first, why is diversity at work important for us? our mission is to help level the playing field in education, and we’ll only be able to achieve that mission if our products serve all students equitably. that’s why we believe it’s important to ensure our company and workplace culture reflect our students and their lived experiences.

this journey has been an incredible learning process for our people teams here at magoosh, and we’ve made a ton of progress. looking back, it’s clear that we did not get everything right. we hope that by publicly sharing our successes and our failures, we can hold ourselves accountable (and help other companies) to create a diverse and equitable workplace for all. together, we can work collectively on diversity and inclusion in tech and higher education.
 

vision of diversity at magoosh

magoosh students are a broadly diverse group. in order for magoosh to best serve its students and to grow as a business, our team must reflect the diversity of our students. our long term goal is to have a magoosh team that reflects the diversity of our us-based students.

here’s what we know about our students:

race/ethnicity: 46% white, 17% hispanic or latino, 16% black or african american, 13% asian, 6% two or more races, 1% american indian or alaskan native, 1% prefer not to say
 

first-generation college student: 23.2% yes, 75.8% no, 1% prefer not to say
 

first language: 34% not english, 65% english, 1% prefer not to say
 

gender: 63% female, 35% male, 1% other/nonconforming

the benefits of diverse teams have been widely researched: diverse teams tend to have better outcomes. we want magoosh to be a more diverse company, not only because doing so is aligned with our mission, but also because a diverse team will set us up for continued growth and success. at magoosh, we are treating diversity at work like any other area of our business and setting specific, measurable goals to ensure that we achieve our vision.
 

our 2020 diversity at work goals

to reach the longer-term vision of magoosh reflecting the diversity of its students, we set benchmark goals for 2020.

we recognize that there are many ways for groups to be diverse and that no set of diversity goals will ever fully encompass all of the aspects of our students. furthermore, different dimensions of diversity are not discrete line items; they intersect in important ways that have a significant impact both at the systemic and the individual levels. we also know from experience that we are most likely to see change when we set specific, measurable goals and consistently track our progress towards them.

to build a team that reflects the diversity of our students, we set the following goals for 2020 as part of our three-year plan:

1. 20% of magoosh employees will identify as a member of an underrepresented minority (urm) ethnic/racial group.
2. 16% of magoosh employees will identify as the first in their family to go to college.
3. 23% of magoosh employees will have grown up in a home where the primary language spoken was not english.
4. on every team made up of seven or more people, there will be at least two people of non-majority gender identities.

we’ll be sharing our process for setting these goals in a future blog post.

these goals are benchmarks, not goalposts. we’re measuring ourselves against these goals in 2020, but also looking ahead to future years where we will continue to push ourselves to better represent our students.
 

where we started

we started the process of setting diversity at work goals in late 2017, and our first step was to get accurate data on our current team. here is a snapshot of how we stacked up against our diversity goals at that time:

• 7% of employees identified as a member of an underrepresented minority group.
• 10% of employees identified as the first in their family to go to college.
• 28% of employees identified as growing up in a home where the primary language spoken was not english.
• half of our teams with more than seven employees had at least two people of non-majority gender identities.

where we are now

on our recent survey of employees, here were the results:

*additionally, for our gender goal, 100% of teams of size seven or more have at least two members of the non-majority gender identity.

looking at these results, we can see we’ve made substantial progress towards our 2020 goals, hitting them in two areas and coming quite close in the other two. however, we still have a long way to go to achieve our vision of reflecting the diversity of our students. we’ll be pushing forward that work into 2021 and beyond to ensure we achieve that vision.
 

diversity at work: addressing inclusion, equity, and belonging

of course, hiring a diverse team is not enough to ensure that magoosh and our students benefit from the results. members of historically underrepresented communities need to:

• be included and engaged in their work
• feel a sense of belonging
• be treated equitably
• be given equal opportunities for promotion and advancement.

as we grow (and grow more diverse), we are challenging ourselves to think more critically about diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in the workplace, and we’ll be sharing more about our progress in future blog posts.
 

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george floyd. breonna taylor. tony mcdade. ahmaud arbery—four black americans who were senselessly murdered at the hands of police officers and vigilantes this year alone. these murders, among so many others that have occurred over the years, are unequivocally unacceptable. this should not happen.

we at magoosh stand with those protesting and with the black community against racism and violence. we know that the u.s. systems that claim to support all individuals actually oppress and harm the black community. we also acknowledge that racism has existed for many decades prior to this moment and sadly will exist into the future. the fight is long and difficult. we’ve been taking action, and we’ll continue to do so.

the work we’re doing today

we’re donating to organizations that uplift the black community and fight against racial injustice.

we’ve committed $50k towards organizations that uplift the black community and fight against social injustice. more broadly, we donate at 1% of our revenue each year using a combination of employee donation matching and corporate philanthropy towards organizations that help with education equity and access. later this year, we will share the organizations that we chose to support and why.

we’re building upon the diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging work already started.

we’re committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment. representation matters.

we know that in order to achieve our mission, the makeup of our team needs to represent the diversity of our student base. several years ago, we created specific and measurable diversity goals among several axes including race. since then, we’ve heavily audited our hiring process: we increased the number of black and under-represented applicants in our pool through active sourcing, anonymized and standardized steps in our hiring process, and shared with candidates what each interview would entail and how it’s representative of the role.

• we also have policies that combat pay disparity such as structured approach to salary and equity and share those policies with candidates, including posting the salary range on the job description. these changes among many others have helped us attract and hire more black employees who contribute to our mission and who help inform our policies.
• earlier this year, we engaged a 3rd party company (peoplism) to conduct a diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging audit to further review all our processes including hiring, performance, pay, and more. with the audit now in hand, we’re planning further changes to support our employees, especially those underrepresented in tech.

we’re committed to fully living out our mission.

over ten years ago, magoosh was founded to level the education playing field and solve for the inequities that have prevented so many underserved individuals from achieving their educational aspirations. we’ve created one of the most accessible and affordable test preparation products to help students overcome the barriers of standardized tests—and we know these barriers disproportionately impact black students.

• we offer free and heavily discounted prep to non-profit organizations many of whom serve the black community, such as smash scholars, oliver scholars, and mcnair scholars.
• currently, we estimate that we serve 10,000+ black students each year. we’ll continue to serve this population and challenge ourselves to do more and do better.

there’s more work to do going forward

we’re examining how we can do better for our employees, students, and community.

we know we’re lacking in a number of areas, and here’s some of what we need to do:

• create employee resource groups for black employees (and other groups).
• better support our black and minority students by ensuring that our products are inclusive and by hiring instructors who are also black and minority and who more accurately reflect the diversity and experience of our student base.
• proactively partner with organizations that are already experts in and actively pursuing diversity and racial justice work within our communities.

lastly, and possibly most notably, we have no black or under-represented minority representation in senior leadership. we recognize that diversity in our leadership team may be the most impactful way to create lasting change across all groups: employees, students, and community.

we’re actively working on these areas and know there’s a lot more work to do as well. we look forward to updating the magoosh community on our progress.

what else are we doing (and what can you do)?

we realize each person experiences these tragedies and the associated trauma differently. as individuals and employees—particularly those of us with racial or ethnic privilege—we aim to do the following:

• we need to listen to voices in the black community and amplify and elevate those voices.
• we need to educate ourselves and learn to become better allies—this burden should not be on the black community.
• we need to educate others, especially white and non-black people of color.
• we need to discuss race and its implications at work and in our work.

many of our employees are taking additional independent and collective actions. if you’re looking for guidance you can start with this resource compiled by the magoosh diversity, equity, and inclusion committee. if you know of other actions or causes that support the black community, or if you need support in providing test prep to black and under-represented communities, we’d love to hear from you. please reach out in the comments below or email us at help@www.catharsisit.com

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update as of 9/10/2020:

we’re taking an additional paid week off as a company (rotating by team) in the month of september and early october! we are naming this time off “fall leaves”, because 1) they’re days off in fall and 2) we’re leaving work! given the stress of the pandemic and 2020 craziness has continued, folks have continued to take on a lot and we want to make sure folks have time to recharge and avoid burnout.

update as of 4/28/2020:

we’re taking one paid week off as a company (rotating by team) in the month of may! peter, our vp of operations, proposed a company week off, aptly named “may days,” because 1) they’re days off in may and 2) that’s the message you send out when you need help! given that everyone is working in addition to balancing the stress of the pandemic, taking care of their health, and supporting their loved ones, folks have been taking on a lot and we wanted to give everyone some time to breathe.

here are some of the other ways magoosh is supporting our employees and extended community during this uncertain time:

strong leadership through the times of covid

one of the keys for supporting our team has been to ensure that there is centralized messaging and clear communication. our leadership team has been vocal and unified in providing magooshers with a sense of direction during this time.

