dev-event-hiring

{
  "skill_name": "dev-event-hiring",
  "evals": [
    {
      "id": 1,
      "prompt": "I run field marketing at Ledgerpoint, a fintech company in New York. We're launching our first annual developer conference next fall, around 1,200 attendees, and I'm opening a req for an in-house Event Marketing Manager to own it end to end. HR needs a salary band by Friday. I've seen $85k on one site and $175k on another, which is useless. Can you just give me the market rate so I can put one number in the req?",
      "expected_output": "A compensation stance anchored explicitly to Glassdoor's tech-industry cut, with PCMA and BLS kept as separate named references, the tech-industry premium stated, and no single blended market rate.",
      "files": [],
      "expectations": [
        "Refuses to give one blended market-rate number and instead attributes every figure to a named source (PCMA, BLS, or Glassdoor).",
        "Anchors the offer band to Glassdoor's tech-industry cut, on the grounds the hire is in-house at a tech company.",
        "States that Information Technology is the highest-paying industry for the event titles sourced (the tech-industry premium).",
        "Carries Glassdoor's Event Marketing Manager figures: roughly $100,135 national average versus roughly $175,690 IT median total pay, identified as the widest tech premium of any event title.",
        "Does not average or midpoint the user's $85k and $175k figures into a single recommended number.",
        "If BLS occupational data (code 13-1121, median $59,440-$101,310) is cited, it is used only as a broad floor/ceiling check, never as the offer anchor.",
        "The New York geographic cut (Event Manager average about $91,303, roughly 8% above the national average) is presented as a separate data point, not merged into the anchor.",
        "PCMA Convene level-based figures, if cited, are labeled as the general events-industry anchor and kept separate from the Glassdoor cut.",
        "States explicitly which single source the recommended band is anchored to and why."
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": 2,
      "prompt": "I'm one of the organizers of DevBrouwerij, a volunteer-run developer conference in the Netherlands. Last edition we had about 450 attendees on a budget of roughly €38,000. Two core organizers just quit and the rest of us are exhausted. We've decided to hire a paid community manager to take over sponsor outreach and keep the community active between editions. Can you write the job description and tell us what to pay?",
      "expected_output": "A pushback that surfaces the first-paid-hire threshold and the whether-to-hire question, reframes the role as coordinator/manager-shaped, and refuses to quote unsourced pay for this context.",
      "files": [],
      "expectations": [
        "Flags that 450 attendees and a €38,000 budget sit below the threshold where a first paid role typically appears (roughly low-thousands of attendees or a six-figure budget).",
        "Raises whether to hire at all as the real open question and routes that decision to team-structure/org-design guidance (event-team-structure) instead of proceeding silently.",
        "States that the first paid hire at a volunteer-community-run event is consistently an event coordinator/manager, never a community-manager role first.",
        "Notes that program and community leadership typically stay volunteer even after the first paid hire.",
        "Declines to present PCMA, BLS, or Glassdoor figures as representative pay for this context, stating no sourced compensation bands exist for a first paid hire at a volunteer-community-run event.",
        "Does not invent a salary band or quote an unsourced market rate for the role.",
        "Any job description drafted reshapes the role as coordinator/manager-shaped rather than the requested community-manager shape.",
        "The reporting line named for the role is the volunteer board or standing committee."
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": 3,
      "prompt": "We're Klynt, a devtools scale-up, and we're about to publish this posting - marketing already signed off, I just want a second pair of eyes on the wording: 'Founding Event Manager (individual contributor). You'll fully own KlyntConf from scratch: close six-figure sponsorship deals, curate the CFP and speaker lineup, run AV and production hands-on, and manage day-of volunteers. No team yet - you'll build it all. Salary $58,000.' Anything you'd tighten up before it goes live?",
      "expected_output": "A red-flag audit that names both the impossible-person and unresourced-full-ownership patterns, requires scope split or explicit resourcing before publication, and avoids citing a nonexistent event-hiring taxonomy.",
      "files": [],
      "expectations": [
        "Identifies the impossible-person pattern: sponsorship-sales closing, hands-on AV/production, CFP/content curation, and day-of management demanded of one individual contributor.",
        "Identifies the unresourced-full-ownership pattern: founding role, no team, no budget, full ownership.",
        "Calls out the missing success metric, reporting structure, and path to headcount.",
        "Flags the $58,000 salary as entry-level pay mismatched to the requirement list.",
        "Recommends splitting the scope across more than one hire, or stating the resourcing explicitly, as the condition for publishing.",
        "Does not approve the posting with wording-level copyedits alone.",
        "Does not cite a named pre-existing 'pit-trap'-style taxonomy for event-organizing hiring; any pattern names are presented as transposed from DevRel's documented framework, not as an event-industry standard.",
        "If replacement compensation guidance is offered, it names its source (PCMA, BLS, or Glassdoor) rather than one blended figure.",
        "The proposed fix changes scope or resourcing, not only the salary figure."
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": 4,
      "prompt": "I lead recruiting at Bright Cartel, an event-production agency - about half our clients are software companies that bring us in for their user conferences. We're adding a Senior Producer. Design the interview process for me. One of our directors wants every candidate to build a full production plan for a fictional 800-person client conference as a take-home; another says reference calls are a waste of time and two written letters are enough. We can spend at most six interviewer-hours per candidate.",
