Team 6672 Hiring Part-Time Lead Coach

After 6 years of success with volunteer leadership, Team 6672 is now looking for a part-time lead coach. Please see the linked job description for more information.

Job Description

1 Like

Here is my two cents on a role like this as a young engineer who would love to coach full time.

If you are recruiting for a part time robotics coaching/teaching position, you may struggle to find an excellent candidate that meets your expectations outside of retirement age individuals. This is because taking a part time teaching role as a young engineer with a bachelors in engineering is a huge opportunity cost. Not only does it come with a significant pay cut, it comes at the cost of career development and training opportunities that an engineer would get working in a industry.

I admit I don’t know the details on the rate and hours that come with this position, I’d certainly be interested to learn them. However, I believe a school would be better off in structuring a role like this as a full time position where the paid coach would also have responsibilities running adjacent FLL and FTC youth programs, workshops, and STEM education outreach efforts in order to fill out their schedule. Think of the educational value that a dynamic coach could bring to your organization and assess if part time is really going to draw that sort of candidate.

Of course, this is just my perspective and others might think differently. Your mileage may vary.

7 Likes

Welcome to CD Bagel23. Looks like 6672 is doing really well and I can understand the desire to get quality mentoring by actually paying them! It’s a struggle for most teams. :sob:

Likely a school restriction. Hiring a full-time faculty, even at a private school, usually means more benefits, responsibilities and costs. I’d guess that the school is willing to offer a part time position and play it by ear to see if a full time is something they want to take on financially in the future.

6 Likes

I may be misunderstanding what this Part-Time role is, but I read it as you could have a regular full time job in the industry but your role as Lead Coach would be at night/weekends (like many mentors already devote to their teams).

2 Likes

Don’t think so. Like many private schools, it looks like they want the coach to also teach an elective in the Fall. A lot of private schools will offer robotics as their winter/spring sport, but also as part of an elective. That’s how it was at the private school where I was the hired lead mentor but could not run a class for them during work hours.

I will say that a private school comes with a lot of perks for FRC - in my experience the school was very accommodating with space, time, and funding for the team. However, some schools are also pretty demanding of kids’ time for participation in assemblies and stuff like that, which can often be during build season.

For anyone applying to this or other paid coach roles - definitely don’t undervalue yourself just because this is robotics and it would be “fun.” When robotics is a job, you should be compensated nearly as competitively any other job you’d be looking to take on within that industry (teaching). Running a team is a ton of work, especially when you’re the one getting paid to do it. Set performance expectations with your employer just like you would with any other job. This will also help you determine how you want to run your team - a group who is happy to just participate is instructed and run quite differently from a group that aims to win titles or consistently make elims.

7 Likes

Thank you for the welcome, @Zook. I am just helping the school administration by posting this, but my sense is that what you said about playing it by ear is accurate.

Thank you for the comment, @AmbroseWiering. I passed it on to the school administration.

@XaulZan11, I think this might be a possibility. The school tends to be flexible in working with a person’s situation. I started working here when I was in grad school, and they worked around my class schedule. However, I know a lot of engineering jobs require overtime, so it would probably be a challenge for a person working such a job to also fulfill all that is desired for the robotics coach position.

This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.