Building your A-Team
Based on his many years of experience as a recruiter and a manager, Jason Mesut talked about getting the right people for your team and then supporting them.
| Frame | Scope and position the team and the roles within it Make sure you understand it and position |
| Hire | Attract and assess the fit of people to your team Honestly represent your positioning – signing NDAs before interviewing can be weird but it allows people to open up -you want to see the best and worst |
| Fire | Manage those that don’t and can’t fit into your team |
| Grow | Develop individuals, scale the team, increase its presence |
| Adapt | Flex to changing needs and the team dynamics itself |
| Exit | Get out to let others grow and shape things without a dependence on you |
They may be happening in parallel.
Framing and hiring affects the other stages.
Think WATCH:
- Work
Consider the level of innovation, medium, nature (sector), who for, for candidates, relevance or transferable experience, interests and reservations - Approach
Hard to asses – design challenges can be used carefully (though they can create false results and put people off – this can be a good thing?) if focusing on approach and used sparingly - Team
Use your network to check whether people would be a good fit (avoid toxic people) - Career
understand their journey, future (are they Experience Strategy, Interaction Design, User Research, or Information Architecture), personal situation (delicate area – some people contract to pay for a house or support new family but has uncertainty) - Help
identify capability and growth areas – experience, aptitude, and aspiration (capability mapping can help with this)