At the start of my Agile career, it was tough to find an opening for the position of a Scrum Master in South Africa – Agile and Scrum was a new thing. When I was looking for a change in 2013, LinkedIn had three Scrum Master jobs and none for an Agile Coach. But when I search for Scrum Master jobs today, LinkedIn has a list of potential opportunities that spans over ten pages. At the same time, the job market is tougher today – the number of candidates on the market has increased significantly as well. The challenge for job seekers today is how to differentiate oneself from the rest of the crowd. For the past few years, I have been helping people find new opportunities, and companies find new candidates. Knowing the process from both sides, I would like to share the standard points you must have in your CV to land an interview. I will share the typical questions asked in a Scrum Master interview. And we will practice answering these questions in groups. Perhaps, this workshop is a small nudge that will help you land your next dream position. Join me to learn more!

1. How to Ace Your
Scrum Master Interview
Pavel Dabrytski

2. The plan for today
1. Talk about the
Good Scrum Master
traits
3. Practice interview
questions
2. Review your CV

3. Let’s look at your CV
• In your language, be specific rather than general
• Use active rather than passive verbs
• Make it fact-based (quantify and qualify)
• Write it for people who scan quickly
• Put email and phone information
• Make it fit a single page
• Do not include pictures, age, or gender
• Do not use personal pronouns (such as I)
• Do not use narrative style
_______
Harvard University. Resumes and Cover Letters. Retrieved 9 September 2015. Boston.

4. A Good Scrum Master should do:
more of…
less of…

5. The statistical method
• Define a few main traits that you are looking for in a new candidate
• Limit the traits to a small number of six or so
• Develop the evaluation methodology for each of the traits
• Develop an evaluation scale from 1 to 5, deciding on what it means to be
“very weak” or “very strong” for each of the criteria
• During the interview process, evaluate candidates against each of the traits
using the developed scale
• Hire the individual with the highest score (and above a set threshold)
_______
Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow (1st ed.). New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

6. Multivariable regression function
This chart is used for illustration purposes only.
Multivariable regression function cannot be
visualized comprehensively.
𝑦 = 𝛼 + 𝛽& 𝑥& + ⋯ + 𝛽) 𝑥) + 𝜀
+𝑦 = 𝑥& + ⋯ + 𝑥,, 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑥&…, 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑖𝑡𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑎 = 0, 𝑏&…, = 1
The traits perform the role of independent
variables in the multi-variable regression
function.

7. Results for Agile Coach position
• A total of 68 candidates applied for the position
• 6 of them stopped the process themselves and 26 did not attend their screening
• 27 applicants were rejected during the screening process
• 9 were rejected during the interview process
• 2 candidates with the scores of 20 and 21 were hired into the company

8. Results for Customer Success Manager
• A total of 778 candidates applied for the position
• 394 completed the first round
• 110 were invited to the next round
• 63 completed the second round
• 27 were invited to the in-person interview
• A single candidate with the highest score became part of the team

9. Typical Scrum Master traits
• Practical Agile experience
• Technical knowledge of Agile frameworks and
methods
• Level of education and certification
• Leaning and self-development
• Facilitation and communication skills
• Coaching skills

10. Three must-read books
• Geoff Watts, Scrum Mastery. 2013.
• Lyssa Adkins, Coaching Agile Teams. 2011.
• Jeff Patton, User Story Mapping. 2014.

11. Question 1:
Your team wants to spend the first five sprints to build the
underlying solution architecture. The end user functionality
will be delayed for a few sprints then made available as this
is deemed the more efficient use of time by the
development team.
What do you do? What are the implications of your
decision?

12. Question 2:
In the first few days of the sprint, your product owner has
some last-minute requests from an important customer and
wants to swap some stories out for new ones.
What do you do? What are the implications of your
decision?

13. Peer-interview practice
1. Your team has completed no work during the sprint.
Would you still hold a Review meeting? Why?
2. Who should participate in a retrospective?
3. How do you deal with team members “cherry picking”
tasks?
4. Who should be writing user stories?
5. Are there any common metrics that you would track? If
so, which metrics would you track and for what
purpose?

14. Free CV template and full list of questions
Please use the sign-up sheet and leave your email.

15. website: https://thinkagile.co.za
email: pavel@thinkagile.co.za
phone: +27 73 616 3392
slides: www.slideshare.net/paveldabrytski
How to Ace Your
Scrum Master Interview