We’re in the second week of delivering on our inaugural Youth-Led Tech, and one of the most rewarding parts of running this program is working with our instructors. We assembled a stellar group of people in a very short amount of time.
At Smart Chicago, one of our principles is open. To us, that means publishing open source code, but it also means publishing step-by-step instructions on how we do less technical but often more sophisticated tasks like hiring a high-quality, diverse workforce for tech instruction in a short amount of time.
Here’s how we did it:
We opened the application process on May 15, 2015 and closed it on June 4, 2015 at 8AM. The main instrument was through text on the project page. We promoted the positions via Twitter, email, Facebook, and other means.
On May 26, 2015, we had 36 applications, 3 of which were duplicates. We sent out this Mailchimp email to all 36 applicants, inviting them for interviews
We conducted 15 interviews on June 2, 2015 based on responses to this campaign. As three of us did the interviews— Kyla, Sonja, and I— we collected quantitative and qualitative information in another Wufoo form. We asked general, open-ended questions about why they were interested in the opportunity, and also checked their availability for the six-week course. We also gave each a rating in three areas: classroom management, tech knowledge, and teaching experience.
An additional nine people applied after this initial interview set. We arranged and conducted another 12 interviews with a number of these applicants, as well as people from the initial 36 who couldn’t make it on June 2. We communicated with these people by email rather than Mailchimp. We offered interviews to every applicant, and we interviewed everybody who responded to our offers.
We received 45 applications total. After background checks, consent forms, and consultant contracts, we hired this set of wonder-people:
