How to get Senior Instructors for the Starters Academy

[Gustavo-SF]

#DL: 5/8/2023

@minhhoang1023 and I initiated this conversation to prepare us for Batch 7.

Preparations for Batch 7: Recruiting Senior Instructors

As we gear up for Batch 7, an essential aspect of our planning involves bringing on board Senior Instructors who can lead or support each Specialization. This discussion aims to collate thoughts and suggestions on identifying, approaching, and engaging these individuals.

Given the strategic importance of this recruitment, we have identified two main areas that we would like to get your insights on:

1. Incentives for Senior Instructors: What incentives could we offer that would attract experienced and talented instructors to join us? Feel free to think outside the box - our goal is to create an appealing environment for the best instructors.

2. Recruitment Volume: Considering the scale of Batch 7, we estimate needing 5-10 Senior Instructors and additional Intermediate instructors to form a robust team. How can we ensure we meet this target while maintaining the quality of the instructors we bring?

Please provide your thoughts and ideas by 5/08/2023. Let's work together to make Batch 7 a success!

[pratiksshajain]

Incentives for Instructors

Incentives play a critical role in attracting talent. It is even more significant for our LDSA where the resources are constrained. Here are some potential incentives we can think of :

Skill Development: Offer opportunities for the instructors to further develop their skills by providing access to the latest resources, research materials, and industry experts. We can achieve this by collaborating with partnered businesses, universities or post doctoral students. I believe we also have solid resources.
Networking: Promote the chance to network with other high-level professionals in the data science field, potentially fostering valuable connections for future collaborations or opportunities.
Non-Monetary Compensation: This can include recognition for their work, like public recognition, LinkedIn endorsement, and other forms of acknowledgement. We can ask partnered Instructors for better idea what they would like.
Impact: Need to Highlight the difference Instructors can make in people's lives by teaching data science. For many people, the opportunity to make a real impact in their field is a significant incentive.
Flexibility: need to highlight that options like remote teaching, flexible hours, or project-based engagements are available and work-life balance is promoted.

Number of Instructors Needed

Do we still need 5-10 Senior Instructors and some intermediate ones?

Leverage Existing Networks: we can reach out to existing instructors, board members, volunteers, and other contacts for referrals.
Partnerships with Universities: we can establish partnerships with universities that have strong data science programs. They can recommend their faculty or even post-doctoral students who may be interested in such opportunities.
Hiring Campaigns: we also can conduct hiring campaigns on social media, job boards, and data science forums or communities to attract interested candidates.
Alumni Engagement: we can think of starting a campaign to engage with the alumni of the academy who have gone on to achieve great things in the data science field and would be interested in giving back to their alma mater

Need to have structured plan for above.

What do you think? Open for discussion, suggestion and correction.

[Gustavo-SF]

I've already investigated a bit about University collaboration and it won't be easy. The University still sees us as competition. It might be easier to do joint programs or associate our course with a specific University.

[pratiksshajain]

Let's do this, let's conduct a targeted recruitment campaign on platforms widely used by data scientists.

LinkedIn: Use LinkedIn to post job vacancies. Utilize LinkedIn's advanced search to identify potential candidates and directly reach out to them.

Data Science Forums and Platforms: Post requirement on platforms like Kaggle, GitHub, or Stack Overflow where data scientists frequently engage.

Webinars/Seminars: Host free webinars or seminars on current data science topics. At the end of these sessions, you can announce your need for instructors.

Referral Program: Implement a referral program where anyone referring a candidate who gets hired is rewarded(negotiable) . This will incentivize people to refer potential instructors.

This strategy might help in directly reaching the potential candidates, minimizing the need for intermediaries.

[Gustavo-SF]

The referral program is challenging to do through a volunteer-based organisation. If we offer any reward, we should start by rewarding the instructors. I will consider "develop a Reward-Based Recruitment where both instructors and people doing referrals get rewarded" for our Poll. What do you think?

