Yes means… maybe?

Apologies for the long silence on this site. It has been a whirlwind of job-related activity here in Lima.

I am currently recruiting for a youth entrepreneurship program and I’m having trouble getting enough people signed up to this free 2 month intensive business course that our youth centre offers. At every step of the way I am baffled at the turnout.

This is how it went. We had 105 people sign up to express interest in the course. We called all of them and had at least 80 who confirmed that they would be able to make it to our introductory session. So I was feeling pretty good and confident about how the process was going.

Drum roll please… 29 showed up to the intro session! I am stilled stunned because we had verbal confirmation from 80 within a few days of the session…

So we invite 23 to come for interviews. 16 show up at some point that day (completely turning a blind eye to those that missed their interview time – THE ONE THAT THEY CHOSE-  and showed up at some other time that day).

Now we have 16 candidates for a course that could take 30. What to do? We call those that didn’t show up to the intro session and invite them to an interview too.

We manage to interview 25 people that qualify for the program. And now we have 3 days to chase down 5 more viable candidates before the course starts on Wednesday. I’m told that I absolutely need 30 because being accepted into the program doesn’t mean that they will all come on Wednesday.

It feels like a game of bait and switch with numbers.

What have I learned? That Peruvians love to say yes. (Or can’t bring themselves to say no…). If you invite people to a workshop they will say yes. Does that mean they will come? Maybe there is a formula that some clever statistician can figure out.