📕 Update 2018-01-01: ‘How to Get Hired as a Scrum Master’ Is Available on Amazon Kindle
Scrum Master Career: How to Get Hired as a Scrum Master: From Job Ads to Your Trial Day — Learn How to Pick the Right Employer or Client details how Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches can systematically identify suitable employers or clients to avoid mismatches and disappointments at a later stage. If you are planning a career move into the Scrum Master profession, don’t miss out on these tips.
Scrum Master Career: How to Get Hired as a Scrum Master is currently available as a Kindle ebook. Shortly, the paperback version will be available, too.
TL;DR: How to Get Hired as Scrum Master or Agile Coach
A few days ago, LinkedIn published the LinkedIn Data Reveals the Most Promising Jobs of 2017 report. The report lists the Scrum Master position among the “most promising jobs in America based on the potential for career advancement, job growth, and salary.”
The number of downloads of the “38 Scrum Master Interview Questions” book which already have exceeded 7,000 copies also reflect this positive trend. Hence, I thought it a good idea to write a new guide from a candidate’s perspective: “How to get hired as Scrum Master or Agile Coach.”
From the identification of a suitable agile organization via the interview process to preparing for trial day—everything will be created with the candidate’s goal in mind. However, to do so, I need feedback from you.
How the Original “38 Scrum Master Interview Questions” Ebook Was Created
One of my former clients used to split job interviews with candidates among team members. Principally, this is a good idea. (Read more on peer recruiting.)
In this case, however, the allocated interview slots usually ranged between 20 and 30 minutes — too much for a social gesture, and way too short to get an understanding of a candidate’s capabilities and personality.
So, in the case of an open Scrum Master position, I put together a list of suitable interview questions, grouped them into sets, and distributed them evenly among the interviewers. My hope was that this way we might end up with the “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts” effect.
It didn’t work out that way, but it started the “Hiring: 38 Scrum Master Interview Questions to Avoid Agile Imposters” ebook. The ebook was apparently targeting the employer side. However, to my amazement, it turned out that the ebook became much more popular among candidates.
I have observed two “jobs,” candidates have hired this ebook for—to use the JTBD jargon—since January 2016:
- To better understand possible interview questions, gain confidence, and thus prepare for the interview itself.
Quote from an email: “Stefan, Just wanted to send you a quick note to thank you for your posts and to keep the content coming. I am an Agile project manager who has also taken on the role of Scrum Master for a few teams in a corporate environment. I am now seeking full-time Scrum Master roles as I am passionate about the Scrum process and love bringing creative and talented people together to build a strong team. I thoroughly enjoy your Food for Thought posts and found your questions to avoid Scrum Master imposters extremely helpful for my interview prep.”
- To increase their market value in salary negotiations.
Quote from the blog post comments: “My name is Ali Mohammed and I am an IT Recruiter. I had submitted one of the resumes for the position of Scrum Master. The resume had been shortlisted, and the manager asked for an interview. I shared your PDF with him, and we discussed a lot on this. He's been selected, and the client raised the offer to him. It was really helpful to me.”
I Need Your Support: What Issues Shall the Upcoming “How to Get Hired as Scrum Master or Agile Coach” Book Cover?
So, I thought it might be useful to write a book on how to get hired as a Scrum Master or Agile Coach from the candidate’s perspective. Currently, I am planning to cover topics like:
- Identifying an agile organization the candidate would like to work for
- Finding exciting job offers
- Researching interview partners of the prospective employer
- Preparing for the interview itself
- Preparing for the trial day.
I am also planning to run an anonymous remuneration survey to gather some financial data suitable for comparison with an offer from a prospective employer. The question I like to ask you is:
What important topic am I missing at the moment?
If you could spend 2 minutes of your time on the following anonymous questionnaire it would help me a lot—thank you in advance!
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