard to differentiate from the quality of the interaction, thequality controls imposed are not mainly about the standardization of the product butof the employees. In service work the employee is undeniably a part of the serviceand its quality, and thus the standardization of the product ultimately has to meanalso standardizing the employees. By controlling, training and guiding all employeesto a unitary format, the company can ensure that neither the quality of the serviceproduct nor the company itself is dependent on individual employees.

Training is the key to how this is realized in practice. An essential part of the trainingis to socialize the guides to the company culture. In other words if the first phases of therecruitment process aim at finding the suitable persons for the business, the aim ofthe training period is to prune out those who do not fit in and introduce the rest tothe business culture and their role in the product. In studies on service work “scripting”refers to the practices that companies use to guide employees on how to create the inter-action necessary for delivering the service (Leidner, 1993). By scripting the servicesoffered, companies can ensure beforehand that service production runs as planned.The scripting practices can include detailed regulations on how the employee expresseshim/herself or moves physically. Such moulding of employee attitudes and appearancehas also been called “aesthetic labour” – the employee’s ability to look good and soundright for the job (Nickson, 2007, p. 93; Warhurst & Nickson, 2001; see also Gibbs &Ritchie, 2010).

Scripting is used also in the safari business. First, during the training period the safaricompanies explain the customer service that belongs to the safari product. The guidesare trained to the necessary interaction by telling them, for example, how the customersare greeted when they arrive (welcome, hand shake, eye contact) and how the custo-mers are advised about what will happen during the safari (getting to know eachother, getting dressed in winter clothes, how to ride the snowmobile). There are alsorules on how to treat the customers during the safari (what to say and when, how tobehave and what to do) and on how the safari ends (flatter the group, say farewells,ask for customer feedback). Second, the guides in training are advised on what kindof service style, bodily appearance and way of talking are desirable in a safari guide.Trainers talk about how guides should not smoke when with customers, the importanceof good manners, what guides should look like and how to interact with the customers.

Third, the safari companies have rules about how the customers are to be addressed:what kinds of expressions are suitable and how the customers are greeted andapproached. You should never laugh at a customer, for example, no matter howstupid the questions she/he asks or how she/he behaves. The customers are also tobe addressed in a respectable way, and should not be referred to as tourists. Fourth,there is a rule in the business that the guide’s own attitudes or outlook on life shouldnever be transmitted to the customers, especially if they clash with the customer’sviews or the service product. In addition the guides are expected to adopt a certain“safari style” in their personal appearance and conform to a specific dress code thatdefines what the guide should look like and what kinds of clothes she/he shouldwear. When all these pieces fall into place, the experience produced appears

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spontaneous, unique and memorable as the considerable effort taken in its scripting andstaging is not visible to the customers (Gibbs & Ritchie, 2010, pp. 191–192).

The training period reveals a clash between the expressed skill requirements and thestandardization of work. In their recruitment speech safari companies emphasize per-sonal characteristics and social skills, the so-called soft qualifications that are vital inservice work. The scripting of the customer service, on the other hand, standardizesand unifies the service product itself and thus the work of the guides. The balancebetween necessary control and employee freedom is a specific challenge in servicework (Baerenholdt & Jensen, 2009, p. 362; Callaghan & Thompson, 2002, p. 251).Too strict control can kill motivation and personal sensitivity that successful customerservice thrives on.

Monitoring and Control

The safari companies use specific guidelines and scripting as ways of exercising controlover the employees. The management can never have total control over the workprocess, not even when they follow the principles of standardization, measurabilityand external control. This is true especially in the interactive service sector wherethe production of the service coincides with its consumption and the work process isintimately linked to the personality of the employee. Safari services are producedand consumed outdoors in the wild in an interactive relationship between the guideand the customer group. Yet this does not mean that the employers would not try tocontrol their employees. As they have little control over the actions of an individualguide during the safaris, the more fundamental it is that the employer is satisfiedwith the overall performance of the employee. The independent nature of safari workdoes not therefore wholly remove external control, not to mention quality and pro-ductivity assessments that are also part of company practices.

The safari business uses two ways of ensuring that the guides’ performance is in linewith the company policy. The first practice is a customer feedback system, which is oneof the most common ways of monitoring employee performance in the service sector.As services are always performed under the gaze of the customer, each customer istherefore also a potential observer of the quality of the work. Most safari companiesuse customer feedback both as a quality control measure and as a way of controllingthe performance of the guides. Safari entrepreneurs are, however, hesitant towards cus-tomer feedback as a real measure of control, as customers tend to focus on the visiblesides of the guide’s work, and can give only some indication on how skilled the guide isin other, possibly more important parts of his/her work.

