Programs

Teams and culture · Self-serve

Hiring Manager

Five rooms from the market to the offer, run weekly, measured over time.

A self-serve program for a manager about to hire, built on Renatus. Two research reports, one guided pay review and two simulation rooms · Five weeks, one room a week · Unlimited attempts · Ongoing thereafter.

5 weeks · 5 rooms · Total time 2 hours 10 min

Who it's for: Managers with one open role, founders making their next hire, and team leads handed a requisition, with the authority to set or influence the pay.
Cadence: 5 weeks
Format: Self-serve
Program sessions: 5

Who it's for

Managers with one open role, founders making their next hire, and team leads handed a requisition, with the authority to set or influence the pay.

Output

Two sourced reports, on the career the role sits in and on what it pays, with a confidence rating on every section and a pay band written from them
A pay review of your own team against the new band, naming the cases that matter for retention and costing a refresh at two levels
A scored report after every simulation, with the moment that earned each score, one recommended focus and a trajectory across every attempt
Scored against published frameworks: Structured Interviewing, Evidence-Based Follow-Up, Principled Negotiation (BATNA / ZOPA), Anchoring and Concession Theory, the Pay Band Variance Audit, Retention Concentration Analysis and Two-Level Refresh Costing

Program contents

Market knowledge — Industry Career Map
Pay benchmarking — Salary & Compensation
Internal pay fairness — Employee Comp Review
Interviewing for evidence — Candidate Interview
Closing the offer — Negotiation

How the program works

The rooms

Industry Career Map

Research

Set-up: the industry and sub-sector, the region, the career stage of the person you want to hire, and your own part in it, which is hiring.

Salary & Compensation

Research

Set-up: your part in it (hiring), the job title, the industry, the region and the specific countries, the seniority, the years of experience and the company size.

Employee Comp Review

Framework

You are the source.

Candidate Interview

Simulation

Calibration: role title, interview stage (screening, first round, technical, final round or reference check), industry or sector, and a brief description of your working context; you can add the organisation's website.

Negotiation

Simulation

Calibration: your role title and seniority, your level as a negotiator (early career, mid, senior, executive or founder), your industry or sector, and a real upcoming negotiation to mirror: the offer to your preferred candidate.

Why this program exists

You have a role to fill, and the hire will be judged for a year on the decisions you make in the next few weeks: what the role pays, how you describe it, what you ask in the interview, and what you say when the person you want counters the offer. This program prepares you through two research reports, a guided pay review and two simulations. Ren researches the role's market and its pay from named sources, walks you through your team's pay against the new band, then builds the interview and the offer conversation from your real role, level, industry and context and plays every person in them, so every scene is new, adjusting according to each response.

What you'll achieve

Two sourced reports, on the career the role sits in and on what it pays, and a pay band written from them
A pay review of your own team against the new band: the cases that matter for retention and a refresh costed at two levels
A scored report after every simulation, with unlimited attempts: each dimension with the moment that earned its score, one recommended focus, and a trajectory across every attempt
Five interview questions with a follow-up for each, and an offer rehearsed before the real call

At a glance

Who it's for: Managers with one open role, founders making their next hire, and team leads handed a requisition. It serves a junior role or a senior one; every room calibrates to the role and level you name. It assumes a role title, a rough idea of the level, the authority to set or influence the pay, and your team's current pay.
Cadence: 5 weeks
1: Market knowledge · Industry Career Map · Read the paths and the entry routes; rewrite the job description
2: Pay benchmarking · Salary & Compensation · Read the benchmarks and what drives pay; write the band into the requisition
3: Internal pay fairness · Employee Comp Review · Read Retention Concentration and Refresh Costing; take two numbers to whoever approves pay
4: Interviewing for evidence · Candidate Interview · Read Question Design and Bias Awareness; run the real first-round interviews
5: Closing the offer · Negotiation · Read Concession Pattern and Preparation; make the real offer; set the ongoing plan

Session by session

Week 1: Market knowledge

Understand the career your role is a step in, so the job description is honest about what comes next.

Industry Career Map

Week 2: Pay benchmarking

Set a band from named sources, and know what moves a candidate to the top of it.

Salary & Compensation

Week 3: Internal pay fairness

Find out what the new band does to your team's pay, and what it costs to put right.

Employee Comp Review

Week 4: Interviewing for evidence

Ask questions that reveal capability, probe when an answer is thin, and form a view from evidence.

Candidate Interview

Week 5: Closing the offer

Open inside the band, concede in a deliberate order, and hold your walk-away when the candidate presses.

