Situation 1:

You decided to make a major career leap, and you are just searching for your a new job in the field where you don’t have any formal working experience.

You found a small, nice-looking grant-writing company online, named We Drink and We Write Things Ltd. 

You don’t know for sure, but it seems that they have no more than 20 employees.

The company advertises itself as a modern, dynamic company offering high-quality writing services for businesses and public institutions.

You don’t know much more about the company, as you don’t know anyone who works or worked there.

However, you decided to apply for the recently announced position of Grant Consultant. 

You haven’t officially worked as a grant writer just yet, but you are confident about your writing skills.

You acquired an extensive experience in writing throughout your career. You used to write technical documentation, procedures, marketing materials, essays, and business plans.

You feel confident about your skills on both the writing and the Business Intelligence side.

You have a family at this point. Your kids attend the local kindergarten.

At this stage, you are the head of the family and their bread-winner.

You would like to find a job in your area and stay there for some time – to take care of your kids and your partner who doesn’t have a job at the moment.

However, this is your step towards working full-time as a writer, and you are curious about how much you can achieve on this career path in the future.

Namely, you have the feeling that deep inside, you might also have some leadership skills – and you’d be willing to test this hypothesis in the future.

Thus, you are interested in whether you can have some room for personal development in this position.

Because of your family situation, you cannot afford to earn less than 4,500 Eur gross at this stage.

You also have some savings, therefore, you could also accept a situation when your salary starts at 4,000 Eur, and you get a raise to 4,500 Eur after one year.

You might also let go of the gross salary of 4,500 Eur if the employer can promise you some other benefits that lower your living costs, such as the company car, the company healthcare program, or contribution to the kindergarten costs.

During the conversation, you need to negotiate your conditions and make sure that the company culture fits your expectations – as you don’t know much about it just yet.

Situation 2:

You worked at Corpo-Mess for the last eight years, and you know the company perfectly well.

This large and highly respected company produces new software for a wide range of products, from self-navigating cars, through drones and robots, to new, intelligent medical devices.

You worked your way up to the prestigious position of Product Manager.

Today, you are responsible for launching new Corpo-Mess products to the market: all from the conceptual stage, through building and testing the prototype, to launching the marketing campaign. 

Currently, together with the Human Resources team, you are recruiting a new Product Owner.

The Product Owner will be responsible for the navigation system for a new model of a drone.

They will need to coordinate a team of programmers who develop the navigation system and talk to the customers throughout the process to make sure that this feature also scores high in the customers’ books.

You would like to find a person with strong programming skills and a natural affinity to new technologies, who also understands people and can communicate with programmers and potential clients.

In the past, you trained a few dysfunctional Product Owners who didn’t really have communication skills… which resulted in losses for the company. You would like to avoid such situations in the future.

You also encountered some Product Owners who were leaving their projects halfway. Therefore, it’s very important for you that the candidate can commit to the project for as long as the project lasts, and won’t drop out in the process.

The candidate whom you are interviewing for the position of Product Owner right now, has an excellent CV and GitHub profile.

They seem to have a strong analytic mind and excellent programming skills.

However, you wonder if this person will be able to communicate with the clients and coordinate the team of programmers, as well as stick to hard deadlines as every project will last for 2-4 weeks and cannot get postponed.

If the candidate doesn’t have any formal experience in the Product Owner role, you would prefer to propose the candidate a one-year internship first (paid 2,400 Eur gross per month), so that you can observe the candidate at work.

However, if the candidate is excellent, you might accept them for the position of Product Owner with a trial period.

This is a low-level position in the company, and the Approved Salary Range for this position is 2,800-3,300 Eur gross. The agreed amount should depend on the experience and expertise of the candidate.

You are also prepared to offer some additional benefits such as free gym passes, or the company car.