A Freshworks upskill program for developers to learn, build apps, and win rewards
The Covid-19 crisis has led to uncertain times for businesses and job seekers alike. While numerous heroes are on the frontline battling the pandemic and doing their part in keeping us safe, we at Freshworks asked ourselves––what can we do to help?
In the words of our Chief Human Resources Officer, Suman Gopalan:
We have a shared responsibility to step up and do our part in tackling the pandemic. Businesses need to think about how to redeploy their capabilities and use their privileges for the good of society. At Freshworks, we want to do everything possible to provide people with relevant tools and empower them to get through this crisis, together.
We’ve revised our product offerings to support businesses in these unprecedented times, but we also wanted to do something more; something to help people from different backgrounds enhance their skills and pave the way for newer opportunities.
With that intent in mind, we launched co<div/>, The Freshworks Upskill Program, powered by AWS, for developers, startups, independent software vendors, and universities across the world. The workshop took place over two weeks beginning May 19. The participants attended it from the comfort of their homes, at zero cost. The response was astounding. We saw over a thousand registrations, from people looking to boost their career prospects and experience Freshworks’ products, to those checking out app development on Github and an AWS session with Eventbridge.
The Freshworks Developer Community is host to many talented developers and engineers with a lot to offer in terms of expertise and advice. So, we decided to expand the party by introducing co <div/>, the Freshworks Upskill Program.
Through the program, we shared our knowledge, helped developers understand our platform offerings, and empowered them to build apps to enhance customer experience for businesses. And it didn’t end there. Developers stood a chance to get paid a whopping 95% of the profit for up to one year (traditionally, this percentage has been 80% for all app developers in the ecosystem) if they get their apps paywalled on the marketplace. Businesses were presented with an opportunity to leverage the marketplace to extend the adoption of their brands. Participants made a beeline for the co<div/> hackathon, demonstrated their newly acquired skills, built apps that solve CX business problems, and won exciting cash rewards up to $750.
The session facilitators of the Upskill Program
The excitement was palpable from Day 1. Each session commenced with the host doing a round of introduction and going over the session’s agenda. Shortly after, the session facilitator took over. We ended the sessions with an AMA, followed by a quiz. The scores of the participants were tracked via a leaderboard.
The Upskill Program Experience
During the first phase of the workshop, we introduced the participants to Freshdesk, Freshservice, and Freshsales to help them understand customer experience problems better. We took them through our developer ecosystem and the anatomy of the Freshworks app so that they can get started on building their own apps.
The interactions didn’t stop at the end of the sessions. They went on in the community forum where our developer advocates and engineers were present and ready to answer questions and note down feedback given by the participants. Also, anyone who couldn’t attend the sessions headed over to resources and watched the recordings.
The second phase of the workshop focused on familiarizing everyone with apps that can power sales, support, and marketing teams. These were step-by-step tutorials that guided the developers on how to develop their first app and how to get their apps to communicate with Github. We ended the workshop with a session by Morris Singer from Amazon Web Services on how developers can use the Freshdesk connector to Amazon EventBridge to stream events into AWS services and build innovative customer experiences.
Simultaneously, we geared up for the co<div/>, The Freshworks Hackathon, which took place between June 1 and June 5. More than anything, it was a way for developers to gather with their peers, let out some steam, and win rewards while they were at it. In the community forum, under the events page, we had a separate space for participants to huddle and discuss ideas and inspirations for the co<div/> hackathon.
We endeavored to make the lockdown more meaningful for our participants, and give them an experience that they would never forget.
