UPDATE MAY 13, 2016: We are no longer accepting applications for this internship. Thanks everyone who applied!
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Hey everyone, Idahosa here.
I am excited to announce the launch of the first ever Mimic Method Summer Apprenticeship Program in Budapest. This July 1st, anywhere between 1 to 3 rising stars will join us in Budapest to help us grow The Mimic Method Organization. The apprentices who demonstrate the most promise during the summer program will be offered a full time position on our leadership team, with major growth opportunities starting in September. Will you be one of them?
What we do
The Mimic Method is the name of the unique approach I used to learn five foreign languages (and counting). What makes this approach different from all the others is the focus on two things:
Focus #1: Real Human Connection
Successful language learners care less about the language and more about the people who actually speak it.
- Maria doesn’t care about the rules of conjugation, she just wants the locals to take her to all the underground night spots in Paris.
- Charles doesn’t care about memorizing flash cards, he just wants his Dominican neighbors to invite him to their barbecues.
- Johann doesn’t care about Chinese calligraphy, he just wants his new Chinese in-laws to accept him into the family.
Most language learning programs neglect the human element and focus too much on rules, conventions, and test scores. What they don’t realize is that language is merely a tool for human beings to connect with one another. Therefore, your success as a language learner shouldn’t be based on the accuracy of your spelling and grammar; it should be based on the quality of your connections with the native speakers.
Currently, there is a divide between you and the speakers of other languages. This divide is preventing you from connecting with those people in a meaningful way. In my experience as a language learner and teacher, I’ve found that the key to crossing the language divide is to focusing on sound, which is why the second thing that differentiates The Mimic Method is:
Focus #2: Language learning by ear:
Most language learning programs focus on reading and writing, but human beings connect most intimately through listening and speaking. So you shouldn’t learn a language with your eyes, you should learn it with your ears. The first step to learning a language by ear is mastering its pronunciation. When you can “mimic” anything a native speaker says with a near perfect accent, you can acquire the language rapidly through lots of conversations.
Before I created The Mimic Method, however, there were virtually no user-friendly resources or structured techniques for training pronunciation. The only way to train pronunciation was to study dense phonetic materials and analyze speech recordings - and ain’t nobody got time for dat!
That’s why I founded a company (also called “The Mimic Method”) with a singular purpose: Make it simple for people to learn languages by ear.
I started by focusing on the underdeveloped niche of pronunciation and accent training with my Flow Series courses. Since I launched my first course - The Flow of Spanish, thousands of people have gone through our programs. We are now growing a reputation as the best program for pronunciation training. But we don’t plan on stopping with just pronunciation courses. In the coming years, we plan to develop an entire suite of products to help people go from having zero knowledge of a language to being conversational fluent using just their ears and mouth.
Ultimately, our mission is to help as many individuals as we can cross the language barrier and build meaningful relationships with the people on the other side.
Do you want to join us in our mission?
The Apprenticeship Program
For several years, I ran The Mimic Method as a "solopreneur." I had a great time traveling the world on the income the business provided me, but then last year I decided that I really wanted to make an impact. So I made my first hire, and I quickly learned that 1+1=3.
On my own, things moved slowly, and the final products were always shy of their potential. With two people, however, we were able to develop better products while multiplying revenues. Both of us were highly motivated producing more than either of us had in our entire lives. We reinvested profits in hiring new staff, and now we have a core team of 3 people, with several part-time employees and contractors distributed around the world. And now we are ready to expand the core team again with the apprenticeship program.
- Are you passionate about language-learning and our company mission?
- Would you like to be part of a fast growing, fast paced education startup?
- Do you want a career that allows you to see the world while building something great?
Then this apprenticeship opportunity might be perfect for you.
As an apprentice, you will support our core team and distributed staff in creating new products, curating content for our learning communities, and designing our new marketing materials. This isn’t an office “Internship” where you fetch coffee and do mindless monkey work in between checking your facebook. This is an “Apprenticeship,” because you are training for a high level position on our leadership team, where you eventually will be managing staff below you.
You will have a variety of responsibilities, and we will be counting on you to creatively solve problems on your own. In general, your job will be to help the company to grow faster and help our students to learn more. But in order for all that to work, you’ll need to be the right fit.
