Tips and tricks to build a large team - Part 1 (Hiring)

My experience building large product, design, and engineering teams under pressure has led to frequent requests for advice. Here are key lessons I've learned, both from my work and insightful suggestions from the LinkedIn community, to help you build and scale teams for successful transformations:

Build a product, design, and engineering leadership team.

- Before you start:

1. Take the time to understand the outcomes you need to deliver and the kind of people you need to drive the initiatives you are banking on.
2. Take the time to reflect on the company and department culture. You want people to succeed in the culture you are operating.
3. Be very clear on the skills, experience, qualities, and cultural inclination you are looking for in your leadership team. These qualities will be crucial in building the winning team.

A reflection exercise will give you an organizational design, roles, and number of people. Discuss the organizational design with the leadership, solicit their buy-in, and ensure no overlap. A well-thought-out organizational design and clarity of intended outcomes will give you the input you need to craft job descriptions. What are the "must-haves" from a skill and experience perspective? What are the "nice-to-haves"? Your desired location and flexibility on working hours.?

Write a JD to attract the right candidate

Most often, JDs fall short. Explain the company and the vision. Highlight the leadership team as it helps to market the role. Focus the JD on the outcomes the role should drive vs. core responsibilities. You may also mention "must haves" and "nice to haves."

Salary surveys—

Ask your recruiters how to set a salary budget for each role. Salary ranges often fluctuate; you need an informed point of view to align your budget, expectations, HR, and finance. Know which positions you are willing to be flexible.

The Interview Panel—

For every role, be clear about who needs to be on the interview panel, how many rounds are required, and what is expected. Be thoughtful about who you want to?be bought in?beforehand and who you would like the candidate to meet after you have made a hiring decision. Ensure the panel understands this is important; you expect them to be flexible for efficiency. When hiring scores of people, it is important to designate someone to manage the master schedule so you can see where we are with each role.

Create a KPI scorecard?-

The scorecard should track open roles, candidates in the pipeline, offers submitted, offers signed, and candidates onboarded. Each hiring manager should update scorecards, which should be reviewed at the executive leadership level along with HR weekly. Diane Davis Otter says to designate an onboarding Czar. In my case, my Czar was our very capable Chief of Staff and head of PMO Geetha Balakrishnan . The right person here can ensure the hiring budget is in line and that there is transparency and accountability. The scorecard has to drive the intended discussion vs. a fire drill with no return!

Tap your network —

Develop a network of executive and technical recruiters. Filling hundreds of roles will require you to be creative and resourceful and deploy every tool in your arsenal. Be ready to test and learn.?

Hopefully, you have created a list of your recruiter network. You should meet them and explain the company, your vision, the ideal candidate, the interview process, expectations, and a timeline to them. Help your recruiters help you. Recalibrate the search, especially when filling your leadership roles.?

Your network of candidates?-

You can significantly increase your odds of success by tapping into your network of people. It is often tempting to hire who is available. The lesson learned here is - to hire for the role and hire people who can fit into the role and execute the company's culture. Be honest with yourself. You are putting your credibility and your years of relationship at risk, and most importantly, you are risking the outcomes you intend to deliver by hiring a person who may struggle to excel in a particular culture. Also - refrain from making big promises to your talent network that you may struggle to deliver.

Your network of third parties?-

Hiring hundreds of people often takes a long time, sometimes over a year. You have to start driving the results. Usually, you may need third parties to drive the projects you are banking on while you hire for full-time roles. Be cautious - Hiring third parties without a full-time leader is like a ship without a captain. The mistakes made here can leave you with a vast amount of technical, product, or UI debt, which may become expensive to address. So focus on hiring the full-time leaders first, who can direct the third-party resources to drive the expected outcome. During negotiation, it is super important to ensure that both sides understand the rules of engagement well. Partner with the right size vendor so they value the engagement, and you also can put pressure on them when needed. Build relationships with the company's senior management before the engagement starts.

Interviewing is expensive; take it seriously?-

Identify managers who want to fill the role without validating candidates against a list of "must haves," "nice to have," and culture. These mistakes are often painful and expensive to fix. So spend the time coaching your managers on what good looks like so they understand. The goal is not to micromanage but to ensure a filtering mechanism that reduces pain in the long term. Coach managers on being prepared before the interview, being prompt with scheduling, and avoiding rescheduling.

Connect with people who have done it before.

It is amazing how connecting with people can spark creative ideas quickly when pressured to hire hundreds of people. Don't feel shy; tell your ego to get some rest. Be bold and ask for help.

Make friends with your HR team—

You need help while hiring a big team. Make friends at the HR leadership level and with every recruiter who will be helping you. Train them on what you are doing, role expectations, selling the job, pre-screening your candidates, efficient scheduling, and escalation. Invite them to the weekly scorecard review and encourage honest and frank conversations to get the roles filled as soon as possible.

Location and work culture efficiency?-

Understand your work culture and be clear (with yourself, your team, HR, and recruiters) about what you are willing to be flexible on and what are absolute must-haves to ensure you can drive the innovation and results you are banking on.

Optimize the process for efficiency and quality and reduce stress for candidates.?

Stay tuned for more on how to build and scale a winning team.?I expect to cover onboarding next.?

I want to give special thanks to my mentors who helped me with my journey.?Additionally, thanks to Matt Lopez , Christopher Abboud , Ankush Jain , Dmitri Novomeiski , Rohit Sharma , Gavin Hupp , Diane Davis Otter for their thoughtful and valuable contribution.

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