• one of the first messages about covid after shelter in place began in the bay area was from our ceo, bhavin parikh. he shared how the expectations were that everyone would be at a reduced capacity—whether due to childcare needs or taking care of their mental health, and that was not only ok but also encouraged
• additionally, peter started an internal weekly covid newsletter to share how the business is doing, new policy information, and updates to our office and remote work situation. this has provided our team with a level of consistency during an otherwise very uncertain time.
• finally, while we would normally have a monthly meeting to discuss the specifics of our work, bhavin used our last meeting to instead to provide reassurance to our employees, to share how magoosh as a business may or may not be impacted by this crisis, and as a townhall to answer any questions folks might have and to alleviate concerns.

adapting our sense of community to a remote world

one of the reasons i have worked at magoosh as long as i have (currently 6 going on 7 years!) is because of the sense of community and camaraderie that we have. we’ve worked together to translate that sense of kinship to an all-remote setting and facilitate that feeling of togetherness during these otherwise isolating times.

• we set up additional communication channels such as a covid specific slack channel to provide folks a space to get updates, ask questions, and share advice and learnings with one another.
• morgan, our amazing associate office/operations manager, has planned some incredible social events from a kids talent show to virtual pet happy hour to matching folks for 1:1 coffee chats.
• we have a watercooler google meet link where folks can hang out and just chit chat as they would have in a normal office environment.
• we’ve provided calendly links to our hr to make it easier for folks to get in touch.

providing accessibility and security to our employees

making sure people have what they need—from time off to flexibility—has been critical to ensuring folks can focus what bandwidth they have on the work at hand instead of spending their precious mindspace on worrying about logistics.

• iris, our senior hr manager, has gone above and beyond to set up our processes for remote work, such as creating a remote onboarding process for our incoming new teammates.
• our operations team has made trips to the berkeley office to grab equipment folks might need and drop it off at their homes.
• we immediately provided additional sick days for anyone who needs the time during this period as well as the hr support to facilitate that.
• we’ve provided additional flexibility and enabled folks to take advantage of, and encouraged, more time off and reduced schedules.
• we’ve created exceptions to our policies such as enabling folks to reschedule their sabbaticals if they were interrupted due to covid.
• we’ve sent out resources—for both mental and physical health—to help folks cope with the anxiety and stress, as well as any physical ailments during this time.

delivering on our values of passion and wow

ultimately, one of the ways in which magoosh has been so lucky with this crisis is not only due to our business but also due to our amazing, driven workforce. they have gone above and beyond to support one another, and have found ways to work more creatively and strategically during this time.

• most video calls i’ve recently had have involved at least one parent in the meeting having a child with them or interrupting at some point. this is the norm and is not to be apologized for. it is incredible to see parents balancing their additional childcare responsibilities with passion for their work.
• folks have been more strategic in their prioritization of projects and found ways to structure their time so that they are able to make the most of the limited time that they do have devoted to work
• we’ve had employees going above and beyond for one another—whether dropping off groceries or equipment, or providing a listening ear and links to resources. it’s been incredible to see magooshers stepping up in support of one another.
• morgan added some surpise and delight to our weeks by getting everyone some incredibly cozy slippers to add some comfiness to our new wfh normal.

helping our students and our communities

ultimately, our mission is to make the world more accessible which means not only supporting those who work for us but going beyond that and providing support to our students and our communities during these difficult times.

• our students: magooshers have found ways to go out of their way to help our students. from tireless efforts to test out the experience of remote exams to providing webinars on how to deal with studying during such an uncertain and unstructured time, from blog posts with advice on how to handle test cancellations to proactively providing product extensions—i’ve been blown away by how all of our teams have quickly focused on ways to be there for our students.
• our community: magoosh has had a large presence in the berkeley community for over ten years and as such has donated $50,000 to the berkeley relief fund. iris found masks that we had from the fires and donated those along with our office hand sanitizer and cleaning wipes. morgan donated the money we would have spent on a team dinner this month to a charity helping fund meals for essential employees working to save lives right now.

when times are tough, a real spotlight shines on how companies and individuals react. my hope is that we as a company can look back on this response and feel good about the responsibility that we took and the togetherness and sense of safety that we were able to foster. it is times like these that i feel most proud to work at magoosh.

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(note: this next paragraph contains a reference to self-harm; if that’s something you struggle with, you might want to skip it.)

i have a vivid memory of walking to the school i taught at one morning and thinking “hmm, that car isn’t going too fast. i bet if i jumped out in front of it i’d get hurt enough to get some time off. it’d be bad, but not too bad.” at the time i remember laughing at how preposterous that thought was and (thankfully!) did not jump in front of moving traffic.

with the perspective of time, i can now recognize that this was a completely unhealthy thought that should have indicated i was in a seriously rough state.

i was experiencing burnout.

image credit: nickvector (licensed via shutterstock)

i ended up leaving the teaching profession, going to business school, and getting a job at magoosh. but i never forgot that feeling of burnout, and i try to be aware if i see it in others.

fortunately, magoosh is a company that prioritizes the whole lives of its employees. we have a flexible vacation policy, generous benefits and parental leave, and a culture that specifically eschews perfectionism. but we’re still a startup, and that means there’s always more to do than there is time to do it. work is often a sprint, and you just can’t sprint forever. i want to make sure no one who works at magoosh ever feels that same sense of burnout i felt in dc.

that’s why we’re introducing sabbaticals at magoosh.

magoosh now offers six-week fully-paid sabbaticals for qualifying full-time and part-time employees who have worked at magoosh for five years or longer, averaging at least 24 hours per week.

you can take a look at our sabbatical policy (the document we shared with all employees when we rolled this benefit out back in october) here if you’re curious about the specifics.

why offer sabbatical to our employees (especially as a small company)?

the goal of magoosh’s sabbatical benefit is to encourage longevity with the company, prevent and alleviate burnout, and help longer-tenured employees get a fresh perspective on work.

in addition to this being good for the individuals who take it, there is some compelling research that a sabbatical policy can be good for the company overall.

magoosh employees have also shown an interest in having a sabbatical policy. we have an “ideas and brainstorming” section of our company asana, and offering a sabbatical benefit has been a proposed idea for quite some time.

so, for a company wanting to attract and retain great employees — and help them do their best work — offering a sabbatical benefit seemed like a great next step.

but why now? well, magoosh grew substantially in 2013 and 2014, adding many new employees in that time (including me!). a lot of us are still working at magoosh, and some of us are in need of a break. after having conversations with a few long-tenured employees, we decided that 2019 was the right time to prioritize creating a sabbatical policy.

how we structured our sabbatical program (and challenges we’ve faced so far)

when we first set out to make a sabbatical policy, we thought that the biggest issues would be hammering out the specific rules (length of service, length of sabbatical, etc.). it turned out those questions were pretty easy to answer, but then others were surprisingly tricky!

