How an entrepreneur can create a dream team for his startup: tips on hiring people
Dream team is a close-knit group of people on the same team. Together they achieve goals and achieve cool results. Where to look for such people? We tell you in this article.
One person proposes an idea, but a team presents it to the world. This is how the stories of Google, Apple, HP, Amazon started, with startups that were developed by groups of enthusiasts in the garage after their main job.
Why do some startups get stuck in "Death Valley" without making a profit from the project, while others gain a strong foothold in the market?
One reason for success is the people who "haul" the project like locomotives. They must be not only good performers, but also strong initiators.
In this material, we tell you how to assemble a dream team, with which your startup will stop giving hope and start generating profits.
A startup is not a classic business
At the heart of a startup is an innovative idea or an improvement on someone else's idea. It is a business that is being prepared for launch or is already being launched. It has a lot of features and an association with the word "stress. Why?
The startup still has a small team, and everyone in it performs 100+ additional functions in addition to the main ones. All this under conditions of limited investment and budget. What distinguishes a startup from an ordinary company?
- There is no bureaucracy and directivity in management (even if there are departments and managers, the system is more set up for horizontal interaction);
- More opportunities to offer your ideas for development (and implement them);
- Uncertainty and risks (how the market situation will change, how much the project will be in demand);
- Often irregular working hours.
5 tips on how to build a successful startup team
If you want to implement the idea "from the napkin," make it a priority to grow and develop your team. Neural networks are unlikely to completely replace human resources, but they already have serious competition. So you need to be smart about who you choose for your team. But before you start working with someone, use these 5 tips:
1. Make a clear vision for your startup
Develop a business idea. Think about the mission of the future company. While the startup does not have a sufficient budget, people need to understand what they are working for, what goal they are striving for. If your startup still exists only at the level of an idea, find good consultants or a mentor who can help give your idea a formal shape. The main thing is that this person should have experience in a similar field. You can find a mentor either among acquaintances or on special resources.
2. assess the needs of your startup
Do an audit of your skills, match them with those that are missing for the job. And find people with the missing skills, they will help you to improve your work. For example, your weakness is negotiation, you need to look for a reliable employee with this developed skill. Do not like working with documents? Invite a paperwork guru to your team.
Hiring people who are different from you helps create a cohesive team with a diverse set of skills. Diversity helps you solve problems creatively. The types of people that complement the team and create synergy are discussed below.
Use connections to your advantage
Networking is important for any entrepreneur when starting out. Attend industry seminars, events, and conferences. There you can find specialists and similar people. But you will have to be proactive. In order for networking not to pass you by, but to bring results in the form of new connections, you must: a) be remembered; b) communicate effectively.
Come up with extraordinary, memorable business cards, or better yet, offer people the chance to find you immediately by qr-code from the phone screen. It's quick and convenient.
For the conversation to be productive, show your expertise and interest, and be able to listen and share your opinion.
Once you have assembled a team of like-minded people, you can look for/separate people by area, such as marketing, product, finance, technical, sales.
4. Inculcate strong values in your team
Trust, transparent communication, communication, respect, and honesty are strong values on which effective teamwork is built. In such a team, employees are more invested in their work.
To determine your company's corporate values, answer these questions:
- What values will align with customer values?
- What principles should guide the choice?
- What should other people think of the company?
- How will values differentiate a company from its competitors?
- What qualities of employees are valued in the company?
5. Reevaluate your team as needed
Track the progress of the business. How well you and your team are doing. This can be tracked by metrics such as:
- time spent on projects and tasks (with a time tracker: what time the work day starts and ends, how long an employee is active, not just moving the mouse on the screen)
- the number of tasks the team completes in a certain amount of time (perhaps some of the tasks should be dropped, or the team should be expanded);
- financial receipts and expenditures;
The most convenient way to keep track of everything - to keep statistics, comparative analysis, today it automatically does for you and the team project management service.
If you realize that you need additional skills, you can find an employee to outsource and connect to your team to work together. What kind of people to look for in a team? Let's move on to the next step.
Dreamer, visionary and others: what kind of people to look for in a team
The team must contain a variety of talents, including people with an unconventional type of thinking, who will offer creative and breakthrough solutions. Otherwise you cannot survive in the conditions of capitalism.
First of all, when hiring an employee, you pay attention to his hard skills. You can base your search on the concept of roles. According to it, your team should have a dreamer, visionary, doer, innovator, supervisor, connector.
The dreamer will bring inspiration, excitement, and drive to the team. This is a person who will believe in an idea to the last, even if others do not. As a rule, he is a rabid optimist. You could go to Mars with someone like that.
The visionary skillfully identifies problems and finds solutions. Every business faces obstacles. The visionary will take responsibility for moving forward.
The executor is a trained expert. He is not as strong in planning and strategic vision, but he can do his job well. He is aided in this by his extensive experience and hard skills.
The innovator is a person with an enviable intuition and original approach. This employee (perhaps the founder himself) has excellent taste, seeks to develop and does not stand still.
The supervisor gives the right tasks to the right people. He organizes the processes between employees and departments, and makes sure that everyone does their job well.
The Connector builds vital connections for the startup. With his help, everyone is in good relationships: the startup with customers, investors, and other stakeholders.
How to hire people
You can post the position on services like hh.ru. Think through your job description, your mission statement, your core values, and your vision to screen candidates beforehand:
- Determine what positions you need people for;
- Specify the type of employment: outsourcing, freelance, office work, remote work;
- Find candidates: they have experience in a relevant position, they like your project, they are willing to start with a limited salary.
- Prepare for the hiring: think through the questions, invite suitable candidates to the interview, and prepare a test assignment.
- Consider post-hiring: hiring a person is not a problem, next it is important to plan how you will adapt the new employee - onboarding is just as important as the interview.
The main thing in recruiting Dreamtim is to feel that these are "your people" and you can easily find common ground. A startup may only have a 10% chance of success, but if you bring in a diverse team that shares a mission and a vision, and you organize a cohesive team, you will greatly increase the chances of your startup making it to the top.
