The article below was written by a former coworker from my pre-MBA Software Engineer days named Filippo Morelli. Filippo was actually the guy who recruited me to my second employer and, in the couple of years that we worked together, I learned a lot from him about how to connect with people and position one’s self as a positive influencer. His background is in Software Development and Process Improvement, but, when it comes down to it, he’s a “people person” who just so happens to know a thing or two about technology. That’s sort of the way that I tried to position myself back when I was a techie before business school.
Filippo’s article is actually an entry in his blog where he shares some tips about team building. He’s had 20+ years of experience with building teams of all shapes, sizes, and purposes and, while most of his teams had a Tech focus, the approach that he developed could be used across industries. His article starts off with some intro text and then leads into a quick deck that is full of useful advice on laying down the foundation and structure for a team, identifying the right people, and pushing forward toward selling what the team has to offer.
My long-time readers know that I have a strong interest in people and how organizations work, so I found this article to be really interesting. I hope that some of you feel the same way.
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Title: The Art of Hiring to Build a Team
Author: Filippo Morelli
Source: Coincident.net blog – http://blog.coincident.net/2010/08/art-of-hiring-to-build-team.html
Excerpt text from the article:
Hiring the right people is one of the most challenging parts of the work environment. I was fortunate enough to be part of an agile team in 1988, at the age of 22, which hired by consensus. Since then and for the last 20+ years I’ve been heavily involved in finding and hiring people. I hazard to guess that I’ve read 3,000+ resumes and probably interviewed 500 people. I have been involved in hiring peers on a team, people for groups I managed, hired my boss twice, and found numerous people for others. Thankfully many of these hires have turned out to be great contributors and, selfishly speaking, I’ve both learned a lot working with them and have come to count many of them as friends.
Building teams is undoubtedly a complex problem, multi-faceted in dissimilar topics from project goals, team personalities, to skill sets and roles. Individual hires are also influenced by organizational culture in which they must operate, the customers for which work is being performed or even the market which is being targeted for a software product. Over the years I’ve come to see hiring as a set of several kinds of activities – part planning, part archeology, part detective work, add a bit of marketing and let’s not forget the sales skill of closing a deal.
