Interviews - in the furnace or how to search for a team

If you like job interviews like me, they seem like a funny job to you. I have been to them on both sides of the barricades, and often they are competitions in which the applicant tries to prove that he is worthy of this work, and char builds his schemes. Sometimes, instead of Eychara, a leading developer or even a whole gang of interviewers comes forward, each of whom, for his part, wants to test the applicant for strength.

All this, of course, is very fun and, perhaps, even works for large bureaucratic organizations. But, in my opinion, it is absolutely not suitable for finding a team for a start-up or another medium-sized project, since the promise itself turns out to be wrong that someone has to prove something to someone. The effectiveness of this pastime is low - all forces are spent on defense and attack, and not on productive activities.
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In this article I will talk about how to make the search for people in the project team convenient for each of the parties.

In most projects, the main thing is the result. It can be expressed in money, audience, recognition, experience, women, men, etc. A person achieves the most effective result if he does something he believes in himself. Therefore, I want to look for just such people.

But searching through a recruitment agency and interviewing is a weak tool in this matter. Since if a person defends himself and just wants to get this job, he is more likely to spoil what you want to hear.

Also, the interview does not help to understand the skills of the person. More precisely, well-posed questions will allow you to orient yourself as far as a person is fluent in a particular area, but they will not say anything about how effectively he will be able to solve problems in your particular project. For example, a person may know some standards very well and understand a certain issue, but he will not be able to move a single step from an already explored territory.

The only advantage of the interview - direct communication with the person. But because of the inappropriate atmosphere, it can dissolve without a trace.

Another approach (which does not exclude the first, but complements it) is to search for people from among former colleagues. If you have previously worked with a person (even if not very long), then you know him much better than those whose portfolio and resume you have diligently studied. But the number of former colleagues is limited, and not always among them there are those who can join the new project at the right time. Therefore, I want to increase the number of these people.

These arguments led me to the idea that in order to effectively find a team, you need to get rid of the “attack — defend” strategy and the narrow paradigm of role separation: the applicant, the employee, the employer, the investor, etc. And for this, all parties must be in such conditions that would allow them to see, hear each other, check and understand for themselves who is who in a state as close as possible to the natural.

I believe that this may be, for example, an event at which developers can look at customers and vice versa. And not just to see, but immediately join an interesting project. No one is obliged to anyone, nothing needs to be proved. You can simply join any group of people, see what they do, tell how you would do something, get to know each other, learn something new, share experiences, etc.

From such parties, new useful connections can emerge that will develop into mutually beneficial relationships.

A good example is the format Hakdey - worked two days with a man shoulder to shoulder over a common project, got to know each other in battle - the circle of potential colleagues expanded.

We are already doing with one fund a project about collecting teams around projects. And I thought that it was not too late to turn it in the direction of an open event, so that the benefits would be for everyone.

This can be imagined as follows: there is some openness in which there are islands of projects - training or combat - it does not matter. Anyone can participate in any project and any number of them.

You come up, find out what the project is about, delve into the details, put forward your suggestions, but at least get a laptop and show how you would have done. In general, using the example of real actions, you show how you can be useful to a project and you yourself see how interesting this project is to you. As a result, over one weekend you can see a bunch of projects, try on a bunch of roles and see what suits you best.

I think the main thing is the people and the team. After all, even in an awesome interesting project, you can feel at ease, simply because you cannot work together with its participants.

If there is a desire, then at such an event you can in 2 days try to launch your project and attract the attention of a potential team, if necessary - investors. And you can just come for a couple of hours, start a bunch of dating and try yourself in different projects.

The first such event will take place in Moscow, is already in development and registration will soon open. If you want to be among the first participants - write a few lines about yourself in a personal.

Now we need to solve several issues, such as, for example:

1. Do developers need to meet in this format?
2. How exactly is it better to organize, to be interesting and rich, how often to carry out?
3. How to not accidentally organize a hotbed of trolls?

UPD: Transferred to “Project Management”, since the article is rather about one of the first stages of the project - team search. And in general the word “resource” (in HR) in relation to people somehow sounds wild.