The Selection Process
In any organization, there are three things that determine the performance of a team member: her values, her abilities, and her skills. “Skills” refer to the technical things you learned how to do, like making a spreadsheet or editing an image on photoshop. Skills are useful, but overrated. Anyone can learn to be competent in any skill with enough time and focus.
What is more important than skills is abilities. An ability is something innate that you won’t be able to change dramatically in the short term. Are you good at high-level strategic thinking? Can you explain complex concepts in visually creative ways? Are you able to pick up on the subtle emotions of others? We are looking for individuals with certain abilities to supplement our own, and we will be assessing applicants on those abilities during the interview process.
But before we assess your abilities, we need to first assess your values. What do you stand for? Are they the same things that we stand for? We won’t hire you unless you naturally fit our unique culture, even if you are the most skilled and able person on the planet. That’s because teamwork is what matters most, and teams that share the same core values are always the most effective.
How deeply do the following statements resonate with you?
- I must constantly grow as a person, otherwise I am dying.
- I have an insatiable appetite for knowledge, and I will continue learning for the rest of my life.
- My sex, gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, nationality, etc, doesn’t make me inherently superior to anyone, which is why I make a point to respect everyone.
- “That’s just how things are” and “Everyone does it this way” are never good enough explanations for anything. I won’t accept or do anything unless it makes logical sense and feels right to me.
- Before I die, I must travel the world and know its people as much as I can.
- Before I die, I must create or contribute to something meaningful.
These statements represent my most deeply-held values, and whenever I hired someone who didn’t share them, it didn’t work out. That’s why we will not hire you unless you sincerely and deeply resonate with these statements. If you don’t care about these values, then please do not apply - you will save both yourself and us a lot of time.
Seriously, even if you are just lukewarm about these values but think it would still be cool to work with us, DON’T APPLY.
My team and I will be able to determine your sincerity very easily. And even if you somehow fooled us during the interviews, you won’t survive the eccentricities of our work culture. But if you do strongly resonate with these values, and you have the abilities we are looking for, then we very much want you to join us this summer and contribute your passion and energy for a long time thereafter.
These statements represent my most deeply-held values, and whenever I hired someone who didn’t share them, it didn’t work out. That’s why we will not hire you unless you sincerely and deeply resonate with these statements. If you don’t care about these values, then please do not apply - you will save both yourself and us a lot of time.
These statements represent my most deeply-held values, and whenever I hired someone who didn’t share them, it didn’t work out. That’s why we will not hire you unless you sincerely and deeply resonate with these statements. If you don’t care about these values, then please do not apply - you will save both yourself and us a lot of time.
Where and How We Work
When I first started hiring people, I offered purely “location-independent” positions that allowed team members to be anywhere at anytime. But I’ve since learned that Skype and Whatsapp will never be able to replicate the motivation and creative energy that comes with people working together in the same room. That being said, I originally started my business as a means to travel the world, so it’s important for me to keep that part of its soul intact. That’s why my team and I are trying to find a happy medium between location-independence and location-dependence.
Here’s what the current balance looks like:
- For 2-4 months we hunker down in one location and collaborate in person on growth projects. We call these periods - “On-Site Mode”.
- During “On-Site” mode, we commit to working together at the office every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday from 9AM to 4pm, with an hour lunch break.
- When we are not in meetings, we all synchronize our work sprints and breaks using “The Pomodoro Technique,” to ensure maximum productivity from everyone.
- At the end of an “On-Site” period, we then all branch off on our own for 1-2 months to collaborate digitally on maintenance projects. We call these periods “Distributed mode”.
You may have noticed how we only have to show up at the office three days a week during “On-Site” mode. We decided to free up Wednesdays so that we could rejuvenate energy and sleep if we needed it, and we left Friday open so that we could take extended weekend trips to nearby cities whenever we wanted. But don’t get it twisted- this isn’t vacation time. We don’t count hours, but we do expect a “full-time” amount of production from each other.
We all have individual goals we set for each other at the beginning of the quarter, and every week we have Accountability checkins to keep ourselves on track with these goals. If we bring you on as an apprentice, we will hold you to the same high standards. It will be rigorous and challenging, but it will also be rewarding.
What’s the deal with Budapest?
During distributed mode, we all get a chance to visit places we’ve always been interested in seeing (for example, I’m currently writing this blog post in Osaka, Japan). Or, we take the time to spend some extensive quality time with friends and family (see you in two weeks mom!)
