Lead Upwards

CHAPTER TENRecruit Smart and Build Belonging

Your people matter, people. Here's how to build a superlative team, with some pitfalls to avoid.

Whether you've inherited a team or are building one from scratch, as a startup leader, you'll need to learn how to successfully lead a group of individual contributors and managers.

RECRUITING NEW TEAM MEMBERS

While you'll ideally have a People Ops/HR recruiting team at your startup, your success depends on your ability to recruit people with the skills and experience to deliver outcomes for your team.

Anyone you hire must align with three areas:

• The skills and experience required to meet the business objectives of the role in your organization (that tie into the company's larger business objectives).
• The company's values and cultures.
• Your team's unique culture.

That's a lot to balance, right? There's a reason why hiring is one of the most valued startup skills. It's one of the biggest jobs of a team lead.

Many executives, unfortunately, churn because of their inability to hire and retain top talent. Hiring talent who will scale is hard. It sounds obvious, but if you can't build a team effectively, startup leadership is impossible. You need to convince talented people to join your company, but more than that, to join you as a boss.

This is even more true at smaller startups; larger companies or scaleups benefit from their size, and if someone doesn't like working for one manager, they may switch teams or departments (even ...