      "expected_output": "An interview loop on the general event-planner sequence with a live scored scenario walkthrough instead of the unpaid take-home, live reference calls instead of letters, stages deleted to fit six hours, and honest framing that the design is assembled.",
      "files": [],
      "expectations": [
        "Builds the loop on the general event-planner sequence, not CMX's five-competency community-manager loop.",
        "Portfolio and past-events review is the first stage.",
        "Includes a concrete-metrics request (attendee satisfaction, on-budget percentage, repeat-client or repeat-attendee rate) scored on whether the candidate volunteers figures unprompted.",
        "Includes scenario-based questions such as a last-minute venue change or a vendor no-show, scored for real-time troubleshooting.",
        "Includes budget-management questions.",
        "Rejects the unpaid take-home production plan for a fictional client conference, replacing it with a live scored scenario walkthrough.",
        "Rejects written reference letters in favor of live reference calls with past clients or stakeholders.",
        "Fits the six-interviewer-hour ceiling by deleting whole loop stages, not by keeping every stage in compressed form.",
        "States that no single fully-documented tech-conference-specific hiring loop exists published anywhere and presents the design as assembled.",
        "Specifies independent per-interviewer scoring with a written evidence note before any debrief, combined mechanically against pre-set competency weights."
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": 5,
      "prompt": "Beaconforge is a 40-person dev-tools startup and I'm hiring our first Developer Community Manager - they'll run our monthly meetups in three cities, our Discord, and our annual community day. I have a strong senior finalist. I want a final-round exercise, the interview questions, and a scorecard. My current plan for the exercise: ask her to audit our Discord and meetup program and send us an improvement plan before the final round. Also, if she falls through, where do we even find more candidates like this?",
      "expected_output": "A CMX five-competency scorecard and loop, a paid bounded mini-audit as the final-round exercise, and sourcing via CMX plus named general event-industry boards.",
      "files": [],
      "expectations": [
        "The scorecard and loop are built on CMX's five competencies: growth mindset, data-driven approach, empathy, leadership, communication.",
        "Includes the conflict question - what the candidate does when the community wants one thing and their boss wants another - scored for a concrete answer over a diplomatic non-answer.",
        "Converts the proposed pre-final-round audit into a paid, bounded mini-audit; free open-ended audit work is rejected.",
        "The data-driven competency is scored on whether the candidate volunteers results and metrics unprompted when describing past projects.",
        "Communication is assessed through the depth and quality of follow-up conversation, not a single scripted question.",
        "Scorecard outcomes are measurable and specific; no vague 'run great events'-style responsibility appears.",
        "The scorecard reflects the in-house context by including cross-functional fluency (sales, marketing, product).",
        "Sourcing names the CMX Job Board and/or the CMX Slack community as the channel for community-manager-shaped candidates.",
        "If wider sourcing channels are listed, they are named general event-industry boards (PCMA Career Center, MPI Career Center, BizBash, MeetingJobs/Cadre, Event Careers), not generic tech job boards.",
        "States that no dev/tech-conference-specific job board exists rather than inventing one."
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": 6,
      "prompt": "Orbit Row Media runs three commercial developer conferences a year - the conferences are the whole business. We're hiring a Conference Manager to own one of them end to end. Give me the hiring scorecard, and tell me how our bar should differ from a normal in-house events hire at a tech company.",
      "expected_output": "A scorecard delivered with the standing-conference-business context flagged as unsourced, the agency analogy presented as hypothesis, and no borrowed compensation figures.",
      "files": [],
      "expectations": [
        "States that the standing for-profit conference business context has no sourced hiring bar and flags the calibration as unverified.",
        "The agency-model analogy (dedicated full-time specialized functions) is presented explicitly as a hypothesis, not a confirmed pattern.",
        "Still delivers a scorecard, with a mission naming the operating context and measurable outcomes.",
        "Does not present PCMA, BLS, or Glassdoor figures as representative compensation for this context; states no compensation data exists for it.",
        "The requested in-house comparison does not import the in-house tech-industry pay premium as if it applied to this context."
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": 7,
      "prompt": "I made the final round for a Senior Event Producer role at a large developer-tooling company - interview is next Thursday, and they told me there's a scenario exercise plus a portfolio review. How should I prepare, and what salary should I ask for?",
      "expected_output": "A one-line audience correction routing the candidate to the career-side skill, with no employer artefacts built.",
      "files": [],
      "expectations": [
        "Recognizes the user as a job-hunting candidate, not an employer, and says so briefly.",
        "Routes them to the candidate-side career skill (dev-event-career) for interview preparation.",
        "Does not build employer-side artefacts (scorecard, interview loop design, sourcing plan) for the candidate.",
        "Any salary discussion names its source (PCMA, BLS, or Glassdoor) instead of quoting one blended market figure."
      ]
    }
  ],
  "trigger_queries": [
