Help Wanted & Residency Program — Case Study
Program design — Career development

Three roles,
one program

Worked on a career development program — Help Wanted and Residency — from every angle: as the team lead who ran it and built its documentation, as a participant who went through it herself, and as a host manager who designed the onboarding framework on the receiving end. Each role informed the next.

48
Participants in 2024
22
Opportunities run
52%
Hour growth YoY
3
Full-time transitions

What I brought to this

Program management Proposal writing Stakeholder coordination Participant experience design Onboarding documentation Mentor framework development Feedback-driven iteration Cross-functional collaboration

What I learned

Running a program and living it are not the same thing

I spent years helping agents find opportunities through this program — writing proposals, coordinating timelines, building the documentation. When I went through it myself, I saw it completely differently. The gaps I hadn't noticed from the outside became obvious from the inside. That shift directly shaped the onboarding infrastructure I built afterward.

Agent feedback is a design input, not a complaint

A meaningful part of my work on the program was turning agent feedback into better documentation — clearer proposals, more useful checklists, more honest communication about what to expect. Treating that feedback as a signal rather than noise made every version of the program better than the last.

Say yes before you feel ready

When the Residency opportunity came up for me personally, I was the one who hesitated. I'd spent years encouraging others to push past that feeling. Having to take my own advice — and seeing it pay off — gave me a much more grounded way to talk to participants about the discomfort of growth.


The full arc

Three distinct phases across three years, three different vantage points on the same program.

2023–2024
Agent Team Lead
Running the program — and building it as I went

As an Agent Team Lead, I was part of the team responsible for running Help Wanted and Residency opportunities for agents across the organization. That meant writing proposals, coordinating with workforce management, managing candidate communications, and building the documentation that made the program repeatable.

Wrote full residency proposals for external team partnerships — including business justification, candidate criteria, and skills development plans
Built and refined the best practices checklist used by host managers to run opportunities end-to-end
Created the participant meeting outline and presentation guide used after each opportunity concluded
Incorporated agent feedback into program documentation to close gaps between what was promised and what was experienced
Helped grow the program from 40 participants and 25 opportunities (2023) to 48 participants and 22 focused opportunities (2024), with a 52% increase in program hours
8,047 program hours in 2024 · 42% success rate converting outreach to new team partnerships
2025
Residency participant
Taking my own advice

A Residency opened up for a role that felt like a stretch — more technical than my background, an unfamiliar team, a new set of expectations. I'd spent years encouraging agents to apply for things that scared them. I applied.

"I didn't feel ready. It had been intimidating. But discomfort and the unknown is a sign that you're growing, not failing. You don't have to know everything to start — you just have to be willing to learn."

Managed 8 direct reports across multiple product areas
Led a cost analysis project on a major billing migration
Ran a senior team member feedback and mentorship pilot
Designed and launched a team wellness program
Conducted an executive escalation root cause analysis
Residency led to a permanent Senior Team Lead role
2026
Senior Team Lead — host side
Building what I wished had existed

Now on the receiving end — hosting residents onto my own team — I built the onboarding infrastructure from scratch, informed by every friction point I'd noticed as a participant and every gap I'd seen from the program side.

Wrote the Peer Mentor Expectations doc defining distinct roles for mentors vs. team leads — with clear guidance on feedback ownership, escalation paths, and weekly cadence
Built a day-by-day Week 1 launch checklist covering access, shadowing, tool walkthroughs, and the first reporting cycle
Designed a weekly meeting template for resident self-reflection, mentor coaching notes, and team lead status — all in one running doc
Established the ticket review framework: three coaching pillars (investigation logic, specialist tone, efficiency path) with explicit guidance on how to give feedback, not just what to grade
Designed to be self-serve — no tribal knowledge required

What changed

Without the infrastructure
Opportunities existed but weren't consistently documented
Host managers had to figure out proposals from scratch
Resident onboarding depended on whoever happened to know what to do
Mentor expectations were assumed, not defined
With the infrastructure
Standardized proposal template and host manager checklist
Day-by-day Week 1 launch guide any mentor can follow
Clear role separation between mentor and team lead
Ticket review framework with coaching guidance, not just criteria
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