The real expertise of the safari guides is measured with the second control mechan-ism: peer group control. According to Casey (1995, pp. 121–124), in organizationsbased on teamwork, the main focus of work control shifts from external control tointernal processes and teams. Our observations of the safari business support thisclaim, as according to our interviewees it is common practice that the more experiencedguides monitor the activities of the junior staff. This control is a way of ensuring that theemployees live up to their tasks and continue to perform their role accordingly. Theinterviewees explain that guides are continually tested and evaluated during the prac-tical duties they perform, and a new guide can, for example, be deliberately put to

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perform certain tasks to test how she/he manages. During the first winter in a guide’scareer this peer group control is also the final stage of the long recruitment process.

The objective of this monitoring is to make sure that the employee performs in a waythat the company desires. The testing, on the other hand, is used to examine what theemployees are like as individuals. This information is needed to see which of theemployees are best suited to perform different tasks. In addition, one of the aims ofthis system is to give the employee him/herself an understanding of how well suitedshe/he is for the business. Using the more experienced staff to monitor the newguides is a form of direct employee control and an acknowledged part of their work.The control does not focus only on ensuring that the new employee has the necessaryskills, but senior guides also have a say in who gets to continue on the job and in whichcapacity. They are the “controlling eye” of the employer in the field as they report onthe suitability of the employees to perform different tasks; on how they fit in the work-place community and how they follow its values and norms.

Conclusion

Examining the work of safari guides and how they are socialized into members of theworkplace community from the recruitment point of view allows us to take part in dis-cussions on the changing nature of work and increased demands of the working life.Much has been said about the changes brought on by globalization and the rise ofthe service economy, for example, but as Bolton (2004) notes, the extent and depthof these changes boil down to how they are visible in empirical cases. Recruitmentis a specific labour market situation where the match between the demands of thejob and the characteristics of the applicant is evaluated in practice, and wherethe changes of skill requirements manifest themselves. During the different phases ofthe long recruitment process, the applicant’s suitable personality, individual character-istics and social skills are factors that attract the interest of the company recruiter. As wehave explained, recruitment can begin from a random encounter and include manyunofficial features that are common especially in employment sectors with seasonaland fixed-time contracts and high turnover of employees (see, e.g. Bills, 1999;Nickson, 2007).

Our analysis demonstrates that the idea of the increased importance of the so-calledsoft qualifications is not without an empirical base. Grugulis and Vincent (2009,pp. 605–606) have suggested that new focus on the personal characteristics andsocial skills of the employees is often mere rhetoric rather than a real evaluation ofwhat the demands of the job itself are. In the case of the safari guides, however, therecruiters look first and foremost for the right kind of attitude and suitability for thejob and the team. While this increased importance of personality as a job skill hasbeen noted before in tourism and hospitality research (e.g. Nickson, 2007), our casedemonstrates that the evaluation of employee skills and personality does not stop atsigning the work contract, but continues throughout the first season as a safari guide.

The prolonged recruitment system that the safari companies use aims at finding thesuitable types, allocating them to tasks and responsibilities that best fit their skills andensuring that at least some of the best guides continue work during the next season.Though it has seemingly haphazard and unofficial features, this type of a recruitment

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policy can also be goal-oriented and efficient from the company’s point of view.Despite the emphasis on individual skills tied to one’s personality, there is more tobeing a successful safari guide than just being of a suitable type. In this sense our analy-sis leads to similar interpretations as Leidner (1993), Warhurst and Nickson (2009) andGrugulis and Vincent (2009) have each respectively made. In the service sector therequired work qualifications are only partly linked to employee subjectivity.

Service-sector employees learn most of the skills that matter during the companytraining and through the socialization process that is a part of the recruitment itself.The training period is not only about the skills required in leading a group of touristson a trip through the wilderness in freezing temperatures, but also about regularizingthe appearance and behaviour of the guides. Dress codes, rules and tips on how tospeak in the presence of customers point to a conscious moulding of employeevalues and attitudes by regulating their self-expression and physical presence. Afterthe training the guide should embody the values and goals of the company andexpress them with his/her being, his/her manners, gestures and behaviour.

As we have demonstrated above, the safari business utilizes a twofold strategy ofboth personalizing the service and standardizing and controlling work practices.Through a rigorous process of employee selection, training, guiding and control thesafari companies try to make sure that employees embody their company spirit andact in the field in a way the company would. In a best-case scenario the personal ambi-tions, hopes and enthusiasm of the employee match with the goals of the company.Being a safari guide means playing a specific role designed by the company, butwith a great degree of personal freedom in the field. In other words, even though thesafari companies prefer employees who are willing to work with their personality,they go to great lengths in trying to ensure that that personality is in line with thecompany goals and policy. Relative independence while in the field does not equalless control of the work process or lack of control of the service quality and efficiency.The selection, training and control of the safari guides are ways of socializing them intotheir role and guaranteeing them relative autonomy to work as independent pieces, butas parts of the larger company puzzle.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Academy of Finland for funding the Tourism as Work researchproject (grant number 8111276) for Jarno Valkonen, Societal Choices in Promoting Life-wide Learning (grant number 200197) for Heikki Huilaja and Spatial Citizenship in Euro-pean Labour Markets research project (grant number 12445) for Saara Koikkalainen.

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