    { "query": "How do we hire an event producer for our annual developer conference?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Write a job description for a conference manager at our devtools company", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Design the interview loop for an event manager we're hiring", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Our community conference needs its first paid event coordinator - where do we start recruiting?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "What should we pay an in-house event marketing manager at a tech company?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Can you review our job posting for a founding event manager before it goes live?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Is there a job board specifically for tech conference producers?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "We're hiring someone to run our meetup series and Discord - what should the interviews look like?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Our volunteer organizing team is burned out and we finally have budget for a paid person - how do we recruit them?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "What competencies belong on a scorecard for a developer community events manager?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Is it okay to give event manager candidates a take-home test project?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Salary benchmark for a senior producer at an event production agency?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "We want one person to own sponsorship, content and production for our conference - is that a reasonable job spec?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "How many interview stages for an events hire if we only have four interviewer-hours per candidate?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Event coordinator or event manager for our user conference - which title should we hire and how do we screen?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "What red flags should I strip out of our event manager job ad?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "I need interview questions for the person who'll run our hackathons and meetups", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "We got headcount to run DevSummit next year - help me define the role and find candidates", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Should our first events hire be permanent or freelance, and how do we evaluate candidates either way?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "How should I run reference checks for an event producer candidate?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Build a hiring scorecard for a conference manager at a company whose whole business is running conferences", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "What's a fair final-round exercise for the finalist who'd run our developer meetup program?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "We're poaching an event manager from an agency - what should our in-house offer look like?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Should I use PCMA or Glassdoor numbers when setting pay for our conference producer?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "We're recruiting for a role that mixes event logistics with developer community work - how do we structure the process?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "I have a final-round interview for an event producer role next week - how do I prepare?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "How do I break into tech event organizing as a career?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Should our volunteer-run conference hire its first paid staff member at all?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Help us define decision rights between the conference co-chairs and the program committee", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "How do we recruit volunteers for our developer conference?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Design the volunteer experience so our crew comes back next edition", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Assign the day-of roles - MC, speaker wrangler, room monitors - for our conference", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "How do I hire a DevRel community manager for our developer advocacy program?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Write cold outreach emails to invite speakers to our conference", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "How should we score and select talks from our CFP submissions?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Find us a caterer and an AV vendor for our conference", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "How much cash should we award the winners of our hackathon?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "How much should tickets to our developer conference cost?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Negotiate the sponsorship agreement terms with our headline sponsor", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Build the budget and P&L for our 800-person developer conference", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "How do we recruit judges for our hackathon?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Can you audit my resume for event manager roles?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "How do I get promoted from producer to senior producer at my agency?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "How should we staff our expo booth at someone else's conference?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Recruit mentors for our hackathon weekend", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Should we pay our workshop instructors, and how much per session?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Should we outsource our conference production to an agency or keep it in-house?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Write the 30-60-90 onboarding plan for the event manager who just signed", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "How many people should our conference organizing team have and which functions?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "How do I find and book a keynote speaker for our conference?", "should_trigger": false }
  ]
}

