Director - Fellowship Selection - NGO

Director, Fellowship Selection

Location: Mumbai

Working at Teach For India

Teach For India is on a journey to reach an India free of poverty and filled with love by ending educational inequity in our country. Fourteen years into our journey we are a movement of 4600+ Alumni working at all levels of the education system, who are reaching 1 in 10 children across the country. These Alumni have graduated from our two-year Fellowship Program where they taught in under-resourced classrooms to put ~38,000 low-income children on a different life path. Today, we have ~940 Fellows and are the largest pipeline of driven, skilled talent into the educational ecosystem in India.

In 2022, we embarked on Phase 4, our fourth strategic phase. We have a bold and ambitious ten-year journey ahead of us that aims to grow 50,000 leaders, who will work collectively, and with love, to transform the lives of 1 in 10 low-income children in our regions, through an education that unleashes the potential of self, others and India. In this decade, five key priorities will lead us to this vision.

1. Strengthen our core Fellowship to build strong teacher leaders who provide an excellent and equitable education to our children and continue to do so beyond the Fellowship

2. Scale our impact by strategically introducing additional Fellowships as alternative pathways for leadership development

3. Match the Alumni of our programs at an intersection of their interests and the needs of the system and our children

4. Advocate for key issues that impact educational equity, and engage 3.5% of the population in the movement for educational equity

5. Act collectively with our Alumni to learn about and address key issues in our regions.

Our work will only be completed when we have built a movement of leaders that is large enough to ensure that every child in India attains an excellent education.

We pride ourselves as being a passionate, idealistic, mission-driven team of individuals. We're committed to learning and excellence in our roles, and to being deeply rooted in our core values.

What Teach For India Can Offer You

- The opportunity to be part of one of the most established and visionary movements in the education sector in India which is at a pivotal point in terms of expanding its scale and outreach across the nation and working with changemakers across the country.

- A challenging yet flexible workplace in which every individual employee's Staff journey is tracked for excellence and leadership development.

- A work environment in which employees' holistic well-being is a core priority, enabling people to be their best selves.

- Access to connections and resources from the global Teach For All network that includes partner organizations spanning 50+ countries across 6 continents.

- Remuneration that is competitive within the top quartile of the Indian NGO pay scales, and a benefits package that includes extensive medical insurance and maternity coverage for both parents.

Position Summary

Reporting to: Senior Director, People.

Directly Managing: Lead, Model Implementation, Lead Model Development and 0-2 additional managers based on the priorities of the year

The Director, Fellowship Selection is responsible for the design and implementation of our leadership model. They focus on the sweet spot between what we train for and what we hire for to ensure that we are able to identify the most right-fit candidates for our flagship Fellowship program.

Team Overview

What skills and mindsets drive excellent teachers and how are these similar to or different from those that drive our greatest leaders? These are the questions that guide the work of the Fellowship Selection Team at Teach For India.

The Fellowship Selection Team is charged with the responsibility of ensuring the best possible makeup of our cohort. We conduct research and analysis to design a selection model, which will lead us to efficiently identify those likely to be excellent teachers and impactful leaders. We design and run systems and processes that ensure efficient and accurate execution of this model across 8 cities in India. All this, by training and supporting over 200 Staff, Fellows, and Alumni to execute their roles as interviewers and reviewers. Outcomes are monitored and evaluated at each stage of our process to ensure all decisions are accurate and that every applicant has an experience, that is fair, consistent and leaves them as advocates of our movement. In short, we put teachers in classrooms who will transform the lives of every child they teach and who will, as Alumni work towards eliminating the wicked educational crisis in India. Our team is entering an exciting phase where we strive to maintain the stability of our operations while focusing on innovation and automation of our processes to prepare for scale and strong analysis to measure the impact of our model better.

Responsibilities

The Director, Fellowship Selection, will be responsible for goals across three big buckets:

As a Team Lead for Fellowship Selection:

- Create and execute an ambitious vision, strategy that will deliver an excellent applicant experience.

- Research: Leading, streamlining and conducting research studies to understand the landscape we are selecting from as well focusing on understanding generational shifts we are currently experiencing and understanding how our work needs to change to cater to the shifting needs.

- Awareness: Keeping abreast of the latest in the industry as well as technology so that our processes attracts the best talent and we stay ahead of the curve.

- Collaboration: Working closely with the Recruitment team and institute collaborative practises to ensure state-of the art and seamless experience applicants.

- Continuously evaluate and develop the leadership model towards improving student outcomes.

- Research: Lead on-going research and design projects to validate the model, understand its effectiveness and ensure it is relevant to the needs of our leadership development and Alumni program.

- Leverage Experts: Work with external researchers to pressure test our model design and evolve it to create a more relevant, integrated, accurate and efficient system.

- Technology: Integrate the use of the latest technology and automation tools to improve accuracy, efficiency and reliability to strengthen the model.

- Monitor and Evaluate: Collaborate with the Training team to automate monitoring and evaluation systems for the model

- Oversee the implementation of the model to ensure accurate, fair, and consistent outcomes.

- Technology: Integrate the use of the latest technology and automation tools to improve accuracy, efficiency.

- Monitor and Evaluate: Collaborate with the Training team to automate monitoring and evaluation systems for the model

- Audits: Conduct scrutiny and audits to ensure strong decision making and accurate outcomes.

As a People Manager:

- Building a robust pipeline of talent to lead the organization.

- Managing and coaching the coaches/senior manager and indirectly, the wider team to ambitious outcomes.

- Driving engagement, growth, and retention of team members.

- Engineering and overseeing a monitoring and evaluation system, coupled with strategic direction, to guide our abilities to continuously improve.

- Setting and driving a high-performing, caring culture towards achievement of ambitious goals for the Fellowship selection team.

As a member of the Leadership Team:

- Providing feedback on organisational decision-making and long-term strategy as a member of the Leadership Team.

- Driving internal alignment and support for Teach For India's core Programs.

- Serving as an ambassador of the Teach For India brand and an advocate for our work and educational equity in our country through both internal and external communication.

- Supporting with key organisational areas such as Fundraising, Movement Building, Alumni Engagement.

- Over time, supporting Teach For India's Alumni and other external organisations with organisational insights.

Minimum Qualifications, Experiences and Expectations

- 6+ years of professional experience.

- Experience of having built and managed high-functioning team(s) to achieve outcomes through multiple layers.

- Experience in driving operations in high-pressure, goal-driven environments.

- Experience in engaging with and communicating effectively to large network(s) of connected people.

- Immersion in competency frameworks and selection processes (preferably in a mass recruitment context).

- Previous experience in recruitment, selection, talent acquisition would be an added advantage (preferred, not mandatory).

- Prior exposure to psychometric tools and technology-driven selection processes would be an added advantage (preferred, not mandatory).

Note: We want to hear your unique voice and perspectives through the process, hence all applicants are expected to personally author statements of purpose/essays in the application form. Sole use of AI or Chat-GPT based tools may lead to disqualification from the process.