During On-Site mode, however, we always choose a city with the following features:
- Relatively low cost of living.
- Fast, reliable internet.
- Active social scene.
- Large community of digital entrepreneurs.
We’ve found that these four features make for the perfect work-life balance. The low costs and active social scene give you an opportunity to go socialize with people outside of work without worrying about breaking the bank at the bar. The fast, reliable internet allows you to establish a consistent productivity routine. And the entrepreneur community gives you a chance to network with like-minded people and get fresh ideas on how to grow the business.
From January to April this year, we based in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam for our “On-Site” mode and everyone on the team loved it. Now that things are getting too hot and humid in southeast asia, we are slowly heading to a recently thawed Europe to get back on the grind. I’ve never been to Budapest, but I’ve yet to meet anyone who has who doesn’t love it. From what I’ve heard, it has all the makings of the perfect “On-Site” city, and from what I’ve seen, it’s beautiful to boot:
And the great thing about Europe is that everything is ridiculously close (at least from my American perspective). Here is a list of places that I plan on checking out during those extended weekends:
- Prague
- Vienna
- Belgrade
- The Swiss Alps
- Bratislava
- Venice
- Wherever else I fancy
I’m not gonna lie - our lifestyles are pretty friggin’ amazing. Almost every day I stop and reflect on how fortunate I am to be alive during this internet era. We are getting a chance to see the world, meet interesting people, develop our full potentials, and invest our creative energy into something meaningful. And by “we”, I could be talking about “us” AND “you,” if you decide to take this opportunity, and if we decide to take you. So let's get down to details...
Everything You Need to Know
When does the Apprenticeship Start?
The official start date of On-Site mode is Friday July 1st. That weekend, we will have a meeting to re-align everyone on the goals for the quarter, then Monday July 4th will be the first day of work (Sorry Americans but it ain’t a holiday in Hungary!) The apprenticeship will officially end on Thursday September 8th. On that following weekend, we will decide whether or not to extend you an offer as a full time position.
How will I find housing?
If you are accepted, we will arrange housing for you ahead of time. You will get a private room of a comfortable size in a shared house with all the amenities you need. Rent, utilities, and wifi will all be covered by the company. We’re doing this because we want to get work started as soon as possible, so we don’t want to have you wasting time apartment hunting.
Sweet! Do I get paid on top of that?
Yes, you will receive $1000 as a stipend for the entire period. This is enough to live modestly during the Summer Apprenticeship Program in Budapest, but it’s not enough to ball out at fancy restaurants and buy out the bar every night, so we don’t recommend you do that. The first $500 will be paid out on July 1st, $300 will be paid out on August 1st, then $200 on August 15th. On top of housing and utilities, we will also pay for your office space and a gym membership.
Do you cover travel costs?
No we do not. We are only accepting applicants who can make it out to Budapest on their own.
Will you arrange visas?
It is also up to you to determine your visa situation in Hungary. Hungary is part of what’s called the Schengen zone. If you are from a member country of the Schengen zone, then you know that you can spend as much time as you like there (lucky bastards). If you are American like myself and the other team members, you can stay up to 90 days in Schengen during any 180 day period. That means that if you take a trip outside of Schengen (to London for example), you will freeze your 90 day clock.
In my experience, however, no one actually checks this. I took a very loose interpretation of the 90/180 day rule last year while learning German and nothing came of it. It also depends on which country you enter or leave through. For example, the Germans seemed to scrutinize my passport way more than the Spaniards did. But I won’t encourage you to violate any laws. There is also a question of the refugee crisis in Europe which I’m sure has had an impact on everything.
When will you let me know if I got the position?
We will make our final decision on apprentices on May 21st, which will give you 5 weeks to organize your travel to Budapest.
What will the salary be after the Apprenticeship if I get the full time position?
If we offer you the full time position, we will offer you a 6 month contract with the company, after which the next contract will be negotiated. We won’t be able to determine your exact salary until the end of Q2 when we do our budgeting, but rest assured it will be enough to live comfortable in most parts of the world.
Great! So how do I apply?
Please click the button below to apply for the apprenticeship. Looking forward to hearing from you!
Will the Mimic Method be holding an apprenticeship for the year 2017?