# Company-type hiring bar

Contents: four operating contexts, three sourced · what differs concretely · the honest note on the unsourced fourth.

## Four contexts, three sourced

1. **In-house at a tech company running its own conference/meetup series.** The role often blends producer and manager responsibilities into one hybrid title; cross-functional collaboration (sales, marketing, ops, design, content, customer success) is a named expectation. Pay skews to the tech-industry premium.
2. **Event-production agency** (hiring for client work, including tech companies buying flagship-conference production). Agencies specialize by function (production, account/client management, logistics) because they serve many clients in parallel and can amortize specialists across them. A documented internal ladder exists (Junior Producer -> Producer -> Senior Producer -> Conference Manager -> Director), and a freelance/contractor posture is common and accepted.
3. **Non-profit/foundation or volunteer-community-run event making its first paid hire.** The first paid role that appears as an event scales past roughly low-thousands of attendees and/or a six-figure budget is consistently an event coordinator/manager - never a community-manager role first - with program and community leadership staying volunteer even after that hire. Compensation has no sourced bands specific to this pole.
4. **A standing for-profit conference business** (the product is running the conference) - **not sourced.** Likely closer to the agency model on skill/role structure (dedicated full-time functions rather than a rotating volunteer base), but this is an unverified hypothesis - say so rather than writing a scorecard as if it were confirmed.

## What differs across the sourced three, concretely

- **Scope of one role**: in-house and non-profit/community both tend to compress program + logistics + sponsorship into fewer people than an agency, where roles specialize by function.
- **Reporting line**: in-house event roles are explicitly pulled into sales/marketing/product alignment; agency roles report to a client-services structure; non-profit/community roles report to a volunteer board or standing committee.
- **Career ladder visibility**: agency and in-house both have a somewhat-documented internal ladder; the non-profit/community pole does not - closer to succession planning than career progression.
- **Pay**: in-house tech-company roles carry the clearest, best-sourced premium; agency pay is only sourced narrowly (UK bands, likely dated); non-profit/community pay has no sourced bands at all.

## The gate before hiring at all, for a non-profit/community event

Before building a scorecard for a first paid hire at a volunteer-run event, confirm the event has actually crossed the threshold where a paid role is warranted (roughly low-thousands of attendees or a six-figure budget). If it hasn't, the real decision is whether to hire at all - route to `samber/dev-event-organizer-skills@event-team-structure` first.

# Compensation guidance

Contents: the three named sources, kept separate · when to use the tech-industry premium · what's missing.

No dev/tech-conference-specific salary survey exists. Never blend the sources below into one number - name which one an offer is anchored to.

## PCMA Convene 2025 Salary Survey (275 event professionals, primarily North America)

By planner level: Coordinator $77,321, Manager $95,077, Director $133,147, Executive/VP $176,217. Use this as the general events-industry anchor when the hire is not specifically inside a tech company.

## US BLS "Meeting, Convention, and Event Planners" (occupation code 13-1121)

Median $59,440-$101,310 - a census-scale figure blending every seniority level and industry. Use only as a broad floor/ceiling check, never as a precise offer anchor.

## Glassdoor tech-industry premium, by title

Use this cut when hiring in-house at a tech company - Information Technology is the single highest-paying industry for every event title sourced:

- Event Manager: national average $85,244-$89,104/yr; IT median total pay $114,016.
- Event Marketing Manager: national average $100,135/yr; IT median total pay $175,690 - the widest tech premium of any title sourced.
- Events Manager (broader title): IT median total pay $157,737.
- Event Technology Manager: national average $116,910/yr.

Named top-paying IT employers across these titles: Amazon Web Services, Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft.

