I am currently in the process of interviewing for a role at a competitor. I have already completed a 2hr video interview with the hiring manager who is based in Norway for which I took a 1/2 days leave on a Friday. I have been asked to attend a second interview (fine, its a comparatively "senior" position) but the hiring manager is due to be in London in a couple of weeks and has therefore asked about availability to attend another 1.5hr face to face interview in London, mid week. The role itself is part remote part based in Manchester (~20mins from where I live) so commuting to London isn't part of the role as such. I could do with some advice from others in a "professional" sector on how best to respond to this request. Taking what would need to be a days leave mid week to travel to London (and I don't know about if I can claim expenses yet) would be annoying. I need to cover school holidays and taking time of mid week will raise quite a few eyebrows amongst colleagues (potentially prejudicing my current role). I don't "need" the job but I thought it looked interesting but not desperate enough to do whatever they ask. They only asked about my availability to attend so it might not be a deal breaker if I say no but obviously would like to avoid scuppering my chances in declining the request.
What level are we talking? High level IC / Manager / Director / VP? Also I would not expect a second interview with the same person. Especially if you already spent 2 hours at a first round! What’s expected in the second round?
It's for a software product owner but in a very niche engineering area. So middleish management. My understanding is that it would be an opportunity to meet with other members of the software product team and be a less formal discussion than the first. My hunch is that it would be to check if I would fit with the team but not certain. Im probably going to decline going to London (stating existing work commitments) but offer being available via video call or in person at their Manchester office
Ah, that's a great clarification. Personally I would be excited that's a great sign. I'm also product owner (PO's unite), so getting the opportunity to meet the team and understand culture would be useful to you to decide if you actually want the job.
I did something like this for a job and it sealed the deal for me, I was surprised to find there was nothing technical about the second meet at all, they had got enough from the initial call, basically knew where I was coming from, how long I'd been there and the pressures involved in the products I was delivering so they were already confident I could get **** done, they basically just wanted to get me down the pub with the rest of the team to see if I was a character fit. I'd be looking to go along personally, it's one day off.
Good to know in case I need advice! This would actually be a bit of a career change for me. The day job (currently) is mostly technical consultancy with a sideline of commercialising our internal software tools. The product(s) I would be in charge of I know extremely well (from the day job) and I've done enough coding over the years to understand what goes into it (but I'm not a software engineer). However, I've never been a 'proper' product owner but giving the niche nature of the software there is probably only a few people in the country who would understand the product, market and software.
Not counting time alloted for connections, your travel time on the train would be roughly comparable to mine, give or take half an hour or so each way. Personally, I would have to question how much of an opportunity it represents for me. If it's a pay rise of more than about 8-10% then I'd likely do it. If the pay rise is less than that then I'd have to consider what other opportunities the new role would open me up to: career progression, working with newer/different/more interesting technologies, profile and/or reputation of the company, etc. The caveat to this is that this is, of course, looking at it from my point of view. I'm on the low-to-mid end of the salary scale for my role, I could definitely get more money elsewhere (in some cases a hell of a lot more), but so far this has been a great company to work for with a great culture and there are some incredibly talented and experienced people here. It takes an awful lot of salary to compensate for a toxic working environment. Yeah it's tough work and things move very fast, but I'm in a fairly comfortable position and the salary is far more than I ever expected to be earning by this point in my life. My point is that my interest in a new job is pretty low; however if I were more dissatisfied with my job or the company then it would take an awful lot less to convince me to spend over 5 hours travelling to London and back for a ~1.5hr interview. EDIT: If they're willing to meet you in Manchester instead of London then you should definitely go to that interview. You wouldn't make that kind of accomodation for a candidate that you're only "kinda sorta" considering.
Update: They would be happy to meet me after 5pm in Manchester and then go for an early dinner. Even as an eternal pessimist that sounds rather promising! Glad I went the route I did though because travel to London would have been a massive pain and got in the way of my current work. Sometimes it pays to say no and to be honest if it had been a deal breaker I probably wouldn't want to work there (if the company culture is to expect you to jump as high as they demand without question).
Great news, I assume you aren't currently certified? If not and you get offered the position, then you might want to add to your compensation negotiation the provision for certification training and on-going learning. Maybe even try and get it into your 90 day onboarding plan to set yourself off on the right foot.
That's a great tip, no I'm not certified and to be honest I wasn't aware that you could be. A quick google suggests that the certification process isn't overly onerous or expensive so should be possible. I have tried to be honest about my level of experience as a product owner (i.e. very limited!) so would imagine they would be keen to get me trained up.
This is a slight tangent, but that's hardly a new phenomenon here.... Having worked in Scrum in three different companies now, and having worked as a Scrum Master for about a year and a half, I'd say the hardest aspect of using Scrum properly is everything that the Scrum guide doesn't cover: stakeholder management/engagement, communication, co-ordination between workstreams, managing business priorities and resources, infrastructure/security constraints, etc. We used to have Project Managers and Business Analysts for a lot of that stuff, they weren't just there for show . A lot of the time this stuff tends to be left to the Product Owner, but puts a huge amount of pressure on the Product Owner and makes their job infinitely more difficult. I'm pretty militant about following the Scrum guide - you don't get to pick and choose what you want, you're either following the guide or what you're doing isn't Scrum . It's really not a complex document and everything in it is there for a reason. You can pick and choose the bits you want and the bits you don't want... but don't call what you're doing "Scrum"! When it works well it really works well, but many places don't do it well! And that's the real challenge: finding what works well for each company and team (if you have that flexibility - we certainly do). Sometimes Scrum ain't it. My team does use bits and pieces - loose sprints, planning, daily standups, maybe one or two other things that I can't remember - but it's very loose, and I get on everyone's nerves when I get pedantic and tell people off for calling it "Scrum"
Scrumagers Unite! I may be certified (or should that be certifiable?!) as a Scrum Master (working as a Product Owner/Team Lead) i'm pretty relaxed about the framework. I prefer to focus on the basics of Agile and just get stuff done; doing what helps you when it helps you. This is probably (if not definitely) because in my industry (Defence) the managment love to play buzzword bingo with agile/scrum/kanban/devops/safe terminology and then still insist we work a waterfall programme schedule/plan... /tangent
