When I put out the notice for the program, I was expecting only a handful of people to apply, but within 3 days, 33 people had applied. I closed the form on the 3rd day so it would be easy for me to sort through.
I vetted all 33 applicants and selected 27 to proceed to interviews. The idea was to give them the experience of getting a remote job and learning on the job.
I sent the 27 selected applicants emails asking them to book a call on my Calendly and allowed them to pick their preferred day and time. I set the only available week to that of Mon Aug 29 2022 - Fri Sep 2 2022 and about 20 of them booked calls.
Interestingly, almost half of the 20 applicants did not show up for the calls they booked themselves and selected their preferred day and time. I followed up with them sending emails saying I missed them and asking if they were still interested, and a good number replied and booked new calls. And at the end of the week, 17 of them had signed up on our Discourse instance.
Now, the next phase of the training begins. I’ll onboard the learners, working with each of them to achieve their learning goals. You can follow this in our #learning section. The goal now is to build the right foundation and culture, so I will be agressively focusing on those who are serious. This will make it easier to attract more of the same kind and make it easier to scale while still retaining quality. Those who slack off will be let go.