## Geographic cuts, when relevant

- San Francisco: roughly $83,000-$115,000 base, often $130,000-$150,000+ total comp at named top-tier tech employers. Sourced from a single practitioner blog post, not a survey - use as one data point, not a benchmark.
- New York City: Event Manager average $91,303/yr (8% above US national average).
- UK agency bands (Regan & Dean): Entry ~£18,000/yr, Producer £23,000-£35,000/yr, Manager/Director £35,000-£45,000/yr - no confirmed publication date, treat as likely stale.

## What's missing

No comp data exists for a first paid hire at a volunteer-community-run event, or for a standing for-profit conference business. State this plainly rather than extrapolating from the tables above - a posting for either context should not cite a PCMA or Glassdoor figure as if it were representative.

# Interview loop design

Contents: the general event-planner sequence · CMX's five-competency loop, from the hiring side · work-sample design by role shape · scoring mechanics.

No single, fully-documented tech/developer-conference hiring loop exists published anywhere - this design is assembled from general event-industry hiring-guide sources plus one much more specific named source for the community-manager-adjacent slice of this role family. State this to the user rather than presenting it as one pre-existing tech-event loop.

## The general event-planner sequence (producer/manager-shaped hires)

1. **Portfolio and past-events review** - ask for work showing the style, scale, and quality level appropriate for this event, plus client or stakeholder testimonials.
2. **Concrete metrics request** - attendee satisfaction scores, percentage of events delivered on-budget, repeat-client/repeat-attendee rate. Score for whether the candidate volunteers these unprompted.
3. **Scenario-based questions** - a last-minute venue change, a vendor no-show, a weather contingency. Score for real-time troubleshooting, not memorized process.
4. **Budget-management questions** - staying within budget while meeting or exceeding expectations.
5. **Client/vendor relations questions** - communication style, handling a difficult stakeholder relationship.
6. **Live reference calls, not written recommendations** - a candidate's past clients describing the working relationship reveals soft skills no resume captures.

## CMX's five-competency loop (community-manager-shaped hires)

- **Growth mindset**: "What would you like to achieve in this role within a year?" / "What motivates you to do your job well?"
- **Data-driven approach**: score whether the candidate volunteers results and metrics unprompted when describing past projects.
- **Empathy**: "What would your current or past colleagues say about working with you?"
- **Leadership**: "What are three things you would change about our current community?" / "If the community wants one thing and your boss wants something else, what would you do?" - score for a concrete, specific answer over a diplomatic non-answer.
- **Communication**: assessed through the depth and quality of follow-up conversation, not a single scripted question.

## Work-sample design, by role shape

| Role shape                                       | Work sample                                                                            | Never                                                                    |
| ------------------------------------------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| Community-manager-shaped, senior/final candidate | A paid mini-audit of the existing community - a real, bounded, compensated deliverable | An unpaid, open-ended audit                                              |
| Community-manager-shaped, junior/moderator-track | A sample-thread-response exercise in a shared document                                 | Live, public-facing moderation as a "trial"                              |
| Producer/manager-shaped                          | A scenario walkthrough (the venue-change or vendor-no-show question, scored live)      | An unpaid mock full-event plan requiring real hours of client-style work |

## Scoring mechanics

Score independently per interviewer with a written evidence note before any debrief, then combine mechanically against the scorecard's pre-set competency weights - a general employment-selection finding, not specific to event organizing, but it transfers directly.

# Sourcing channels

Contents: the general event-industry boards · the CMX community-manager channel · what to say about the tech-specific gap.

No dev/tech-conference-specific job board or candidate community exists. Every channel below serves the general corporate-events/meetings/community-management industry; the closest thing to a tech-specific channel is CMX's community-management board.

## General event-industry job boards

- **PCMA Career Center** (careers.pcma.org) - run by the Professional Convention Management Association, serving the business-events industry broadly.
- **MPI Career Center** (careers.mpi.org) - run by Meeting Professionals International, similarly broad, not tech-specific.
- **BizBash** - a publication for corporate event and meeting professionals, running a searchable vendor directory alongside its job board.
- **MeetingJobs.com** - merged with Cadre in 2020 to add short-term contract-planner and on-site event-staff placement alongside permanent roles.
- **Event Careers** (via Event Marketer) - North America-focused; employers pay to post jobs or purchase resume access.
- **Event Industry News** - a European event-tech and industry-news publication; job/career content is secondary to news coverage.