Negotiation

Whether a market is real, where it is growing, and where the opportunity sits

How an entire industry is structured, who controls it, and where it is heading

Who controls a market, how they compete, and where the real gaps are

Who buys in a market, what drives their decisions, and where the unmet needs are

What competitors charge in a market, how pricing is structured, and what customers will pay

Who supplies the critical inputs to a market, how concentrated it is, and what switching costs

The technology deployed in a sector, and where competitive advantage moves next

How product reaches the buyer in a market, and where channel power is shifting

Financials, leadership, strategy, and reputation on a company

Deep dive into how a company operates strategically, and where it is most exposed

Revenue, margins, cash, debt, and auditor signals on a company

How a company is perceived across customers, employees, media, and ESG

Discover a country's GDP, political environment, infrastructure, and outlook

Discover a city's GDP, economic drivers, workforce, and trajectory

Trade flows, tariffs, agreements, and friction points between two countries

Background, current state, key actors, evidence, and where an issue is heading

What a policy does, who wins and loses, and how it lands in practice

The specific risks facing a market — ranked, evidenced, and with the signals to watch

Single-source exposures, concentration, and trade-route risk for a market

Climate, governance, social, and controversy risk in a sector

Pending legislation, enforcement shifts, and where the rules are likely to change

Licensing, compliance, recent changes, and pending legislation in a jurisdiction

Government stability, policy direction, and the political risks facing a market

What a role pays — verified across named salary databases and job posting data

Whether to take a job at a company, with the evidence behind the answer

Who the credible candidates are, what they earn, and how the search will unfold

How a career in an industry works — entry, paths, pay, and prospects

The three things that will move a business forward this quarter

A 90-day plan that turns a strategy into something a team can act on Monday

Segment, positioning, channels, and pricing — tested against each other so the four hold together

A positioning the market can place — and a category claim worth defending

A pricing strategy that the market accepts and the business can defend in negotiation

Dashboard, thresholds and owners

Dashboard, thresholds and owners

Targets, thresholds and cadence

Whether an opportunity is worth pursuing — with conditions or risks named

The real problem behind the surface one, with options and a recommended next step

How a business creates, delivers, and captures value — and where it is exposed

Where work is breaking, where capability is missing, and the one structural change worth making

Build, buy, partner, or wait — with the killer assumption named

Whether a specific partnership is worth pursuing — with the asymmetries named

The right financing structure for the opportunity — tested against fit, cost, and flexibility

A fundraise structured to close on terms worth living with

Every variance classified — structural, timing, one-off or noise — with the call the pattern demands

How long the cash lasts across three scenarios, with the killer assumption named

Whether the per-unit economics hold up — with the killer assumption named

Whether the pay set serves the talent strategy, with the cost of fixing it

A board report that lands the narrative, the KPIs, the exceptions, and the decisions requested

What metrics are missing, misleading, or quietly rewarding the wrong thing

A complete business plan ready to put in front of investors, partners, or a board

A career decision weighed against criteria that matter, with a pre-mortem and a verdict

What matters most, what you would give up, and what stays true under pressure

Which option holds up under income loss, rate moves, or a downturn

A relocation decision and plan, with the trade-offs each destination forces

What the culture is like — values in practice, leadership behaviour, and where the gap sits

Strategy clarity, alignment, talent density, ways of working, and trust in leadership

What's energising people, what's draining them, and the levers that would move engagement

The patterns in how a person handles pressure, conflict, collaboration, and decisions

PENDING — product being redesigned. See Replit brief.

How a person leads — defaults, strengths, blind spots, and development areas

Real strengths backed by evidence — and the cost each one carries when overplayed

The values revealed by what a person has held the line on, refused, or regretted

What every role owns, what's silently dropped, and which handoffs are breaking

Where the team is aligned on priorities and goals, and where dangerous gaps sit

Where trust, conflict handling, and accountability are strong — and where they break

Any subject explained to a real listener, scored on accuracy, depth, audience adaptation, and handling the unknown

A presentation rehearsal scored on lead argument, evidence, question response, and poise

A stakeholder-influence rehearsal scored on reading the room, framing, negotiation, and durability

A managing-up rehearsal scored on positioning, evidence, flexibility, and outcome

A meeting rehearsal scored on structure, air-time management, progress, and closure

The conversation that's been avoided, with an assessment of how the conversation went

A saying-no rehearsal scored on clarity, rationale, alternative, and relationship

A performance-conversation rehearsal scored on clarity, ownership, empathy, and path forward

A team-conflict rehearsal scored on directness, fairness, action, and aftercare

A hiring interview rehearsal scored on question design, follow-up, bias, and assessment integrity

A leadership crisis scored on decision quality, communication, strategy, and pressure response

A negotiation rehearsal scored on preparation, anchoring, concession pattern, and pressure response

A strategic-decision rehearsal scored on framing, information use, trade-off recognition, and time horizon

An ethics rehearsal where the right path is costly, scored on recognition and response

A prioritisation rehearsal scored on triage, trade-off recognition, communication, and revisability