If you like interviews as much as I do, you find them funny. I've been to them on both sides of the barricades, and they are often competitions in which the applicant is trying to prove that he is worthy of the job and Eichar is making intrigues for him. Sometimes Eichar is replaced by a leading developer or even a whole gang of interviewers, each of whom wants to test the applicant for strength.
Of course, it's all very fun and maybe even works for large bureaucratic organizations. But I don't think it's right to look for a team for a startup or other average project, because the message is that somebody has to prove something to somebody. The efficiency of such pastime is low - all efforts are spent on defense and attack, not on productive activities.
In this article, I will discuss how to make finding people on the project team convenient for each of the parties.
In most projects, the main thing is the result. It can be expressed in terms of money, audience, recognition, experience, women, men, etc. The most effective result a person achieves is if he does something that he believes in himself. Therefore, you want to look for such people.
But the search through a recruitment agency and interview - a weak tool in this matter. Because if a person is defensive and just wants to get this job, he or she is very likely to have what you want to hear.
Also, the interview will not help to understand the skills of the person. More precisely, well-posed questions will allow you to orientate yourself as to how well a person knows a certain area, but will not say anything about how effectively he or she will solve problems in your particular project. For example, a person may know some standards very well and understand some issues, but will not be able to turn a single step away from the territory under study.
The only advantage of an interview is direct communication with a person. But because of the unsuitable atmosphere, he can disappear without a trace.
Another approach (which does not exclude the first one, but complements it) is the search for people from among former colleagues. If you have worked with a person before (even if not for a very long time), you know him much better than those whose portfolios and resumes you have carefully studied. But the number of former colleagues is limited, and not always there are those among them who will be able to join the new project at the right time. Therefore, we would like to increase the number of these people.
These discussions led me to the idea that in order to find a team effectively, it is necessary to get rid of the "attack-protect" strategy and the narrowness of the role-sharing paradigm: job seeker, employee, employer, investor, etc. And to do this, all parties must be in conditions that would allow them to look at, hear each other, test and understand for themselves who is able to be as close as possible to the natural.
I believe that this could be, for example, an event where developers can look at customers and vice versa. And not just to look at it, but to join an interesting project at once. Nobody owes anything to anyone, there is nothing to prove. You can just join any group of people, see what they are doing, tell them how you would do something, get acquainted, learn something new, share experience, etc.
Such meetings can create new useful connections that will develop into mutually beneficial relationships.
A good example is the format of Hackdeya - he worked two days with a person shoulder to shoulder on a common project, got to know each other in battle - the circle of potential colleagues has expanded.
We are already doing a project with one foundation about gathering teams around projects. And I thought it wasn't too late to turn it towards the open event to benefit everyone.
We can imagine it this way: there is a certain open-air space where there are islands of projects - training or combat - it doesn't matter. Everyone can participate in any project and any number of them.
You come up to it, you learn about what the project is about, you go into details, you put forward your proposals, and even though you get a laptop and show how you would do it. In general, you show how you can be useful to the project and see for yourself how much you are interested in this project. As a result, you can watch a bunch of projects in one weekend, try on a bunch of roles and see what fits you best.
I think the main thing is people and the team. Even in an awesomely interesting project, you can feel out of place, just because you can't work with its participants.
If you have a desire, you can try to launch your own project in 2 days and attract the attention of the potential team, if necessary - investors. And you can just come for a couple of hours, make a lot of acquaintances and try yourself in different projects.
The first such event will be held in Moscow, is already under development and registration will soon open. If you want to be among the first participants - write a few lines about yourself.
Now it is necessary to solve some questions, such as, for example, as:
Do the developers need to meet in such a format?
How best to organize it to be interesting and saturated, how often to conduct?
How not to organize by chance a breeding ground for trolls?
