Recruitment & School Custodianship

Contents

1. Recruiting Teachers: Approach

2. Recruiting Teachers: In Practice

3. Ambassador Oversight

4. Future Possibilities: School Custodianship

1. Recruiting Teachers: Approach

Over the last several years, countless hours from numerous dedicated people have gone into conceptualising and building the Wavumbuzi product. But without a mechanism by which to get that product into the hands of its intended users, that hard work is wasted. This makes "distribution" and exceptionally important part of Wavumbuzi; which can broadly be split into Marketing (speak to many users at once) and Recruitment (directly target individual users). This section will unpack the latter.

From the early iterations of the the challenge, there has been a core premise that has shaped the way we recruit for Wavumbuzi: the most effective way to get thousands of learners engaged in the challenge is to empower a few hundred teachers to get their learners engaged in the challenge. We do not have the resources to directly contact and maintain human to human relationships with thousands of learners, but doing so with a few hundred teachers is well within the realm of possibility.

Where do Systems come in? The all important role for systems in this whole mix is to enable. Wavumbuzi systems do not exist for their own purposes. They do not exist in a closed system. They exist to support real people in the task for recruiting teachers. It is vital to hold this idea at front of mind at all times when building, adjusting, or maintaining any component of the Wavumbuzi recruitment machine.

More than an important concept though, the idea that Wavumbuzi Systems exist to enable people in the recruitment process is powerful practical guide in how to approach the design and execution of systems - whether a HubSpot workflow or a calling script. It is the foundation upon which the first crucial step of the recruitment system is built: Logical Flows.

In this context, a "Logical Flow" is simply the structured articulation of the series of steps we intend to take in order to recruit a single teacher for Wavumbuzi. It's the How? of it all. It starts with "How do we get in contact with them?", proceeds to "How do we get them to attend training and register for the challenge?", and moves towards "How do we empower them to get the most out of their learners during the challenge?".

The answer tends to be some combination of calls, emails, SMS messages, and events. These are the tools at our disposal, and we will call them "Interventions". And while, in reality, each teacher's journey from not knowing about Wavumbuzi to being a Teacher Champion will be slightly different, the most productive place to start is by creating the ideal logical flow featuring some mix of the tools mentioned above.

Below are two links: 1. The logical flow document that guided recruitment for Wavumbuzi Kenya 2021, and 2. A Loom video in which this logical flow is explored and unpacked. It is worth spending some time truly understanding how these resources set the course for all practical implementation of Wavumbuzi systems.

1. Teacher Recruitment Flow (Wavumbuzi Kenya 2021)

2. Teacher Recruitment Flow Walkthrough Video

Once these logical flows are well defined, the challenge of setting up systems becomes a whole lot more clear. They serve as an instruction manual for the outcome you want to reach. As a Systems Admin your job then is to figure out how to enable the Wavumbuzi team to guide teachers through that journey as easily as possible. Automate what can be effectively automated, streamline where possible, make information more easily accessible, and put the power in the hands of the recruitment team (Ambassadors + in-country Team) with a clear understanding of how to get the most out of the process.

2. Recruiting Teachers: In Practice

A good logical flow is a great foundation for building recruitment systems. It's a blueprint for building workflows and protocols for recruitment success. But it still leaves plenty of building and problem solving to be done - not least because the system needs to enable the logical flow process to be carried out at scale, with hundreds of teachers at once, where each teacher starts at a different time and moves through the steps at a different speed.

However, starting with the logical flow, one can create an exhaustive list of the "Interventions" that will be made. The next step is to define the conditions which trigger each intervention. Together, these two ideas define what to do and when to do it. Stringing multiple whats and whens together is the essence of the systems building exercise.

Informed by logical flows and the planned recruitment activities for the upcoming iteration of Wavumbuzi, your task is then to conceptualise and configure HubSpot for enabling recruitment processes, including:

• Assigning Record Ownership: When records exist for schools and contacts, they ought to have an owner assigned to them for several reasons (Walkthrough Video)

• Updating of record-categorising properties (e.g. "Programme Affiliation") based on trigger criteria (Walkthrough Video)

• Creating recruitment Deals; populating recruitment pipelines; and moving Deals within pipelines

• Allocating recruitment tasks (e.g. calls, adding contacts to WhatsApp groups) to recruitment team (Walkthrough Video 1 & Walkthrough Video 2)

• Supporting Materials: Consider all communications templates and documents needed for automated communications (e.g. emails, forms) and ensure these are configured in HubSpot Marketing module prior to activating recruitment workflows (Walkthrough Video)

• Oversight mechanisms: Create HubSpot Dashboard(s) using HubSpot Reports module to provide management oversight and efficacy tracking of recruitment team (Walkthrough Video - same as prior video; combined)

  • An idea to emphasise from the video: It is as important to use these oversight tools well as it is to build them in the first place. Ensure that you give as much attention to training and enforcing the usage of these tools as you do to creating them. For example, push to set up weekly check-ins with the School Liaison to ensure they're using the dashboards properly.

If making calls in countries where HubSpot native calling is not available (all African countries other than South Africa, as at end 2021), you will need to configure an integration between HubSpot and a third party calling application. Historically Toky has worked well for this purpose.

Broadly, the combination of all these recruitment components (as well as the Ambassador team management) has been referred to in the past as the Calling Campaign. In truth, it's more than a calling campaign, but this name captures the essence of the pre-challenge recruitment phase.

3. Ambassador Oversight

If you've read this far down the page and you've watched videos along the way, it will by now be obvious to you that Ambassadors are a key part of the Wavumbuzi recruitment machine. The chain of automations and interventions and team members is only as strong as its weakest link, so it is crucial that ambassador training and management is given a significant amount of thought and attention.

It can be tricky to navigate this facet of systems administration because ultimately the team of ambassadors in a given country will be managed directly by that country's school liaison officer. It is therefore your responsibility to maintain exceptionally good communication with those School Liaison Officers in collaboratively managing ambassadors. The system you build on HubSpot is an incredibly powerful resource that allows the team to scale the efforts of a small group of people into a sophisticated recruitment campaign. But the power of the system is completely undermined if those it's intended to empower are circumventing its use.

The three broad components of a successfully managed team of ambassadors are:

1. Set up: Prepare thoroughly the framework you want them to operate within, the materials they will need, the communication channels you will use with them, the accounts they will use on HubSpot and other platforms. More on this in the "Ambassadors" page which follows.

2. Training: Thoroughly equipping the team with the understanding and skillset they will need to use the tools you have prepared for them and be confident doing so. More on this in the "Training" page which follows.

3. Oversight: Maintaining good practices of ensuring ambassadors are operating as intended; reviewing the system as it operates and making fixes or improvements along the way; ensuring the School Liaison Officer is maintaining a high degree of accountability and efficacy among their ambassador team. More on this is the previous section and the latter half of the oversight mechanisms walkthrough video.

4. Future Possibilities: School Custodianship

Enabling effective recruitment is the Systems Administrator's number one priority. It has to be. Without good recruitment, there is no Wavumbuzi.

But once the mechanisms for successful recruitment are in place, the same logic and framework might be applied to managing school relationships beyond registration.

Thoughts, reflections, ideas, and more in this School Custodianship Video.