## The community-manager-adjacent channel

**CMX Job Board** (cmxhub.com/job-board) - connects to 7,000+ community professionals, the single most relevant named channel for the community-manager-shaped slice of dev-event-organizing roles (meetup organizers, developer-community-events hybrids). CMX also runs a Slack community explicitly recommended as a discovery channel for both sides of a hire.

## What to say about the gap

Tech/developer-event hiring currently borrows general event-industry channels rather than having its own - say this plainly rather than inventing a tech-specific board. The community-manager overlap with CMX is the closest exception. An informal channel like the "#eventprofs" hashtag on X/LinkedIn is widely known in the general industry but was not independently verified for current activity in this field's research - name it as informal and unverified if mentioned, never with invented member counts or activity levels.

---
name: dev-event-hiring
description: Employer-side hiring for tech-event-organizing roles - producer/manager/coordinator, and the community-manager-shaped end of the field. Calibrates the scorecard to operating context (in-house, agency, non-profit/community, or a standing conference business), builds the loop from the general event-planner sequence plus CMX's five-competency set and paid mini-audit work sample, flags the "one hire owns sponsorship, content and production" consolidation pattern seen in postings, sources candidates from general event-industry boards since no tech-specific one exists, and gates compensation on named sources (PCMA, BLS, Glassdoor) rather than a blended figure. Use when the user asks how to hire an event producer or manager, write a posting, design a loop, or hire an event community manager. Do NOT use for candidate prep (samber/dev-event-organizer-skills@dev-event-career) or team org design (samber/dev-event-organizer-skills@event-team-structure).
license: MIT
metadata:
  author: Samuel Berthe
  version: "1.1.0"
---

# Dev Event Hiring

Build the artefacts a hiring manager needs to recruit a tech-event-organizing role: a scorecard calibrated to operating context, an interview loop assembled from the field's real (if partial) evidence, a sourcing plan, and a compensation stance that names its source instead of blending numbers.

Out of scope, hand off instead:

- **Coaching the candidate** - samber/dev-event-organizer-skills@dev-event-career is the mirror image of this skill.
- **The standing organizing team's own structure** - legal entity, decision rights, succession, the volunteer-to-paid threshold - samber/dev-event-organizer-skills@event-team-structure. Route "should we hire our first paid role at all" there; this skill answers "how do we hire well, once we've decided to."

If the user is job-hunting rather than hiring, say so in one line and route them to dev-event-career.

**Not this skill: hiring requests that reach organizers from their audience.** Organizers report a constant stream of "can you introduce me to..." and "do you know someone to hire..." requests from attendees and local companies. Those are not the organizing team's own hires. Route them to `samber/dev-event-organizer-skills@event-community-building` § Recruiting requests, which gives them a bounded outlet so the community does not drift into a job board.

## Interview

Ask one question at a time, multiple-choice where possible. Skip anything already answered. Questions 7-9 re-rank the artefacts below.

1. Operating context: (a) in-house at a company running its own conference or meetup series (b) an event-production agency hiring for client work (c) a non-profit/foundation or volunteer-community-run event making its first paid hire (d) a standing for-profit conference business.
2. Target role shape: (a) producer/logistics-and-production-focused (b) manager, blending production and stakeholder management (c) community-manager-shaped (meetup organizer, developer-community-events hybrid) (d) undecided - recommend one from the scope.
3. For a non-profit/community-run event: has the event crossed roughly low-thousands of attendees or a six-figure budget - the threshold where a first paid role typically appears? (If not, route to event-team-structure first - this may be premature.)
4. What does this role need to be measured on - attendee satisfaction, on-budget delivery, sponsor renewal, community growth, repeat-attendee rate?
5. How many people and what budget will this role actually have - solo ownership, a small team, or shared with existing staff?
6. Compensation stance: do you have a range in mind, and do you know which source (PCMA, BLS, Glassdoor tech-industry data) you're anchoring it to?
7. Deadline: this month, this quarter, or no hard date?
8. One-off hire or the first of several where the scorecard and loop get reused?
9. Effort ceiling: how many interviewer-hours per candidate, and is there a recruiter?

