We are seeking volunteers with experience in software development or technical hiring for a high-impact role as a career counselor. Volunteering as a career counselor is invaluable and crucial work that will have a real impact on our developers, former Onja students, as well as for those who will follow them.
Your Role as a Career Counselor:
- Perform mock interviews.
- Following mock interview practice, provide a written appraisal of the mentees’ performance and areas for improvement.
- Talk about your own professional experiences.
- Build a positive and constructive relationship with mentees.
- Provide, if any, written insight or ideas on how we can improve interview preparation for all mentees at Onja.
The developers
- Mostly female, all African and from underprivileged backgrounds.
- Each developer graduated high school in the top 1% of their peers and was selected for our programme from an initial pool of 200,000 students.
- During their training they have spent over 4,000 hours learning and writing HTML5, JavaScript, React, Redux, TypeScript and React Native and achieved advanced English level (B2-C1).
- After their training, Onja places the students in positions as software deevlopers in Euroapean and US tech companies. Their technical skills have also expanded. We have now developers that can use other technologies such as Cypress, Next.js, Golang or PostgreSQ. In case a contract with a partner company ends, we are looking for new jobs for the developers. This is where your contribution on the interview preparation comes in a invaluable contribution.
- With a model proving to be highly impactful we are now focused on scaling and training hundreds of students in the coming years who will also benefit from the career counselling program.
How It Works
- We schedule a call with you to explain more about the Onja initiative and what the role looks like. If your values and experience align with our mission, we can schedule an introductory call with you and one of our developers.
- Developers will reach out to you to request an appointment during your times of availability. You can increase/decrease your availability according to what is most helpful and works for you and mentees.
- We have 18 developers that work currently at Onja – in case one or more of them need interview training to get into a new job, they will reach out to you during your time of availability.
- If you are keen but worried about the time commitment let us know and we should be able to work something out.
- We suggest using Google Meet or Zoom for calls.
How to apply
To apply, or learn more about the volunteer position, please send a message to rova.ranaivoarisoa@onja.org and marti.iata@onja.org, and include a link to your Linkedin profile (if you have one.)