let’s start with the easy stuff.

length of service. we pretty quickly settled on five years as a good length of time. when we looked at other companies that offered sabbatical, five years was the most common requirement. i’ll admit, as a linguistic purist, i really wanted to keep to the traditional seven year duration (“sabbatical” comes from the biblical “sabbath”, as in “on the seventh day, he rested”). but five years is far more common in corporate sabbatical, and is also a nice round number.

length of sabbatical. we chose six weeks as the length of time for a couple of reasons. again, this length is comparable to length of sabbaticals at several other companies that offer them. additionally, it feels long enough to be meaningful, but not so long that it would be particularly difficult for our teams to plan around.

eligibility criteria. everyone at magoosh was aligned on the idea that we wanted to be able to provide sabbatical benefits to both our part-time and full-time employees. we have several part-time employees who have worked at magoosh for many years, helping literally thousands of students individually. we modeled our part-time sabbatical requirements after adobe’s, offering the benefit to folks who work the majority of their week at magoosh (three out of five days, or 24 hours per week).

these points came together pretty quickly. but, as i said, it was the other questions that came up that really made us think. “can i take a sabbatical in smaller chunks?” “can i save up sabbaticals and take twelve weeks after ten years?” “can i combine sabbatical with other pto, unpaid time, or leave?”

we really struggled with some of these questions! on the one hand, we want employees to do what is best for them and don’t want to put up arbitrary restraints or rules. on the other hand, sabbatical really only benefits the company when employees take the time in a way that is restorative.

we decided to align our approach to these trickier questions around a guiding principle: the purpose of sabbatical is to give employees lengthy, uninterrupted time away from work so that they come back to magoosh with a fresh perspective and renewed energy. if an employee wants to use their sabbatical time in a way that is in alignment with that principle, then we’re generally ok with it.

image credit: alena ozerova (licensed via shutterstock)

our first employee to take sabbatical will go out in december 2019, and we have four more already scheduled for 2020 (including our ceo’s in late summer — have fun bhavin, we may or may not fold our bagels in half while you’re away!). while our sabbatical is optional, we do hope that everyone who is eligible takes it.

i’m sure we’ll have more challenges and bumps along the way as we prepare for and go through our first employee sabbaticals. if you’ve taken a sabbatical, let us know in the comments what challenges you and your organization faced. and if you’ve never worked at a company with a sabbatical policy, maybe now’s the time. check out our careers page for open roles and join our team!

the post away they go: introducing paid sabbaticals at magoosh appeared first on magoosh 2022年足球世界杯举办地.

spend enough time in startup land and you’ll stumble upon one of the holy commandments of saas (software as a service) businesses: thou shalt talk to your users early and often.

that means not just doing usability testing (putting a mockup or a new feature in front of users to see how they interact with it), but also picking up the phone to learn about users and potential customers before you build, mock, or even brainstorm.

unfortunately, implementing a consistent user research practice is like building a regular fitness routine: we all know we should do it because it’ll be good for our short- and long-term (business) health, it’ll give us iterative and actionable feedback that will help us improve more quickly, and it has a tendency to spread positive ripple effects to other areas of our lives (and our companies).

and yet, too many startups do the equivalent of driving past the gym every morning by putting user research on the back burner for an ever-distant “someday.” if you’re at a small startup like ours, the justification is often a lack of resources — with a tiny team (that already wears multiple hats) and limited capital (that takes a lot of sweat equity to raise), user research can understandably feel like a “nice to have” luxury, one meant to be saved for the day when your company finally makes it and can afford to hire a snazzy ux researcher.

well, we’re here to channel our best richard simmons-esque level of encouragement and let you know that the benefits of asking your customers for feedback are well worth the work, even and especially if you’re on a team that lacks a dedicated ux researcher. here’s how we’ve approached user interviews at magoosh from the very start, how they’ve helped our business grow, and tips and advice for getting started.

three benefits we’ve gained from conducting user interviews with our students

image credit: thinglass (licensed via shutterstock)

we’ve conducted user interviews in some iteration for nearly every quarter over the past ten years. there are three main motivations—and resulting benefits—behind our prolific user research habit:

reason/benefit #1 – offer better products

as a relatively young startup with a global student population, achieving product-market fit has been crucial to our growth and success.

it’s allowed us to make it to profitability on just one seed round of funding, grow our product line from our staple gre offering to products helping students prep for over nine standardized tests, and invest in expanding our team, fostering great company culture along the way.

throughout our now decade-long journey, our growth has been catalyzed by product feedback from our users, from our recent addition of text-message reminders to our act and sat products, to our 2010 decision to switch from user-generated to expert-written content. today, though our products can always continue to be improved, we’re stoked to see our net promoter (nps) scores overall on the rise, and our student numbers continuing to climb from eight million served.

reason/benefit #2 – check our assumptions

we’ll be the first to admit that, even amidst the fiercely proud-nerd culture of magoosh, there’s still so much we don’t know!

when we first entered the sat market, we assumed parents would be the louder voices we’d need to listen to. a round of user interviews later, we realized the story was actually much more nuanced: many students were studying on their own, with little or no parent involvement.

it’s in the spirit of one of our core company values, learning > knowing, that we acknowledge our blind spots and seek to listen to our students in the hopes of learning what they can teach us or broaden our perspective around.

reason/benefit #3 – deepen empathy for our customers

the world of education is rapidly changing, and even as lifelong learners, it can be incredibly hard to keep up.

this is especially true as the college admissions landscape becomes more complex and less accessible to students and, in line with our mission, user interviews have afforded us a personal, humanizing means of empathizing with our customers and their wildly diverse lived experiences. we would never have known what it’s like to prepare for the toefl in iran if we didn’t talk with people doing exactly that.

when – and how – to start conducting user interviews

image credit: notto yeez (licensed via shutterstock)

when should you conduct user interviews?

it’s important to learn to differentiate between when a user interview is the best path for learning, and when it might actually be a distraction. generally, user interviews are better for focused learning over open exploration, such as talking through challenges and problems with your users. the more specific the info you’re trying to get, the better a user interview can help you inform next steps.

some points to consider:

should it be a user call?
whether you are trying to identify a problem, get more information about a known problem, or see if a solution will work, you should consider whether user calls are the best tool to get what you’re looking for. does the information you want already exist somewhere, or are there better methods (like a survey) to collect it? user calls may or may not be the route you want to go.

define your purpose
are you conducting “discovery calls” to try and understand problem spaces, or have you defined a problem space and want to do a deeper dive into how users may be solving this problem already? this will additionally inform who you reach out to and the questions you ask.

what does success look like?
user interviews are a means, not an end. if the sum of your user calls leads you to the next stage of your work, and that work is successful, then the calls were a success.

how to recruit (the right) participants for user interviews

image credit: ollyy (licensed via shutterstock)

so you’ve gotten clear on the information you’re trying to learn and decided that user interviews are indeed the best route. now, who in your customer pool should you reach out to?

• who you recruit for a user interview depends on what questions you are trying to answer
  recruit users who will provide the “best” source of information for the problem you are tackling. take into account the various stages of your customer journey (for example, users already aware of your brand who have yet to purchase? trial users? power users? users whose engagement has dropped off recently? blog readers who never engage with your product?) to inform what subset of your users makes the most sense.
• match your research group proportionately to your customer population
  working on your core product? well, if 70% of your customers are domestic and about 30% are from india, then aim to recruit a cohort of users that matches this 70/30 breakdown. if you can’t get there, do more recruitment, and don’t hesitate to turn some volunteers from over-represented groups down when you need to (kindly, of course!). self-selection is a real thing that can skew the makeup of your pool of users so you’ll need to find ways to target your outreach so that your research is proportionate to your user base.
• plan a funnel to determine how many users to recruit
  start with how many users you ultimately want to talk to. next, estimate the percent of users who you think will sign up and not show. then, the percent of users who will open your email and percent who click through to sign up. play around with this funnel (using historical data on the sign up and open rates of your customers, if available) until you understand how much outreach you’ll need to reach your target number of interviewees.
  
  note: this initial outreach number might be bigger than your pool of potential candidates. if that’s the case, you may need to sweeten the deal a bit with (bigger) incentives or build out a more robust campaign to increase open and sign-up rates.

