Outreachy report #27: November 2021
Intern selection
We’ve been testing shorter periods for the intern selection for a while. It went from a month to three weeks to two weeks this round, and we learned very quickly that two weeks won’t cut it – the ideal is offering mentors and coordinators three weeks to finalize their intern selections.
Intern selections weren’t more problematic this cohort, it was a just a matter of not having much time to check applicants’ time commitments and communicate with community coordinators and mentors in case the applicants they selected were ineligible. We had a couple of cases of applicants that didn’t disclose their employment status or their school time commitments and that led to a lot of back-and-forth between us, applicants and communities.
There’s no easy solution for this other than having more time available for this part of the selection process.
Invoicing
The shorter intern selection period also meant that our invoicing process was delayed. We had a lot of communities blocked on intern selections, which in turn meant that we couldn’t issue their invoices witht the exact amount they should be invoiced for. On the other hand, as December is usually a smaller round, we didn’t have too many invoices to take care of.
A direct consequence of that delay is that we didn’t announce sponsors the same day we announced our selected interns. We decided to move that announcement to the first day of the internship.
Written exercise session
We had to put a pause on our selection process as we finalized intern selections but we returned to that soon after. We decided that our screening interview data will be used in conjunction to the information we’ll get from the written exercise and the information we have from their resumés and cover letters. People that didn’t advance to the written exercise either misundertood the role during the screening interview or didn’t schedule a screening interview at all.
Sage and I designed a 1h30min written exercise session. Candidates write their answers in a prepopulated etherpad. The questions involve contacting potential partners, replying to applicants inquiries and analyzing a feedback from an intern and their mentors.
In the email we sent to schedule those sessions, we provided candidates links to important and relevant parts of our documentation.
We export the contents of the etherpad after 1h30min. We send them a thank you email with their exported answers and tell them what to expect next.
I have a feeling this will be the “make it or break it” moment of our selection process. We have clear expectations of what their answers should look like and this will be a good representation of how they would do in this role. I’m curious to see how everyone will do.