Staff Recruitment: Building Your Dream IT Team from Scratch

Team leaders in the information technology (IT) sector are constantly faced with talent management challenges. They are looking for solutions to their human resources problems. Specifically, there is an urgent and critical need to identify and recruit people who are:

• Skilled and have domain knowledge.
• Experienced in working on software development projects in the IT sector.
• Able to relate to the business needs of the team, the organization and the clients.
• Quick learners.
• Team players.
• Long-distance runners.

Indeed, this does seem like a very difficult set of requirements and parameters to meet in the current business and industry scenario. But this is not an impossible task to achieve.

Understanding the mission of building a dream team

Team leaders will do well to look at this business challenge as an opportunity to build a dream team. And that can happen only when they approach the situation with a missionary zeal.

Staff recruitment in the software development space really means identifying and bringing on board people who can collaborate, conceive, create and design and maintain software applications. The composition of this team varies from one project to another. In an ideal scenario, when building a team for a complex project, the business leader may consider bringing on board specialists, domain experts, designers, developers, testers, software engineers and project managers.

Normally, a good, high-potential software development team would comprise a lead business manager, a product manager, a technical lead, a developer, a UI/UX designer, a tester and a quality assurance expert.

Critical to the mission of building this dream team is the business leader’s ability to recruit people who have complementary skills. Which is, much like players on a sports team, the key people in a software development team would focus on winning. This means building high-quality software that makes a client’s business successful.

Important steps in building the dream team

Be invested in the recruitment process: While the recruitment team at your company will be executing the mandate of staff recruitment for your business unit, it is essential that you pay attention to and own the process. Hiring mistakes are usually costly. And, importantly, they lead to a loss of quality management and organization time. As the business leader, you know the kind of people you want. You know what skills they must possess. You also know the temperament and attitude that you want on your team. So spend time on the hiring process. It will help you find better people and also save you the bother of undoing a hiring mistake.

Look for passionate people: Almost always, skill alone is insufficient in a real project situation. You need team members who are driven and passionate. You need them to own the business mandate that client is expecting to achieve through this software development project. So look for people who are not just skilled but are passionate too. Passion is the secret sauce in staff recruitment, especially when you are building a dream team.

Build your team’s soft skills: Once your team is in place, quite naturally its members will go through induction and onboarding. They will also go through a technical orientation on what the project entails. But, as a business leader, you must ideally focus on imparting training in soft skills to your team. This will mean training your team members in effective communication, problem-solving, better collaboration, conflict resolution and managing change. A team that does not score high on soft skills often fails.

Create and build a culture of trust and high performance: There’s an old saying in cricket: Catches win matches. You certainly don’t want your team members dropping the ball. Which is, at various stages of a software development project’s execution cycle, your team members need to stretch themselves and work seamlessly in high-pressure situations. Trust will be critical in such situations. Only when there is a culture of trusting each other and wanting to win together can high performance be delivered. As the business leader, it is your responsibility to build and protect the culture of your team.

Ensure your team’s well-being: With the levels of awareness high around the subject of mental health these days, every team member’s well-being needs to be nurtured. This alone will help you avoid a burnout situation for your team members. Young professionals need mentorship to manage stress and anxiety levels. So encourage your team members to take breaks at regular intervals. Ensure that they have time to pursue a hobby by giving them time off from work. Arrange for counseling sessions and motivational programs at the workplace. This is what will preserve your team and help them deliver high-quality work in crunch situations.

Conclusion 

The responsibility of a team leader does not end with signing off on a staff recruitment mandate or checklist. If the mission is to build a dream team, the focus must relentlessly be on finding the right people, training them, developing their soft skills, building a culture of high performance and ensuring that everyone’s well-being is constantly prioritized.

When people feel valued, when they feel they belong in a workplace, they own their roles, responsibilities, and goals. This is what makes an ordinary team perform extraordinarily well. This is how a dream team is built and nurtured.

Now that you know how to build your team, it’s time you found your people for the job, check out Xpheno’s IT Service page on our website and build your dream IT team.