Location
Other District Other Location
Other District Other Location
Description
Industry: Agriculture
Minimum Qualification: Unspecified
Minimum Experience: 2 years
Industry: Agriculture
Minimum Qualification: Unspecified
Minimum Experience: 2 years
Operations:
Our country operation teams face a classic leadership and
management challenge: how to keep a large country operation growing at
40-75% per year while also making significant improvements to our
operating model. Program Associates first learn from our organization’s
deep knowledge on scaling rural field programs; then, they are
challenged to find new ways to stretch, grow faster, and increase our
quality of service.
Field operations staff focus on farmer-facing services.
They start as generalists, with overall responsibility for executing our
program in a region. Over time, they can continue to rise as a general
leader, possibly growing to manage an entire country’s field operation.
Or they may specialize, for example, in the creation and roll-out of
staff development training for hundreds or even 1,000+ team members.
Support operations staff build the infrastructure required
for growth. These teams proactively eliminate barriers to scale in a
diverse range of areas – processing millions of farmer payments,
communicating to farmers via tens of millions of SMS, hiring hundreds of
new staff per year, and physically moving 20,000+ tons of farm inputs
to thousands of drop sites. Program Associates also make steady
improvements to accelerate growth – for example, setting up mobile money
integration for a country.
Innovations:
Our Innovations teams discover new ideas for our programs
and conduct dozens of trials to test these ideas. As an organization, we
constantly seek to learn and improve, and our Innovations teams lead
the way.
Product Innovations staff improve our core agricultural
products or run new experiments in energy and health products. The ideas
they discover may eventually scale to hundreds of thousands of
households. Product Innovations staff design trials, execute trials
together with thousands of farmers, synthesize trial data, and make
constant revisions to the product offering. For example, our Product
Innovations team is currently testing delivery of live chickens and
preparing the product for full-scale rollout. The organization is also
increasingly delving into energy and health, and we are currently one of
the largest sellers of solar lights in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Scale Innovations staff seek to improve our core operating
model. By running trials with tens of thousands of farmers, they analyze
targeted questions such as: does moving from a group liability loan to
an individual liability loan improve repayment and customer
satisfaction? Or they might investigate more radical ideas, such as
setting up physical the organization’s shops to see if there are more
efficient ways to deliver high-quality service to farmers. They try
variations on our program with the goal of improving our scalability,
impact, and financial sustainability.
Understanding and solving problems: observing field
operations, meeting with leaders of our field staff , running surveys,
conducting desk research, analyzing KPIs, etc. Then creating simple and
lasting solutions to complex problems.
Planning and executing large projects: identifying clear goals, creating project calendars, designing workflows, creating field tools and talking points, designing incentive systems and understanding stakeholders, following up and monitoring project execution in the field, etc.
Building teams: hiring staff using the organization’s unique “experiential hiring” system, mentoring key deputies, and steadily handing off responsibility to your team as you build it.
Communicating with other teams: working in coordination with the organization’s other teams on the ground to execute a smooth customer experience in the simplest way possible.
The organization has deep operational experience running rural field programs at a scale of 1,000+ full-time staff per country. Program Associates benefit from this past experience, quickly building their skill-set through immersion in our operating environment. At the same time, the main role of Program Associates is to accelerate growth and to constantly stretch and improve our operations. This presents an excellent career opportunity to both learn from the organization’s accumulated experience and constantly improve and enable 40%+ program growth per year.
Planning and executing large projects: identifying clear goals, creating project calendars, designing workflows, creating field tools and talking points, designing incentive systems and understanding stakeholders, following up and monitoring project execution in the field, etc.
Building teams: hiring staff using the organization’s unique “experiential hiring” system, mentoring key deputies, and steadily handing off responsibility to your team as you build it.
Communicating with other teams: working in coordination with the organization’s other teams on the ground to execute a smooth customer experience in the simplest way possible.
The organization has deep operational experience running rural field programs at a scale of 1,000+ full-time staff per country. Program Associates benefit from this past experience, quickly building their skill-set through immersion in our operating environment. At the same time, the main role of Program Associates is to accelerate growth and to constantly stretch and improve our operations. This presents an excellent career opportunity to both learn from the organization’s accumulated experience and constantly improve and enable 40%+ program growth per year.
CAREER GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT
The organization invests in building management and
leadership skills. Your manager and a global support team will commit
significant time in your career development. We provide constant,
actionable feedback delivered through mentorship and through regular
management consulting-style career reviews. We also have regular
one-on-one meetings, where we listen to and discuss career goals, and
work collaboratively to craft roles that each person can be passionate
about. Because of our rapid growth, we constantly have new high-level
roles opening up and opportunities in many functions.
QUALIFICATIONS
We are seeking exceptional professionals with 2 to 5+ years
of work experience, and a demonstrated long-term passion for
international development. Candidates who fit the following criteria are
strongly encouraged to apply:
Strong work experiences. Examples include a demanding
professional work experience, or successful entrepreneurial experience,
e.g. starting a field program in a developing country, leading a
conference, starting a business, solid Volunteer Service Organization
accomplishments (VSO, Peace Corps, JICA, etc).
Leadership experience at work, or outside of work.
Humility. We are looking for passionate professionals who combine strong leadership skills with good humor, patience, and a humble approach to service to join our growing family of leaders.
A willingness to commit to living in rural areas of East Africa for at least two years – this is a long-term, career-track role. The ideal candidate will have at
least one year demonstrated experience working in the developing world, although this is not a strict requirement.
Language: English required in all locations. French required for Burundi placement. Other notable and useful languages are Swahili, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Chichewa, Amharic.
A client seeks to hire a qualified candidate for the position of a Program Associate
Leadership experience at work, or outside of work.
Humility. We are looking for passionate professionals who combine strong leadership skills with good humor, patience, and a humble approach to service to join our growing family of leaders.
A willingness to commit to living in rural areas of East Africa for at least two years – this is a long-term, career-track role. The ideal candidate will have at
least one year demonstrated experience working in the developing world, although this is not a strict requirement.
Language: English required in all locations. French required for Burundi placement. Other notable and useful languages are Swahili, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Chichewa, Amharic.
A client seeks to hire a qualified candidate for the position of a Program Associate
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