The selection of our students: a fair and rigorous process

Concentrating on the poorest areas in the extensive region surrounding each training centre, in Cambodia, the Philippines and Vietnam, our Selection Process follows four stages. We select our students through information sessions, written exams, motivation interviews and social investigations. Discover how we proceed!

In each centre, the selection relies on our Selection teams with other staff members’ support throughout the whole process. This mostly involves organizing preparatory meetings with the staff but also other partners (NGOs, schools, local government or institutions, etc) to make sure that all the stakeholders understand our process and schedule and are likely to spread the news.

Let’s hear Sim Hul, Education Coordinator in Cambodia sharing his experience of the Selection Process

The first step of our Selection process is Information Sessions (IS) to introduce to high school students/graduates, our selection process and our programs as well as to explain the IT sector and its opportunities.

To do so, we use various communication tools, adapted to the language of the country in which we work. In addition, upstream of the sessions, we promote them through radio spots, social media, posters or flyers displayed in the areas where the sessions will be held.

After the Information Sessions, if students are interested in joining PN programs, they have to return their application form to participate in the next step: Written Exams.
This step may not lead to an application for a PN scholarship but may open the student’s mind to other possibilities to escape poverty.

Three main subjects are chosen to assess the student’s abilities: Math, English and Logic (or Computational Thinking). The Selection team re-assesses the questionnaire to make sure that all tests are accurate and fair. To ensure the quality of the exam, PN centres also carry out pilot sessions with their current students.

In order to streamline the entire process, we use assessment tools, which allow us to obtain applicants’ grades within less than 15 mins (Digital Clickers for Cambodia and the Philippines, and ZipGrade for Vietnam). ZipGrade is an App which turns mobile devices into optical scanners and will be distributed to all of our centres next year.

If successful at this step, applicants are invited to answer the team’s questions during an individual motivation interview.

The motivation interview occurs quite quickly after the exam. It consists in learning more about the candidate and focuses on his/her motivation to join the program as well as his/her ability to live with the other students. The applicants’ mindset is an important aspect of the selection process.

The interviewers are staff members. They’re paired and try to be as diverse as possible: an experienced member with a new one, a local person with a foreigner. Throughout the session, they rely on different documents: notes, a questions guide that can be modified by the interviewers if they notice that the interviewee keeps answering the same thing, and a grading guide which will be completed and discussed afterwards. In addition to the grades, the interviewers will give their opinion about the student’s ability to live in a community, to complete the whole program or to work in a company.

The applicants won’t know if they’ve been successful or not. This will be revealed during the last step: Social investigation.

An impromptu visit is organized for all successful candidates, who were asked to draw a sketch of the way to their home and were given a timeline for this step at the beginning of the interview session. It’s aimed at assessing their eligibility by investigating and digging deeper into the socio-economic situation of the family and enables us to target the most under-privileged youth.

A training session and a simulation are given to the investigators: these are drawn from the current staff, but can also be former PN members or even hired social investigators. The trips are organized according to location: their number needs to be levelled up when the number of investigations is too important. Teams travel by boat, bus, tricycle, motorcycle and sometimes have to walk a few kilometres to reach their destination.

A questionnaire is used to lead the investigation. It contains categories such as family background, income, external help, or perceived family problems. Staff can also interview the neighbours and officials to strengthen their investigations.

All those steps lead to a Deliberation to select a final list of students to join our vocational training program.