Prayaas - TFI Problem Statement

8/3/2019 Prayaas - TFI Problem Statement

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“Dear All,

It gives us great pleasure to welcome on board Anya Daniel! She has joined as Recruitment

Associate in Delhi.

Coming up straight from her:

"Hi everyone!! I am the newest member of the TFI family!!

I completed my graduation in June this year and I'm so excited to be in Delhi working on the

recruitment team. I have loved meeting students and Fellows in classrooms the past few days.

At TFI, I hope to obtain the opportunity to work with a team of people committed to social

development and the well being of human beings around the world.

If you have an appreciation for reality television, mainstream pop music or Thai food, you and I

will get along quite nicely. I'm looking forward to meeting you all soon."

Anya re-read the email that had been sent out on her first day of work, introducing her to what

would so quickly become her new family, on the new Staff Board that HR had put up. With a

fast growing team, this was a new necessity. Anya began getting ready for her day as she

thought back over the 3 months she had been part of Teach For India; it was 9.30am on

Monday and she had a long list of action items that had to be completed within the week.

In the short time that she had been working here, Anya had learned about every aspect of the

organization from Admin to Program Development and Organization Expansion, it was one of

the huge advantages of working at a startup, and she continued to learn more with each

passing day. With each new learning, Anya had also met a new person from a different part of

the world. “This is such an interesting place to work at!” she thought for the hundredth time

with a smile.

Before she could continue daydreaming about the past few months, her phone beeped,

demanding her attention – “Please call into the team conference now, its been pushed back

because we all have presentations at 11! – Ashok.”

After a quick update on what the team would be doing that week and going through the

application numbers, Ashok, the Recruitment Director, began the weekly session of challenges

being faced and brainstorming on solutions.

Anya and Ashok were two of the eleven members on the Recruitment Team. Each team

member was in charge of a different region and sub-region within the country. Anya’s region of

concentration was the North and East and she handled 40 of the top colleges across every

profile imaginable. As a Recruitment Associate she was in charge of outreach and awareness



across her colleges, and targeting high potential applicants to become a part of the Teach For

India Fellowship for the coming year.

“Teach For India is a Non-Profit Organization that provides a Fellowship program placing

promising college graduates and young professionals in low-income schools to teach full-time

for two years. Teach For India currently has 370 Fellows teaching 12000 children, from

underprivileged background, in India. It is a highly selective organization and the current Fellows

were selected from over 5000 applications. The organization's mission is to build the movement

of leaders who will eliminate inequity in education.

The movement strives to find leaders across diverse sectors and bring them together to work at

the grassroots level and critically examine the problem of educational inequity and then go

forward after the 2 year Fellowship and use their skill-sets to fix the problem and change what

education in India looked like. They were given the challenge of finding a way to raise the

quality of education and make sure that each child had access to a classroom and a teacher who

would work towards giving them just that. The challenge of a Fellow was to transform the

education sector and consequently the future of India.”

She had repeated these words innumerable times when talking to students and placement cell

officers. Anya’s challenge however, was far more short term – she had to figure out how to

reach out to students in Eastern India and show them that the Teach For India Fellowship was

something that they needed to be applying for. And this is exactly what Ashok brought up as

the first team challenge.

“Applications numbers in the East have historically been low, never more than 10% of our total

numbers. But we do have a handful amazing Fellows making a huge impact in their classrooms

and cities from Calcutta! I was there just last week and students have an incredibly high

potential to become rockstar Fellows and they are invested in the idea of creating a change. But

our numbers have not changed at all, only 6% of our applicants are from the East. How can we

get more students to apply for the Fellowship and to consider moving to one of our placement

cities1? Every student I spoke to wants to pursue a 1-year Masters in London, how can we show

them that this is valuable experience to have before going for further education? We have 2

new placement sites and Hyderabad is so close to Calcutta, so there has to be something we

can do! Anya, what activities have been undertaken in the East?” said Ashok.

Anya had prepared for this and gave her summary of activities in Kolkata and the surrounding

region quickly - “So far, we have visited almost every campus in the region and given

presentations about Teach For India at most of them. We have some great Campus

Ambassadors who are working within the student body to raise awareness and we are trying to

1For the current year, Teach For India will be placing Fellows in Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Hyderabad and Chennai



have some representation at college fests, however most of these fests seem to take place

after our final application deadline in January. They have also created Facebook pages for Teach

For India on their campuses, but apart from semi-monthly updates there is not much moreactivity on them. Students have some basic understanding about Teach For India and we have

gotten some interest, but we do not have a permanent team member stationed in Kolkata so it

is very difficult to follow up on the phone with placement cells.”

The challenge was that as a Non-Profit, Teach For India did not have enough funds to send their

Associates to Kolkata every month so that constant contact could be maintained with colleges,

both Ashok and Anya were very aware of this. However, when looking to be a national

movement and expanding rapidly, the dearth of Fellows from the East was being noted and

questioned.

It was already November and there were just 2 months left for the final deadline, time was

running out and something had to be done fast. But Anya was stuck at what else she could do

on campuses – presentations had been conducted, there were posters and fliers all over

Kolkata campuses and the Campus Ambassadors were trying to reach out to every final year

student possible.

Case Analysis Question:

1. How can Anya and the Recruitment Team at Teach For India create awareness and address

misconceptions about the Fellowship in a city like Kolkata where it has no physical presence?

2. If Recruitment has a budget of Rs 10,000 what can it do in Kolkata to raise awareness and

increase applications?

Documents

Prayaas - TFI Problem Statement