## Reading the answers

- **Q1 decides the scorecard template and realistic scope** - load [references/company-type-hiring-bar.md](./references/company-type-hiring-bar.md). An in-house hire needs cross-functional fluency (sales, marketing, product); an agency hire is screened against a specialized function inside a client-services structure; a non-profit/community hire is almost always an event coordinator/manager, never a community-manager role, at the first-paid-hire stage.
- **Q2 decides which interview design applies** - a community-manager-shaped role should use CMX's five-competency loop (see Workflow); a producer/manager-shaped role uses the general event-planner sequence.
- **Q3 is a gate, not just a data point.** If the threshold hasn't been crossed, the real question may be whether to hire at all, which is samber/dev-event-organizer-skills@event-team-structure's decision, not this skill's - say so before building a scorecard for a premature hire.
- **Q4 sets the scorecard's outcome metrics** - never write a generic "run great events" outcome; name the actual thing this role is measured on.
- **Q5 is the check against this field's real red-flag pattern** (see Reading a posting for red flags below): a solo hire expected to own sponsorship sales, content, and production simultaneously with no team or budget is the consolidation pattern job postings already show.
- **Q6 triggers the compensation gate** in the Quality gate - never quote one blended number; name PCMA, BLS, or Glassdoor explicitly, and state the tech-industry premium if hiring in-house.
- **Q7 promotes reusing an existing loop over designing one from scratch.**
- **Q8 decides whether the loop stays thin (one-off) or gets built properly (compounding).**
- **Q9 deletes loop stages rather than reordering them**, the same way sales-hiring and devrel-hiring treat a tight interviewer-hour budget.

## Workflow

1. Run the Interview. State the operating context and role-shape calibration in one short paragraph the user can veto.
2. **Artefact 1 - role scorecard.** Build from [references/company-type-hiring-bar.md](./references/company-type-hiring-bar.md):
   - a one-sentence mission naming the operating context and the metric from Q4
   - 3-8 measurable outcomes, never vague responsibilities like "run great events"
   - competencies weighted per role shape - a community-manager-shaped scorecard should use CMX's five competencies (growth mindset, data-driven approach, empathy, leadership, communication); a producer/manager scorecard should weight portfolio quality, budget management, and vendor/client relations
3. **Artefact 2 - interview loop.** Build from [references/interview-loop-design.md](./references/interview-loop-design.md):
   - for a producer/manager-shaped hire, the general event-planner sequence applies: portfolio and past-events review first, a concrete-metrics request, scenario-based questions (a last-minute venue change, a vendor no-show), budget-management questions, and live reference calls rather than written recommendations
   - for a community-manager-shaped hire, use CMX's five-competency question set, including the pointed conflict question ("if the community wants one thing and your boss wants something else, what would you do?")
   - place a work-sample stage appropriately: a **paid mini-audit** of an existing community for a senior community-manager-shaped hire, or a **sample-thread-response exercise** for a junior/moderator-track one - never unpaid, open-ended client-style work for a producer/manager hire
   - state plainly that no single, fully-documented tech-conference-specific loop exists published anywhere - this is an assembled design, not a copy of an industry-standard one
4. **Artefact 3 - sourcing plan.** Build from [references/sourcing-channels.md](./references/sourcing-channels.md):
   - use general event-industry boards (PCMA Career Center, MPI Career Center, BizBash, MeetingJobs/Cadre, Event Careers) since no dev/tech-conference-specific board exists
   - for a community-manager-shaped role, the CMX Job Board and its Slack community are the closest tech-adjacent channel
   - where local meetups run a short, bounded announcement round at the start of each gathering ("who is looking for work, who is hiring?"), post the role there. It reaches people already attending community events, which is the community-manager-shaped role's core skill. state the role in one sentence and respect the round's time limit
5. **Artefact 4 - compensation stance.** Build from [references/compensation-guidance.md](./references/compensation-guidance.md):
   - name the source explicitly - PCMA Convene's level-based figures, BLS's broad occupational median, or Glassdoor's tech-industry-premium cut for an in-house tech-company hire
   - never blend sources into one number; state which one the offer is anchored to and why
6. Run the Quality gate below. Iterate until it passes.
7. If your harness has persistent memory, store the scorecard, loop design and sourcing plan for reuse on a repeat hire.