 

• talk to as many users as you have time for, prioritizing the recent customers
  to find useful themes, you’re going to need to talk to more than 5 customers. we’ve found 10 works as a minimum for a lot of purposes, but shorter, less dense calls may warrant 20 or 30. for most interviews, recency matters. aim to recruit active customers from the past few weeks as opposed to the past few years. they are in the midst of using your product and not trying to remember what it was like. oh, and if you happen to be talking with low-intent or low-engagement users, get them on the phone immediately. the longer you wait after booking, the more likely it is that they won’t show up for the call.

tips and tools to streamline your user interview process

we’ve made a lot of mistakes conducting user interviews over the past 5 years (and discovered a lot of useful habits along the way!). here are seven tips and tricks:

• create a script and have someone review it
  having a script will help you avoid leading questions, control your time, and stay focused on your goals. but be prepared to shuffle the order of your questions and ask follow up questions.
• find a notetaker and tell them what type of notes to take
  humans are actually really bad multitaskers. understandably, it’s hard to have a high-level picture of a conversation when you are in the middle of it. to make the most of each of your user interviews, it’s best to have one person focused on asking questions, listening, and responding while someone else primarily takes notes.be clear about the type of notes each person should take—verbatim, paraphrasing, or highlights. when you have two people, you can take two different approaches. it’s inevitable that you’ll forget some details, so if you have one person taking notes as close to verbatim as they can get, you’ll be able to return to exact phrasing after the fact, which will help prevent false memories. but if there’s only one person in the room, conducting the interview, taking verbatim notes, and seeing the big picture becomes impossible.
• spreadsheet tracker, not a bad idea!
  with multiple calls, and potentially multiple people making calls, having a spreadsheet with the users, relevant info, and recaps from the user calls is a great way to stay organized—and know who needs to have a gift card or other reward sent to them.
• ask users for multiple modes of contact
  technical difficulties will happen, and it’s helpful to plan for them in advance. when recruiting users, ask for their phone number (or other additional contact method) so you can call them instead of having them call you.
• schedule smart, schedule often, and send reminders
  schedule less engaged users as soon as possible in your interview window to mitigate against no-shows. in that same vein, overbook more users than you ultimately need to talk to because people will flake. to account for the faulty nature of human memories, text reminders to users an hour before the scheduled call to verify they’re still available.
• plan for a debrief + aim for 2-4 takeaways
  ideally, you discuss the call immediately after the call, so make sure to reserve time in your schedule before the next one. discuss what stood out and arrive at 2-4 takeaways. if you’re pulling out more than 4 highlights, they’re probably not equally important—try to keep it to only the meaty points so you can focus on what really counts.
• know thyself
  some people can rock through eight user calls in a day. others may find it challenging to do more than a few in a day. plan the interviews so that you don’t burn out.

troubleshooting common user interview challenges

image credit: juergen priewe (licensed via shutterstock)

you’ve checked off all the right things (defined a clear purpose and outcome, recruited the best users from your customers, set up a solid process and roles) but find that your questions are falling flat during the interview. what gives?

not convinced you’re framing the right questions during your user interviews? avoid these common mistakes.

avoid asking leading questions
asking leading questions is the best way to invalidate a response or even an entire call. if you ask a leading question (even one!), you may have to throw out the entire interview, so practice as much as you can to not ask leading questions. no yes/no questions. ask who, what, where, when, why, and how questions. “can you tell me about x?” and “can you tell me more about y?” are good! also, practice might just mean conducting interviews where you make mistakes and the results are thrown out, assuming that you use those learnings to improve future interviews.

priming is not the same as leading
it can be helpful to start broad and narrow into the questions you want to ask. start with something concrete and that will make it easier for them to answer questions later. instead of “how did you use magoosh to study for the sat?”, start with, “tell me about the last time you studied a new topic.”

take answers to quantitative questions with a grain of salt
people tend to search for the “right” answer or provide an answer that you want to hear. so you won’t get an honest response if you are asking for something on a scale. the nps question (“how likely are you to refer…”) when asked on a phone call is likely going to result in a higher score than the same question asked in another medium—your interviewees will try to make you happy, and may not give the most accurate response. these kinds of questions can be helpful to lead into follow-up questions, but they’re dangerous when used on their own.

covered all of your bases? here are a few bonus tips to be double sure you’re not leaving insights (and honesty) on the table during your user interviews.

you won’t hurt my feelings
start the call with why you are conducting the calls. and tell them you want them to be brutally honest, and that they can’t say anything to offend you. people will unconsciously provide answers that they think you want to hear or that they think true of themselves. prime them with a statement at the beginning that hopefully dampens this.

i know what you did last summer (or last week)
similar to setting the stage, let the user know you have their usage history in front of you, if you do. starting with a quick “i see you spend a few hours using [our product] each week”—or whatever happens to be true for the particular interviewee—can help avoid situations where people claim to have done much more or much less than they actually have. not everybody wants to admit how much time they spend on an entertainment service, and many of us will claim to have used that exercise app as much as we wished we had, not how much we really did.

silence is golden
sometimes the best way to get someone to talk is with silence. let there be a space so people can talk, and think, and talk some more. the impulse to respond right away can be a difficult one to fight, but there’s very often something more that will come out unprompted (with no danger of having led them to it, to boot!)

ready? set? research!

image credit: yummyphotos (licensed via shutterstock)

starting to conduct user interviews (and doing them well) can seem like a lot of hassle and upfront effort, especially when you’re working with limited resources, but the barrier to entry is not as high as you might think. they’re also a tremendous amount of fun! for us here at magoosh, we most appreciate them as a way to connect with and build even greater empathy towards our students.

even if you’re not ready to lead a user interview project yourself, we’d highly recommend you volunteer to be a notetaker for someone else at your company conducting user interviews, as it’ll help you be better prepared when your time comes.

we hope you find these suggestions helpful, and welcome any thoughts or questions in the comments below!

if you’d like even more resources on user research, here are a few of our favorites:

further reading on how to conduct user interviews

quick reads: tips for user calls

user research interview tips – brad dalrymple

the art of the user interview – nick babich

how to conduct user interviews – interaction design foundation

6 tips for better user interviews – veronica cámara

starter questions for user research – sarah doody

never ask what they want — 3 better questions to ask in user interviews – chuck liu

longer, in-depth guides

interviewing users: how to uncover compelling insights – steve portigal

talking to humans – giff constable

this guide was co-written by hannah baker, kevin rocci, and lucas fink.

the post no, you don’t have to be a ux researcher to conduct a (good) user interview appeared first on magoosh 2022年足球世界杯举办地.

nearly five years ago, i wrote about how we don’t negotiate salaries as a means of fostering fairness across our company and taking tangible steps to reduce wage gaps that are unfortunately inherent in the tech sector.

a quick google search, however, will reveal that the dialogue is still centered around tips, tricks, and hacks for how candidates should approach salary negotiation, with few questioning how negotiation itself simply rewards the ability to negotiate (disproportionately favoring men and non-minorities) over fairly compensating the value of one’s skills and experience.

we still don’t negotiate salaries to this day, and our company culture continues to thrive in part because, and not in spite, of this stance. we’ve since twice been named one of the best places to work in the bay area (2017, 2019) and, in a q4 2018 cultureamp survey of our employees, 100% of them agreed that they feel respected at magoosh and that their wellbeing is generally cared for.

