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AMA Guidelines and Support#

Guidelines and expectations related to AMA purpose, conduct, attendance, and engagement.

What AMAs are#

“AMA” stands for “Ask Me Anything”, it is an opportunity to get to know a candidate on both personal and work-related topics.

AMAs are...#

The purpose of an AMA itself is to give the wider amazee.io team the chance to meet each final stage candidate prior to a hiring decision being made. The candidate also gets the opportunity to meet their potential new colleagues, giving them a chance to see if the environment and team fits them. This in turn can also have the bonus of increased retention, although the direct purpose is to gather team feedback, and make sure that everyone has a voice in who joins our team.

AMAs are not...#

AMAs are not a technical stage interview. By the time they have reached the AMA, the technical requirements for the role have been assessed and given the green light.

An AMA is purely designed to assess team and value fit for the workstream and wider company. Therefore we should be focusing our questions, engagement, and feedback on the team fit, value fit, and soft skills of the candidate.

Structure#

In order to keep the structure of AMAs consistent and fair for each candidate, we have the following guidelines in place:

Total Duration - 45 minutes We always start with questions directed to the candidate from amazee.io attendees This takes some of the pressure off the candidate and allows them to build a bit of rapport When asking your question, please start by introducing yourself - name, location, role - if you have not previously met the candidate We also want to give the candidate a chance to ask us questions, and depending on the flow of the AMA, between 10-20 minutes before the end , we give the floor to the candidate This also allows us to gauge their curiosity and see how well they have prepared

Attendance#

Timezone allowing and in an ideal world, we would like everyone at each AMA, the more the better! The more feedback we gather, the better chance we have of making great hires.

We encourage attendance as frequently as your schedule allows.

Workstream attendance#

Whilst in general, attendance is optional, we do have an expectation that all relevant workstream team members attend AMAs for positions within their own workstream, as the candidate will be one of your direct colleagues.

Members of overlapping workstreams are also encouraged to join if the candidate is likely to be someone you will interact with regularly.

Engagement and Etiquette#

We want to encourage a lot of engagement between the candidate and the team at AMAs. This leads them to be more productive, and gives us the best chance of accurately assessing team fit.

To support this engagement, we have an expectation of the candidate being asked at least one question from each amazee.io attendee.

Can’t think of your own? 😩 Have no fear! We have the “AMA Question Bank” to help you out when your creative juices just aren’t flowing to come up with your own. By having one question from each attendee, we also mitigate awkward silences, and generally makes the candidate feel more welcome.

To get the most out of an AMA, we also ask that:

  • We are “video on” for attendance whenever possible
  • Show interest in the conversation (i.e. don’t be working on the side, or be more engaged with Slack messages.)
  • We also ask for as little background noise as possible, or tactical use of the mute button when it’s not possible to avoid (public spaces, barking dogs, getting inadvertently caught in a flash mob, etc.)

Feedback#

Your feedback is a large part of the reason we ask you to join the AMA, and therefore feedback is mandatory from each attendee. Naturally with the responses being anonymous this can't be enforced, so we operate on good faith because you’re awesome ❤.

Feedback is obtained via a Google Form which is provided via a link to each attendee after the call. As we want to hear open and honest thoughts from everyone on the call, this feedback is completely anonymous.

In order to obtain your freshest and most meaningful thoughts, we ask that feedback is given within 24 hours of the AMA taking place.