We’re Sharing Our Secret Sauce…Well, Some of It (Hiring Series Part 6)

When Miriam Greenberg, SDP’s Senior Director, floated the idea for our LinkedIn hiring series, I was apprehensive. Isn’t the magic behind our selection process something we need to keep under lock and key? But as we talked more about the lessons we could share, I found myself matching her excitement. Sharing the competencies we prioritize in screening data talent isn’t the same as giving away every detail of how we operate.

At the Strategic Data Project, we have built and refined our hiring approach for more than a decade. We use carefully designed cases. Structured questions. Calibration across reviewers. Input from colleagues and Harvard researchers. Long-tested processes that we continuously improve. Years later, we still feel quite confident that we are selecting excellent candidates who will go on to do amazing things in public education. But sharing our own principles is not the same as sharing every prompt, rubric, and follow-up probe we use in our process. 

All of that to say, there is more to it than the resources we’ve shared in this series. Our competencies (integrity and humility, analytic entrepreneurship, and communication) demonstrate what we look for, but not what we’re looking at. The tools we share in this series spotlight these competencies, but our selection process is successful because of all of its ingredients: rigorously designed cases; a series of indicators and deeper look-fors; and calibration across reviewers. And our reviewers themselves are made up of not only SDP staff and leadership who reflect on the skills our most successful fellows demonstrate, but also Harvard University researchers who have deep analytic expertise, and SDP Fellowship alumni who know what it takes to adjust into a new work environment and move data work forward.