although (to our knowledge) we remain one of a handful of tech companies who’ve adopted a no-negotiation policy on salary, we’re hopeful that founders who are passionate about growing strong and diverse startups will consider following suit. if you’re interested in learning more about the how of a no-negotiation policy, and the ways in which we’ve improved our framework to support our employees in receiving equal pay for equal work, you’ve come to the right place.

putting a fair salary system in place

ideally, two people in the same role, with the same level of experience, should be paid equal amounts and evaluated by similar performance metrics. but this is sadly often not the case, especially for women.

as a first step in addressing the lack of fairness around salary, we created salary tracks (or ladders) for each department/function at magoosh, including:

• marketing
• content
• academic support
• product support
• engineering
• product / data / ux
• operations (hr / recruiting / business ops)

we realize that many of the functions above could be split into more detailed functions, but to keep our process manageable and sustainable, we group similar functions together as long as our third party compensation data suggests that people within those roles are paid similarly at the same level. for example, we’ve found that product, data, and ux functions are paid similarly based on the most recent compensation data we received, but if that were to change, we’d separate those tracks.

for each job function, we have two salary tracks, one for individual contributors (ic) and one for managers (m). within each track are levels that correspond to role responsibility, scope, and title, and step increments between levels that indicate smaller advancements in professional growth. these tracks ensure that all ic1 marketers get paid the same, all m3 marketers get paid the same, and so on. guidelines and examples about what constitutes an ic1 vs. ic2 vs. m1, along with the entire salary track, are shared with all employees by function, so they know the skills and experience they need to reach the next level, as well as how much they’ll get paid when they do level up.

validating and updating salary tracks using market data

once you have a salary system in place, how do you actually determine what constitutes fair pay for each role? enter market data:

every year (usually q3), we use third-party data to determine market compensation for each level within a job function. we choose to use radford and optionimpact. we currently target a 65th pay percentile for companies of our stage, up from the 50th percentile a few years ago, and we may adjust that upward in the future. if the market rates increase for similar companies (based on geography, company stage, etc.), we provide salary increases to our employees.

in both 2017 and in 2018, every full-time employee received a market increase. on average, mid-level employees received a 20% increase solely from the market adjustments during this 2-year period (e.g. someone earning $100k in 2016 would receive $120k in 2018). in addition, employees may have received additional increases due to an increase scope and performance.

how to set and share salary levels objectively for new hires

for every job opening, we publish the salary range, so candidates can see not only the job description but also the compensation prior to applying. we also share our no-negotiation policy early in the hiring process, so candidates can opt-out if they choose.

when we initially draft a job posting, the hiring manager estimates the level of the role using the job description and our leveling guidelines. during this process, they sanity check the anticipated level for the new role with their manager and the hr team. we then include the pay of the surrounding levels as the salary range on all job descriptions (so for us, there’s also a method to creating the range).

for example, the job description for our currently open senior product manager role includes a salary range of $150,500 – $168,500, depending on experience. on our salary track for individual contributors, this correlates to a level of ic3.3 – ic4.0, and the hiring manager’s target level for this role is ic3.7.

during the hiring process, we have several candidate assessments: an anonymized take-home assessment and one or two in-person assessments. we use those to help us determine (1) whether we should hire the candidate and (2) what initial level to set for the candidate.

we’ve worked hard to ensure our assessments are reliable and valid, but in full transparency, our assessments aren’t perfect, and we have unfortunately incorrectly leveled individuals. we can fix under-leveling issues relatively quickly because we re-assess levels every 6 months, but over-leveling is more problematic. in these situations, employees end up at a given level much longer than average. they can often feel that their growth has stagnated when, in reality, they were over-leveled to begin with but have been growing. this is something we’ll continue to work on.

how to fairly approach salary increases and employee promotions

our hr team runs a committee-led leveling process every six months. during this process, a manager can advocate for a potential leveling increase for an employee. we know that some managers may be more aggressive about pursuing increases for their team while others less so. for that reason, our hr team periodically looks at the data to identify trends among teams and also encourages managers to bring up employees for leveling even if managers are unsure about the employee’s case.

the leveling committee always involves hr and will also involve managers or executive leadership, depending on the proposed levels being discussed. during those meetings, we don’t look at the time an employee’s spent at a given level but rather at their work output. we review past examples of others who leveled up, and our leveling guidelines, to help mitigate bias as much as possible.

under our system, an increase in level corresponds to an increase in salary, but not necessarily a title or responsibility change (more on that below). it’s important to note that we don’t share or encourage anticipated “time to level up” for any of our roles, as growth is dependent on a number of individual and company factors that are impossible for us to predict.

three more benefits we don’t negotiate

at the risk of sounding like a scrooge of a founder, our no-negotiation policy extends to other compensation-related benefits as well. some companies provide negotiation loopholes, leading candidates to think, “if i can’t negotiate on salary, then maybe i can negotiate on x.” we try to close those loopholes so that we can generally strive for fairness across our employee base.

job titles are tied to levels within our salary tracks, so there’s no room for negotiation on titles. for example, all m4s have the title “director,” no matter whether they work in marketing or engineering.

equity is also non-negotiable. we use an equity formula based on job function and level. we then offer refresh and promotion grants once a year, so if an employee does level up, they can earn more equity.

pto is already flexible, and you can read more about our processes to support that here. items of note: employees take 4-5 weeks of pto on average and hr helps managers flag employees who haven’t taken enough pto.

in defense of fair pay

simply put, offering equal pay for equal work – and providing transparency around the process – is not a radical stance. as an employer, i believe that treating my employees (and by extension, my company) well includes compensating them fairly and without bias, and our stance on not negotiating salaries stems from this belief.

equal and transparent pay supports your business bottom line by helping you attract and retain best-fit candidates. when hiring managers set and openly communicate fair salary tracks for new roles, it eliminates the need for competitive negotiation and levels the playing field, as candidates are paid on merit, not on their ability to negotiate.

we realize that a no-negotiation policy can turn some folks away, especially if they erroneously believe we won’t pay a fair wage as a result. we also know that some companies use no-negotiation policies to purposefully lowball candidates. honestly, my previous thinking (when we were smaller and couldn’t afford to pay more) was that we didn’t want to compete on salary; we wanted employees to choose magoosh mostly for our mission and learning opportunities.

while i still want candidates to be passionate about our mission and environment, i’ve realized pay and passion need not be mutually exclusive. we still use our no-negotiation policy as a way to maintain pay equity and support our diversity, equity, & inclusion goals (by directly supporting those who are less likely to negotiate). but we also want to pay competitively and want employees to feel good about their compensation.

as a startup founder, i can also understand the many reservations around this approach and am happy to talk through concerns and questions – just drop a note in the comments below.

in the meantime, i continue to encourage other companies to reassess their approaches to salary and to consider alternative practices that could increase pay parity, and ultimately, employee satisfaction.

tech companies, it’s time to stop treating equal pay for equal work as a luxury you can’t afford. pay equity should be a starting point for your employees, not an aspiration.

the post we (still) don’t negotiate salaries – here’s exactly how we make it work. appeared first on magoosh 2022年足球世界杯举办地.

what would happen if all salaries at your company became public today — everyone found out what everyone else was paid? would an employee be upset to learn that they were being paid less than their peers of equal experience? would one team be shocked at how much higher other teams were being paid? would manager biases become immediately apparent? would it fuel feelings of jealousy or of fairness?

if that happened at magoosh today, my guess is most people would simply shrug and say “yeah, that sounds about right,” and carry on with their day. and that’s because, without exception, any two people at magoosh at the same job level in the same role are paid equally.

employee salaries and benefits are the largest expense, by far, for most tech companies. and yet, most don’t talk about, much less share, how much people are paid. not only is that a shame, it’s a short-sighted stance and a missed opportunity to improve hiring practices and employee retention.

