Diane Danielson in Ask and ye shall receive … a bad review points us to this post, Salary, Gender and the Social Cost of Haggling.Well, if that isn’t a slap in the face, I don’t know what is. If you negotiate for a salary that fits for you, you’re “not nice.” If you don’t negotiate, you can lose big over the course of your career.(My opinion: Techies of all stripes tend to have a difficult time negotiating for salary, no matter what their gender.)Ladies and gentlemen: ALWAYS negotiate for the salary you think you are worth. You may have to negotiate for these things:
More vacation time for the same salary (paid vacation time).
An earlier review time (3 months or 6 months) if you’re taking a lower salary than you think you deserve.
More stock, and/or a shorter vesting period.
If the difference is small, other perks such as a guaranteed book allowance, some number of conferences per year.
No one else is in charge of your career except for you. (Yes, in Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management, Esther and I talk about how both the manager and the employee have responsibilities for career development. Your manager will rarely fight to get you more money (except in the obvious cases of discrimination).To negotiate effectively, be prepared:
What is the job worth the company?
How easy is it for the company to fill the position?
What is the job worth to you?
How easy is it for you to find a new job?
Read Getting to Yes and know your BATNA (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement). But don’t just accept an offer without negotiating because you want to be nice. Know if that offer reflects what the job is worth and whether it meets your needs.
A behavioral audition is one where youw ant to see some specific candidate behaviors. Management auditions typically fall into this category. But especially if you’re hiring for an agile team, you might want to see how a candidate exhibits behaviors, such as coaching, feedback, how the person participates in a standup meeting or in a retrospective.If you want to see some specific behaviors, first, return to your job analysis. What are those essential technical and non-technical skills? Can you make a behavioral audition around those skills?You might want to see if the candidate will be a smooth addition to a team or a disruptive addition. In that case, you ask the candidate to do some work with one or more members of the team. You’ll ask the candidate how that work went, and you’ll need to debrief the members of your team (with open-ended questions) about what it was like to work with the candidate.Try a focused conversation for the debrief:
What stood out for you?
Where were you challenged?
What insights do you have about this candidate?
What do you recommend we do with this candidate?
Behavioral auditions are the most difficult to design. In my experience, you can see the behaviors if you use a technical audition, you are likely to see the behaviors you want to see. But to know what you want to see, you’ve got to do a job analysis.
A management audition is similar to a technical audition, but because the functional skills are so different, and because senior technical people may also require some management capability, I see these as two different kinds of auditions.As usual, your mileage may vary. Here are some possible management auditions:
Facilitate a meeting
Give a presentation
Analyze some budget information. Don’t forget to ask what they would do with that budget and why
Organize a project portfolio
Develop an audition for a manager. (ok, that’s slightly evil
If you have other good ideas, please comment away.
In his comment, John asked about auditions for a business analyst. The audition will vary, depending on the kind of projects you do. Here are some possibilities:
For a more serial lifecycle, you could ask a BA to help elicit requirements. You’d listen to the way the candidate interviewed, if the candidate interrupted the speaker, if the candidate asked meta questions.
For a more agile lifecycle, you could ask the candidate to make user stories from bullet lists of requirements.
For any lifecycle, ask the candidate to explain his or her favorite way to express requirements. Then take a product and ask the candidate to write down the requirements for that product.
Make sure your audition matches your environment. I might not have described something useful for you, so adapt my suggestions.
If you’re thinking about auditions, consider a “technical” audition for any of your open positions. A technical audition provides you a little insight into a candidate’s functional skills.If you’re hiring a developer, ask the candidate to extend a design, or find a problem and design a solution. You could ask a tester to test a piece of a product, or a particular set of features.A particularly good technical audition is one where you always ask the candidates (for a certain role) to perform the same kind of work. Ask each developer to write some kind of code, or ask a tester to test some specific product. (Don’t vary the task between candidates.)You can use these auditions for a phone screen or an in-person interview.Consider technical auditions the minimum entry point for auditions. You’ll learn a lot about a candidate with this audition.
I’m planning to do a series on audition, and the first one is the idea that every candidate enjoys an audition of the hiring manager, team, and company. That’s because every time you organize an interview, ask a question, or do anything at all, the candidate can watch you work. That’s an audition.