## Reading a posting for red flags

**No named "pit-trap"-style taxonomy exists yet for event-organizing hiring**, unlike DevRel's documented Joe Nash gatekeeper/pit-trap framework - say this plainly rather than citing a pre-existing source that doesn't exist. What real job-posting evidence does show is the same consolidation pattern DevRel names for its own field, applied here as a labeled transposition, not a second independently-discovered instance of it:

- **The gatekeeper equivalent**: a posting describing an impossible person - deep sponsorship-sales closing ability, hands-on AV/production expertise, CFP/content-curation judgment, and day-of crisis management - at entry-level pay and an individual-contributor title.
- **The pit-trap equivalent**: "founding event manager, no team, no budget, full ownership" language, asking one hire to run sponsorship sales, content, production, and volunteer/staff management simultaneously with no stated success metric, no reporting structure, and no stated path to headcount.

Before publishing a posting, self-audit against both patterns. A posting failing either needs the scope split across more than one hire, or the resourcing stated explicitly, before it goes out.

## Company type and role-shape calibration

Never treat one scorecard template as portable across operating contexts - the full comparison and the honest note on the unsourced fourth context (a standing for-profit conference business) live in [references/company-type-hiring-bar.md](./references/company-type-hiring-bar.md).

## Quality gate

Score the artefacts against these checks before final delivery.

1. The scorecard names the actual operating context and the metric this role is measured on, and every outcome is quantified.
2. The posting passes the gatekeeper/pit-trap self-audit - no impossible-person requirement list, no unresourced "full ownership" framing.
3. The interview design matches the role shape - CMX's five competencies for a community-manager-shaped hire, the general event-planner sequence for a producer/manager-shaped one.
4. Any work-sample stage is bounded and paid, never open-ended unpaid client work.
5. For a non-profit/community first paid hire, the threshold question (Q3) was actually asked, not assumed.
6. Sourcing uses named, real channels - general event-industry boards, or CMX specifically for a community-manager-shaped role - never an invented "tech-event job board."
7. The compensation stance names its source (PCMA, BLS, or Glassdoor) explicitly; no blended, unsourced figure is presented as market rate.

## Common failure modes

| Failure                                                                               | Fix                                                                                          |
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Solo hire expected to own sponsorship, content, and production with no team or budget | Split the scope across more than one hire, or state the resourcing explicitly in the posting |
| Copying an agency-style specialized scorecard for a first non-profit/community hire   | Recalibrate against the actual operating context and the coordinator/manager-first pattern   |
| Using CMX's community-manager loop for a pure production/logistics hire               | Match the loop to the actual role shape, not the nearest documented one                      |
| Unpaid, open-ended "test project" as a work sample                                    | Use a bounded, paid mini-audit or sample-thread-response exercise instead                    |
| Quoting one blended salary figure with no named source                                | State PCMA, BLS, or Glassdoor explicitly, and the tech-industry premium if relevant          |
| Inventing a tech-specific job board that doesn't exist                                | Use the real general event-industry boards, or CMX for community-manager-shaped roles        |
| Hiring a first paid role at a community event before the threshold is reached         | Route to event-team-structure first to confirm the hire is warranted                         |
| Treating attendees' "know anyone to hire?" requests as this skill's job               | Route to event-community-building § Recruiting requests: a bounded announcement round        |

## Reference

- [references/company-type-hiring-bar.md](./references/company-type-hiring-bar.md) - the four operating contexts, what differs concretely, and the unsourced fourth context flagged honestly.
- [references/interview-loop-design.md](./references/interview-loop-design.md) - the general event-planner sequence, CMX's five-competency set, and the paid work-sample designs.
- [references/sourcing-channels.md](./references/sourcing-channels.md) - the named general event-industry boards and the CMX community-manager channel.
- [references/compensation-guidance.md](./references/compensation-guidance.md) - PCMA, BLS, and Glassdoor tables, named separately.
- See `samber/dev-event-organizer-skills@dev-event-career` for the candidate's side of this table.
- See `samber/dev-event-organizer-skills@event-team-structure` for whether to hire at all, and the standing team's decision rights once this role is filled.
- See `samber/developer-relations-skills@devrel-hiring` for a community-manager-shaped hire that leans more DevRel than event-production - the two skills' scorecards can cross-check each other.