sadly, tech companies aren’t alone in the struggle for pay equity. five years ago, beyoncé famously spoke out on the myth of gender equality, noting that “equality will be achieved when men and women are granted equal pay and equal respect.” a forbes piece on the rampant nature of gender pay gaps across a number of industries cites that, in the past few years, the 10 top-paid actresses in hollywood earned anywhere from 24 to 35 cents on the dollar compared to their male counterparts. on netflix drama the crown, even the queen herself, played by actress claire foy, found out she was being paid less than her co-star matt smith, who played prince phillip. the reality is even more sobering for the pay gaps faced by women of color.

a 2017 paper on the hollywood wage gap from economists at lancaster university suggested salary transparency could help reverse this phenomenon, noting that “making contracts not blinded in the film industry and thus providing social information about what other co-stars earn can reduce the negotiation gap and therefore the residual wage gap.” ethical clothing brand nisolo recently began publicly disclosing the lowest wages in its supply chain as a means of encouraging other fashion manufacturers to commit to ensuring that all workers are paid at least a living wage. this summer, museum workers banded together to create a public spreadsheet of salaries across museum positions, to expose the rampant pay disparities in the art world. the initiative, led by art + museum transparency, went on to write an opinion piece calling for salary and benefits to be included in all culture sector job descriptions.

so, fellow tech workers, what’s our excuse? why are we still behind the times in treating salaries as a shameful secret or a game to be hacked by the most privileged of us?

it doesn’t have to be this way. you can be a fun, profitable tech company with transparent and fair salary practices, all in the same breath. we know this because magoosh is living proof, ten years since our founding, that transparency is good for business. here’s what we’ve learned from including salaries in our each of job descriptions:

transparent salaries help you hire the right people

my guess is that most startups don’t make salaries for their open positions public for a simple reason: they don’t know what the salary ranges are. managers have identified a need on their team, and they want to find someone to fill that need. they likely haven’t figured out exactly how much filling that need is going to cost. unfortunately, this means they don’t know who they’re actually looking for.

publishing salary ranges in your job descriptions forces you to figure out what problem or opportunity you’re solving for by hiring, and how much you think it will cost to find someone who can do it. this planning prevents you from pursuing under- or over-qualified candidates, and helps you hone in on exactly the right people for your role.

this planning also saves you money. when you’re clear on the level and role you need to fill, you prevent yourself from 1) spending too much hiring someone “great” who is overqualified for the job you need and who will likely become disengaged and quit because there isn’t enough exciting work for them to take on, or 2) spending too little hiring someone “good enough” who is unable to grow into the role long-term and will need to be replaced. getting the right person in the role now saves you money in the long-term.

this planning is critical, but often not a step that happens at fast-growing startups where things are moving quickly. by putting salaries in your job descriptions, you force hiring managers to think critically about their needs, and to budget accordingly.

transparent salaries save you and your candidates from wasted time

a few weeks ago, i received an outreach email from a recruiter at another ed-tech startup. i took the call and spent about 35 minutes on the phone with a recruiter. at the very end of the call, they shared the salary range. as it turns out, it was substantially lower than what i currently make at magoosh (shout out to our compensation!), and if i were seriously considering the opportunity, this would have been a waste of both my and the recruiter’s time. if the initial job description had included salary information, i could have self-selected out of the process and saved us both the time.

(side note: i don’t have plans to leave magoosh, but it’s good to know what’s out there! and since the recruiting function at magoosh is on my team, i like to understand how other companies approach outreach.)

i’m not alone in wanting salary details in job descriptions. according to a study linkedin published on what candidates want to hear from recruiters, 72% said they wanted to learn about salary range in the initial conversation. that’s more than the percent who wanted to hear about job title, company culture, or mission (54%, 40%, and 27%, respectively).

by keeping salaries secret, you will lose out on experienced talent who don’t want to waste time going through a hiring process before finding out what the compensation will be.

transparent salaries help close the wage gap for women and minorities

at magoosh, we put a lot of time and effort into making sure that our salaries are equitable and fair for all employees. we have a no-negotiation policy, and a structured salary framework for every role. any two people in the same role at the same level are being paid the same amount — equal pay for equal work. publishing our salary ranges is a natural outcome of that focus on equity.

by keeping salary information secret, you create an information imbalance that favors your company during salary negotiations. but here’s the problem: studies consistently show that women and minorities are less likely to negotiate salary, and less likely to win larger concessions when they do negotiate. this economic benefit to the company is coming at the direct expense of historically marginalized people.

moreover, unequal salaries will hurt your company. the kapor center’s research identified unfairness as the top reason that people of all backgrounds leave tech companies. saving a few thousand dollars in a salary negotiation isn’t really a win if it later leads to talented individuals leaving your company for competitors who choose to pay them what they’re worth.

“yes, but…” – three common objections to publishing salary ranges in job descriptions

while researching other perspectives on salary transparency, i came across a number of surprising (to me) rebuttals from hiring managers and recruiters. to be quite frank, i believe much of what people frame as disadvantages to salary transparency are honestly just excuses to perpetuate terrible hiring practices, and by extension, foster unhealthy company cultures.

one of the most common objections to publishing a salary range is that hiring managers are worried that great overqualified candidates won’t apply. the idea goes that you might be looking for someone who can do x, but if someone truly great comes along who is capable of doing x+y, you would offer them more money. it’s a really tempting idea, but it’s also totally backwards. do you need x+y? if so, then budget and pay for it. if not, then don’t overspend; you’ll end up hiring someone who is overqualified and will likely become disengaged.

another common objection is that managers don’t want to hire people who are motivated solely by money. in fairness, i, too, don’t want to work with people motivated solely by money. but this is a bit of a straw man. most people have lots of other motivations, but they also want to be paid what they’re worth — and that’s ok! people with families, dependent parents, or other responsibilities have mouths to feed and little time to waste. saying that they shouldn’t have information about salary to guide their life decisions is foolhardy.

then there’s the objection, worth mentioning again, that sharing salary ranges in job descriptions takes away the company’s leverage in a negotiation. and you know what? that’s true. but shifting the inequitable power dynamic between employers and candidates is also a benefit. being transparent about salary in your job descriptions encourages equity and fairness, and helps those who have historically not been able to advocate for themselves (or have been dismissed as overly assertive or demanding when they do).

will you take a step towards equal pay?

salary transparency is a great practice to institute in your company, one that can take many forms. although it can be a robust and (sometimes) complicated process, one of the least burdensome steps you can take is to make the salary ranges for your open positions public in job descriptions. this simple change will reap benefits multiple times over, helping you plan, find qualified candidates, and promote equity within your team. in the long run, this will strengthen your business.

creating a salary structure, an equity-based performance management framework, and an unbiased compensation review process is a lot of work (i know, because we’ve put these all in place and still have a lot to learn!). but publishing salary ranges in job descriptions takes almost no work at all. it’s a great first step towards building a compensation system that is fair, equitable, and transparent.

at magoosh, one of our core values is done is greater than perfect. you don’t have to have all things pay equity figured out to make salary ranges a consistent presence in your job descriptions. after all, when has beyoncé ever been wrong?

