PCs4KIDS’ Education approached me. They told me about their problem. Their expectations. Vision of a product. My first and most important task is to hire a team, lead the people and bring their vision to life.

The outcome? Happy children playing with great content in their newly won computers.

Their strategy is to create a web application for kids to browse through educational content in a fun and intuitive way. Something like a “world” where they are guided on “what’s the next cool thing to do”.

Where to start when hiring a team? That sounds pretty straightforward. Write some profiles. Share the opportunities with your network.  Interviews, choose the best and that’s it! Is it?

My answer:

1. Let’s start by identifying work principles and ethic.
   People work with whom they respect and for a cause they believe in. An example follows.

   Our principles
   We are committed to delivering great software because we believe in a cause.
   We feel the urge to hone our skills and do the best work we can.
   We do meaningful (and fun!) work for children in need.
   Our work ethic
   We give constructive feedback to each other.
   We are honest, decent and reasonable people.
   We work together towards shared goals and vision.

2. Define the challenge in a clear and entertaining way. Break it down if too complex.
   

   “Given one hour to save the world, I would spend 55 minutes defining the problem and 5 minutes finding the solution”~ Albert Einstein

3. Make product vision and goals tangible, in a way that people can almost touch them.
4. Define what is your dream team. Write the profiles in a specific way not to have misunderstandings, but also in an inspiring way. We want people to feel our excitement!
5. Set expectations and analyse trade-offs e.g. what if we don’t find all the roles needed, what kind of compromise are we willing to make?
6. Publish the open roles in social networks e.g. professional groups within Facebook, LinkedIn/Xing, in our case at UN Volunteering page. Talk to friends about it and let the world know how cool it is to work with us!
7. Answer applicants in a timely manner.  Acknowledge the time people invested to apply. Be honest and give a direct feedback.
8. Invite people for the interviews. Set expectations on where it will be, how long it will take, who the interviewers are. Make candidates feel comfortable.
9. Define general and specific questions for each role. This is just a way to remind us what to consider, we don’t get fixed on them. During the interview there can be unexpected great turns.
10. Conduct the interviews with the tools we have. If  teams are distributed, one can use Slack for it (it works!), video interview via Skype or even asynchronously (see Viasto).

We realised that there are great people willing to join our team. More than we ever thought. Next step: we must (no way round) choose few of them. Which criteria? Well, this is something for a next post.

Keep an eye on this blog and you’ll find out which candidates we chose and why!