[carlacotas]

Incentives for Instructors

Recommendations and certificates: we can give recommendations letters or recommendation through LinkedIn as well certificates

Create a LinkedIn group: this can bring more engagement, updates about LDSA, and bring conversation topics

Website: Have a space for volunteers interested in writing to share knowledge to write blog posts about volunteering, data science, python

.Mentorship: we can offer rewarding mentorship opportunities

Number of Instructors Needed

LinkedIn: we can search on LinkedIn for senior professional, contact with them, present the project and see if they are interested in collaborate with us - optional use linkedin recruiter if someone has this type of account; on our About section or Volunteer section (personal profiles), where we have the volunteer experience associated with LDSA write something about that we are searching for senior instructors and if anyone is interested just let a message; post a job offer that we are searching for volunteers, one job post for each specialization

Ask for references: try to reah out previous instructors, ask for references or help sharing through their network, or even if they can help during this batch

Create communities: create a LDSA Community Alumni with a section on website and slack, where past students can join to promote the contact between students after batch finishes and between past students and LDSA; create a slack channel for LDSA volunteers Alumni to promote communication, experience and knowledge sharing

volunteers work/company sharing: promote past and present volunteers sharing if possible in their current company (in cases where the company is open to this type of sharing)

job platforms: use job platforms such as indeed to announce volunteer offer

[majkah0]

Ask previous instructors if they can recommend someone.

[minhhoang1023]

Very good ideas!

What I would suggest, on top of all the ideas above, is to find a good mechanism to sustain senior instructors. We might be able to find senior instructors, but the other challenge is to sustain and keep these people. Building high-quality learning units, and getting acquainted with the Academy's learning materials structure requires non-trivial effort. See the number of hours required here: https://ldssa.github.io/wiki/Instructors/02-Teachers-How-to-build-Learning-Units/

As such, it will be more challenging for senior instructors to commit and stay with us for a long time, unless they are very passionate about Teaching. On the other hand, if you compare it with the Guest speaker role, it would typically require less than 5 hours to prepare and deliver a talk, which in turn would offer similar benefits such as Networking and career development.

Therefore, we will need to find positions that require less time commitment from senior instructors, such as a Mentor role. Here senior instructors would focus on working with less experienced instructors and share knowledge with the rest of the organization. In this way, we won't need a great number of senior instructors each year.

[Gustavo-SF]

If we find the proper incentives, we can sustain our senior instructors longer

[VascoMano]

I feel that we should tackle this problem in two steps: i) in the short term (now) and ii) in the middle term.

I) short term (now)
We have only two months left before the course begins, and August does not count. Leveraging existing networks and alumni is probably our only solution at this moment.

II) middle term
We need to engage more with our partners. Once or twice per year is not enough.
Some potential partners told me they may pay instructors (or let them use working hours to teach in the LDSA). But what do we offer partners in return?
In my opinion, we offer three things: i) recognition (personal and brand recognition); ii) networking (with other companies); iii) students.

i) Recognition
To improve recognition, we can do LinkedIn posts with our instructors and partners, give "awards", etc. At the very least, we should update our website. It is not fair to mention companies that don't support us and don't mention companies that do support us.

ii) Networking
I think we should have more activities. Please share other ideas if you have them.
Also, we should make better use of the things we have. Do we know how to get in touch with the girl from NOS?
We can also make more connections with other groups. For example, I've been talking with DSPA. Even though it's summer now, I think we can join their group and accept them as partners, although we have to take part in their activities.

iii) Students
From my experience, students are the easy part to sell.

[Gustavo-SF]

Thank you all for the input already provided.
Here is a quick summary of the input given so far:

Incentives

Offer Skill Development Opportunities
Offer Networking Possibilities 👍 (great for partner companies)
Recognition 👍 (personal and brand)
Want to make impact
Flexibility
Create Communities
Mentorship Opportunities

Solutions

Use our Network 👍👍 (short term)
Create our Community
Partnerships with other Entities 👍 (middle term)
Hiring Campaigns 👍

My Input

I tend to agree with @VascoMano . Short term is our network and it won't be very different from what we have been having now. In the middle term we can depend on partnerships.

What do you guys think would make it a sustainable solution (long term)?

I am very in favour of creating a community from which we could easily reach out and get instructors for our courses. It would also be possible to take part in other communities instead if we find any that are close to our vision/mission. If we have our own community we can work on sustaining instructors more easily since we can make events for them, allow them to network better and get more recognition with the community.

[Gustavo-SF]

Closing this discussion. Thank you for all the ideas :)