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when you picture the average sat test taker, an image of a stressed-out teenager likely comes to mind. and yet, here we are, two woefully unprepared thirty-somethings who will be sitting for the official sat exam on december 7th, 2019.

update: in an unexpected curveball, the college board canceled our december sat registrations as they only allow testing for reasons other than its “intended purposes” during the march, may, and october test dates. lesson learned on our part – we should have read the fine print! we’re committed to seeing this experiment through and will be replicating test day conditions (proctor, timed sections, and all) and taking a second practice sat exam (from the college board themselves) on december 12th, 2019. stay tuned for our results!

why retake the sat?

so that we can stop talking in the third-person, the two marketers in question here are jessica wan, our vice president of marketing, and kemi bello, one of our content marketing managers. we’ve decided to retake the sat, for the first time since our initial high school attempt many moons ago (13 and 20 moons respectively, to be fully transparent), for a number of reasons.

first, we want to use our prep and test-taking experience to check any assumptions we’ve been making about our customers, our product, and the overall test prep experience, spot any blind spots in our marketing, and, ideally, be better marketers as a result of this experiment.

although we invest heavily in our marketing efforts at magoosh (for example, our marketing team forms a third of our full-time staff at magoosh), we know and are excited by the fact that there’s still so much we have to learn. in fact, we frequently hear from students who tell us that they wish we advertised to them more so that they could choose us as their study partner earlier in their prep journey.

we hope to use this experiment to listen to the feelings that come up for us as we ask ourselves the same questions our students ask of us: where do i even begin studying for the sat? what test score should i be aiming for? how do i structure my time? where do i turn to for help when i’m stuck on a problem? how do i deal with the fears that come up as i’m studying?

second, we want to build better products and improve upon what we believe to be the best affordable online test prep option by trying on our own test prep for size. although we already ask every new magoosh employee to use our products as a part of their onboarding process, we wanted to challenge ourselves a step further and prep not just on a trial or sample basis, but towards an actual test and score goal that reflects how and why our students use magoosh.

a number of the magoosh test prep experts on our content team have made it a regular practice to retake the standardized exams they help our students prepare for as a means of staying up on the latest content and ensuring our suite of magoosh prep products are the absolute best they can be.

as marketers, although we serve as the product messengers to and from our customers, we realized we can be even better advocates for the product if we actually used it ourselves. though this might seem like an obvious practice for any company, popularized in the saas world by the term “dogfooding,” it can be challenging to put into practice when your customer base is of a different demographic or at a different life stage than your team.

most importantly, we want to be better magooshers and build empathy with our customers by walking a literal mile in their shoes.

every week, when we share stoke from our students in our team meetings, we’re consistently blown away by the discipline, resilience, and courage of our students as they embark on journeys to pursue the education of their dreams. some of them share how they’ve been able to overcome crippling test anxiety and cope with rejection after rejection from their dream schools, while others tell us how they manage to juggle dedicated study while parenting a toddler and thrive academically despite tremendous socio-economic odds.

in short, studying for a standardized test can be a stressful experience, and test scores often stand as a barrier to the already uphill battle today’s students face to attain a quality education.

while our short experiment absolutely pales in comparison to the real experiences (and real stakes involved) for high schoolers, we hope to emerge from this test prep experience always carrying the perspective of our students close to mind.

three study habits of our most successful students

before we dive into our specific study plans, we wanted to remind you (and honestly, ourselves) that there is absolutely no need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to how to study for the sat (or arguably, anything). analyzing a sample pool of roughly 5,000 high school students who have studied with magoosh, our data scientist sam learned that the most successful of them tend to share three common characteristics:

1. good students study consistently over time. they don’t cram, nor do they study sporadically, and even the shortest 20-minute daily study block can add up to tangible score improvements over time.
2. good students balance learning with practice. they are not passive studiers, who read or watch a lot of content without trying it out themselves, and they are not solely stubborn practitioners, who march on through countless practice questions without stopping to understand the material and strategize for each study session.
3. good students focus on learning from their mistakes. they know what their strongest and weakest areas are and choose the discomfort of honing in on their areas of greatest potential.

our study plan to retake the sat and what we’ve learned so far

before we dive in, an acknowledgment of the privilege that comes with this experiment:

it’s important for us to name that, unlike high school students around the world whose hopes are pinned on getting into their dream college in the us, jessica and i have no life outcomes resting on our performance on the sat next month. we’re both college graduates and tech sector employees who have the resources and company blessing to experiment as part of our roles, and, though we’re not the content experts at magoosh, still benefit from the support and access to knowledge of our peers. we recognize that access to affordable, quality test prep is a barrier to so many students around the world, and hope that magoosh can continue to chip away at leveling the educational playing field.

to glean the most from this experiment, jessica and i will be embarking on parallel study paths that mimic the decision that many students are faced with: should i use free sat resources or splurge on a paid sat prep product? jessica will be taking the paid route, using our magoosh sat premium product to study, while i (kemi) will be embarking upon the free route, sticking with some combination of our magoosh high school blog, sat & act youtube channel, and our free sat prep and flashcard apps.

in our experience, most students only spend a month or less actually studying, so we kicked off our 1-month sat study plan with a sat practice test from the college board to set our score baselines and inform our study focus. jessica scored a 1390 (out of 1600 total) on her practice test, while i scored a 1380. to be fully transparent, our practice test was taken on company time, and our sat registrations and jessica’s magoosh premium account were paid for by magoosh.

it’s now been roughly 10 days since our sat practice test, and we have exactly three (gulp.) weeks before taking the official sat.

so far, i have…yet to study, which has already helped me empathize with students who tell us that the hardest part is finding the time while juggling a million other high schooler responsibilities, laugh/cry. jessica has found that juggling a full-time job and a family makes for a stressful study experience, and that “cramming doesn’t work.” we’ve both learned that thou shalt not be hungry whilst taking the sat, as we really struggled with this during the 3+ hour practice sat.

you’re invited! join us on our sat study experiment.

whether you’re a marketer or ux researcher interested in our product learnings and takeaways, or a student looking to learn the pros and cons of free vs. paid sat prep resources, we look forward to sharing our sat study journey with you.

we’ll be sharing updates within this blog post both before and right after our official test day on december 7th, as well as a final report back on our official scores and (hopeful) score improvements.

how did it go? our experiment results

our score improvement:

• jessica’s november 7th sat score: 1390 (750 – verbal, 640 – math)
• jessica’s december 12th sat score: 1470 (740 – verbal, 730 – math)
• jessica’s score improvement: +80 points!

• kemi’s november 7th sat score: 1380 (740 – verbal, 640 – math)
• kemi’s december 12th sat score: 1450 (760 – verbal, 690 – math)
• kemi’s score improvement: +70 points!

our study experience & takeaways:

jessica’s total study time: 1.9 hours
kemi’s total study time: 1.5 hours

jessica’s top learnings:

don’t underestimate practice tests! taking even one practice test fully helped with the feeling of timing – what pace is appropriate to get through everything. i felt this most keenly on the writing and math (no calc) sections. coincidentally, they’re the shortest sections.

remember that the sat is a marathon and it tests your ability to focus. you really can’t get distracted or you lose precious time. having a positive attitude and a feeling of confidence is helpful to get you through the marathon. once doubt slips in, it’s easy for that doubt to persist and affect your performance.

kemi’s top learnings:

confidence is key! i felt a huge difference in my mindset on my second vs first try (i felt less stressed, more sure of my answer choices, and wasted less time hemming and hawing over unsure questions), and i think that had to do with two things: 1) i reminded myself incessantly that the test wasn’t a measure of how smart i was (maybe silly but for me, huge) and 2) i felt relief because i knew what to expect – the college board resources and first practice test helped me get a handle on the question format, timing, and which questions types i struggled with most.

speed matters; it’s not enough to simply know the content. each section felt like sprinting a marathon, and i had to be really mindful of pushing myself to answer questions quickly. the challenge there is that there are purposefully placed trick answer choices and i sometimes had to sacrifice getting a question right in order to answer it quickly, or vice versa, and i feel like this directly impacted my score.

have you ever taken on an experiment like this to put yourself in the shoes of your customers? we’d love to hear what you learned in the comments!

the post two marketers retake the sat: a product experiment appeared first on magoosh 2022年足球世界杯举办地.

at magoosh, we believe that students are more than a score.

following their announcement to start using “adversity scores” to measure the socioeconomic position of sat takers, we commend the college board for acknowledging how systematically unfair the college admissions landscape can be to students from marginalized backgrounds and for taking steps, as a leader in the field of standardized testing, towards greater equity.

