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)

Building your Design A-Team from Jason Mesut