Building your Team!

I have been fortunate in my career to have moved from job applicant to the hiring side of the equation. It is interesting that when you are first looking for work,  it can seem difficult to land a good job. Conversely, when you are in the position of hiring it seems so difficult to find a good candidate to hire. I think both of these experiences are due to the challenge of finding a good fit in a sea of applications (and standing out from the applicant side). Over the years we have really worked hard on refining our process for screening candidates and finding people who are a good fit for the organization. 

I was inspired to write this from an interview I watched with Dan Gelbart about engineering “Impossible Problems”. The interview covers a wide range of topics but when asked about building a team a lot of what Dan said really felt affirming about the team we have assembled at Pump. The core of his message was to find people who were obsessed with technology (or in our case problem solving and product development) and they will be driven to succeed through passion. It got me thinking of the famous quote:

“Do what you LOVE and you’ll never work a day in your life”

This is always thought of from the perspective of the applicant but it is just as true (if not moreso) from the role of the person hiring.People who LOVE what they do come in MOTIVATED, and they are EXCITED about what they are working on. So how can you identify those candidates?

• Do they have hobbies related to the core responsibilities
  • Someone who writes for a living should write in their free time
  • Someone into accounting probably has spreadsheets for family budgeting and trips
  • We look for people who design and build things in their free time (wood working, personal projects, home improvement, working on cars, bikes, etc.), having your own 3D printer is a real plus.

Secondly, it is not enough to be in love with what you do, you have to be good at it. This idea is really nicely covered in the book “Strength Finders” by Tom Rath. The core principle is that to be successful you should focus your energy on what you’re good at (not JUST what you are excited about). One of the better anecdotes is the story of Rudy (the walkon football player at Notre Dame). This story is not a successful use of time and energy (excluding the film and media rights ;)). He poured SO much time into playing football and only got to play in one meaningless play. His time would have been better spent working on things he was best at. If you have ever hired a Rudy you know what a challenge it is. A likeable person who tries really hard but doesn’t quite deliver. To best identify candidates with a strong aptitude, develop a technical challenge that tests their skills in the most important areas.

For Pump Studios, we have candidates concept and design mechanisms to demonstrate their problem-solving skills, technical rationale, and proficiency in CAD (the tool we use the most). In technical professions it is likely easier to do this type of screening as there are specific tests you can create. Softer skills, like management, require more creative screening. Below is a part of our test (designing a bi-stable mechanism). Applicants must design a mechanism that “over- centers” to each of these positions.