that said, this approach of an “adversity score” raises concerns for us as a company committed to improving access to college for all students.

our concerns

the choice of the college board to hide the adversity scores from students and parents themselves, while sharing them with colleges for admissions purposes, is ethically concerning, even if well-intentioned.

this lack of transparency leaves students and parents in the dark about how – and how accurately – they are being represented to admissions committees. in the likely instance of an error in computing a given adversity score, students and parents are being refused the agency to advocate for themselves, perpetuating the same inequity that the college board is trying to alleviate.

more importantly, scoring adversity doesn’t solve the problem of alleviating adversity.

while important for colleges to take the various nuances around privilege and access into account when making admissions decisions, as education advocates, we should continue to invest in approaches that tangibly level the playing field for students – well before their senior year of high school.

proven approaches include increasing access to mentorship for students from underserved populations, providing free meals so that no student has to prioritize studying over hunger, and providing funding for complementary academic and test prep support in and out of the classroom.

our recommendations

if they choose to move forward with this program, magoosh strongly urges the college board to make adversity scores and associated data fully available to students and parents, with enforceable avenues to address concerns and correct mistakes as they arise.

we’ve been fortunate to learn from the work of some of our nonprofit partners, including oliver scholars and strive for college, who work daily to level the playing field for students. we encourage the college board to stay devoted to its advocacy for increased equity in college admissions while looking to the robust field of educators, scholars, and advocates for more effective means of ensuring that all students, no matter their background, are able to access the college of their choice.

here at magoosh, we truly believe in the transformative power of education and very much acknowledge that our current educational system falls short of making that promise of transformation available to all students.

we’re constantly thinking of ways we can better support our mission and would love to hear from you – how do you feel about the college board’s adversity score effort? let us know in the comments below!

interested in interviewing a magoosh sat expert? reach out to press@www.catharsisit.com.

the post #morethanascore: our magoosh take on the college board’s move towards “adversity scores” appeared first on magoosh 2022年足球世界杯举办地.

we wouldn’t.

at magoosh, we make every effort to avoid a situation like the one above, but we don’t negotiate on salary. bhavin, our ceo, already wrote about our rationale here. now i’d like to give you an inside look into how we approach raises.

research shows that people—depending on factors such as current position in the company, gender and race—are not equally likely to ask for raises, and that managers are not equally likely to evaluate raise requests from different people.

while employees may reevaluate and reconsider their value and respective compensation, some are able to voice these concerns much more easily than others.

on the other end, even with a strong intent to value employees throughout their careers, managers can be susceptible to unconscious biases and, therefore, may not be providing credit where credit is due.

to solve this problem, we created a comprehensive performance framework to determine the appropriate salaries of magooshers over time. the framework—which we continually strive to improve—mitigates the issues with negotiation, such as how some employees are more likely to ask for raises, or push for their team members to get raises, than others.

our end goal is to make sure that people are compensated fairly throughout their career at magoosh.

while we could write multiple posts diving into each of the steps below—and we likely will—this article is meant to give you an overview of how we do it.

step 1: find reliable market data and create salary tracks

our approach: we looked into a number of ways to find reliable market data from sources such as angellist postings, glassdoor, and a number of salary surveys. while salary compensation surveys certainly have their pros and cons, we currently use one from radford because of recommendations from others, the large dataset, and their focus on job level as opposed to job titles.

one issue with a large set of salary data from any source is that it’s just data, not a salary track. so, as a next step, we take this data and smooth it out to create tracks with logical increases between the steps. if there aren’t enough data points for one particular job description, we look at related fields to compile better, more reliable data. what we end up with is something that looks like this:

step 2: match internal jobs to market data based on job duties

our approach: beyond a large set of data, another key determinant in deciding on a salary compensation survey was looking for salary mapped to level of work as opposed to title.

titles at bay area companies fluctuate greatly. a vp at a large company with lots of hierarchy, etc., for example, may do very different work from a vp at a small company with a lot of funding—and the two should be compensated differently.

this difference was important to us. we didn’t want to do a disservice to our employees and accidentally mismatch them to a salary that didn’t capture the complexity of their work.

you can see a quick example of the difference in salary for the same titled position at differently sized companies below:

step 3: create a set of examples that make level matching tangible to managers and employees

our approach: at this point, we have the salary tracks for each job family, as seen above. and we have a leveling chart with general examples, provided to us as part of the survey.

however, the examples are very generic. they are enough to map to the right salaries, but they are not magoosh-specific, nor are they enough to create a performance path from. examples based on internal work here at magoosh are at the heart of what enables us to match internal roles to their equivalent market rate pay.

these examples have been painstakingly curated through thoughtful conversation between all of our team leads to determine what type of internal work matches the generic language that’s provided. for instance, if a general example referred to “difficult conversation,” we would determine what that language would refer to specifically at magoosh.

here is an example of what this might look like:

step 4: calibrate

our approach: steps 1 through 3 encompass the steps that enabled us to create the basis of our framework.

market salary data → leveling structure tied to market data → company-specific examples tied to leveling structure → role-specific, non-negotiable salaries tied to market salary data

calibration is a quarterly check on all departments to ensure that every manager is thinking about examples in the same way. it protects employees from managers who might be resistant to promotions while also helping to reign in others who may be too eager.

deep dive into step 4: calibration process

mid-quarter evaluation
every quarter, we have a recurring structured task for company-wide leveling—what we call the system of performance increases at magoosh.

mid-quarter, managers write up notes and have holistic discussions with employees on where folks currently stand based on the scope of the work they are doing, the complexity of the projects, and the amount of supervision they require (or are providing, in the case of those on the manager track). managers and employees refer to both the salary track for that position as well as the examples for each section, as described above.

calibration notes
if, based on an employee’s progress, their pay should be matched with a higher level, their manager will write up specific examples of their team member’s work. this write up includes:

1. how the employee has been doing the work,
2. the employee’s goal setting,
3. the success of their projects, etc.

these examples—as well as their ties to our leveling examples—are shared as a proposal with all other managers.

calibration meeting
all department managers comment on the proposal with questions, thoughts, and concerns. afterwards, they all meet to further discuss each proposed level change.

this process is arduous and, at times, reveals issues or areas in which our examples might be lacking. however, this is also a critical step that enables every situation to be provided its due time and thought. there are no rash changes, and every change has the buy in of folks from different departments.

if there is someone on a team whose work has increased in scope but their manager hasn’t brought it up, another team lead involved in the project will ask about it. on the other hand, if a proposed change isn’t in line with the examples at that level, that will be discussed as well.

it is in this step that we are able to deliberate and clarify what changes are being made.

having a process delineated enables us to be thorough and thoughtful each quarter. no steps are missed and there are no random raises that don’t follow process.

drawbacks to consider

this evaluation process does have its drawbacks:

• it’s time consuming—we’re still working on ways to scale it.
• at times of disagreement, it can be frustrating.

however, it is through these very conflicts and open dialogue that we are able to create clearer examples and better systems of thinking for the future.

the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks

all that said, the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks. working on this salary structure will hopefully continue to promote compensation fairness and consistency between different roles, genders, backgrounds, departments, and more here at magoosh.

for example:

• with a purely market-based framework and a no-negotiations policy, the shyest introvert is afforded the same opportunity for raises as the most persuasive self-aggrandizer.
• if an employee is unsure whether their manager is reviewing their performance fairly— a situation they are encouraged to bring up—they also know that their manager’s evaluation is reviewed by others at the company.
• if a person in one department is worried that their peers in other departments are moving up more quickly, they can count on examples for different roles and departments all being calibrated against one another and similar examples being set at the same level.

it is our hope that building upon these structures will foster further pay equality as we grow as a company, increasing inclusion and diversity as a whole.

the post how to reduce biases when giving raises appeared first on magoosh 2022年足球世界杯举办地.