10 Tips for Choosing Effective Team Members

By Alexandra Hayes

Updated Over a Week Ago

Minute Read

Team members will be necessary when you want to build a company from scratch; you have to carefully plan your strategy and resources.

Human resources, more specifically, are your best shot to conquer the niche marketplace and position yourself as a strong player.

You see, the more brilliant people work for your company, the better your image, reputation, and products will be.

Picking the right professionals to build an effective team for a project is more challenging than it looks. It’s a big responsibility and risk because the people you choose are the biggest factor determining if your project will turn out to be successful.

The more skilled and knowledgeable they are, the better their odds of success become.

Here are ten tips for choosing the best professionals for your team:

1. Look for Excellent Communicators

For your team members to be receptive, understand, and act on what you tell them to, they’d better be great communicators. They are people who know how to listen, reply, and respect the other conversation participants.

Individuals need to be usually available when you need to reach them and ready to address your concerns.

2. Seek Well-Organized and Self-Disciplined Members

Two qualities you should always expect from your team members are good organizational skills and self-discipline.

You can cultivate these things by building emotions around them and by engaging in an uncertain process that will gradually lead you toward the mastery of these skills.

Of course, not many people know or apply these things, maybe not even you. However, for a project’s team to be amazing, it needs to be comprised of self-disciplined and well-organized individuals.

Team Leaders

3. Find or be an Exceptional Project Manager

Are you the one who’s leading the team? If the answer is yes, you should ask yourself the next few questions:

  • Can you lead by example?
  • Are you a genuine, compassionate, and patient leader?
  • Do you have what it takes to lead your people to success?
  • Would the project work better with another project manager?
  • Do you have to acquire certain skills and knowledge to improve your leadership confidence and deliver the expected results?

Being a project manager is not a simple task, so whether you’re up to it or not is your decision.

If you decide that you want to hire a project manager, well, you need to make sure they are a better leader than you so they can truly bring your project to life and to success.

4. Hire the Best Fit for the Role

Never make exceptions on this. When you hire people, you need to be 100% objective. It doesn’t matter whether the candidate is one of your mother’s friends or your partner.

You should only hire the best fit for the role and for the team. This is ideally a person whose background (experience, skills, and attitude) corresponds to the requirements and expectations that the job role presumes.

5. Look for Resourceful and Influential Individuals

Do you want your team to be resourceful? Then, start looking for resourceful individuals. When you want to make a big, delicious cake, you need to ensure that each piece is well-dressed in the ingredients and that every single component becomes remarkable at one point or another.

Your team should be comprised of people who have professional connections with different organizations, individuals, and/or clients.

Ideally, they should be influential, meaning that people will recognize them as an authority in their corresponding field.

6. Do Your Research Well All the Time

Proper research will save your project from a lot of trouble along the way. Hiring team members who don’t actually fit the job role and the team will waste your time, money, and energy, and the relationships between you two can often end up in conflict.

Before you hire someone, make sure that you research their online presence, which includes social media and Google. Then, you should call the person for an interview and analyze the person in a better style.

Team augmentation is also a great option, as this way, companies can better accomplish most tasks with the help of their permanent internal teams in collaboration with offshore developers.

Lastly, you can convince yourself by challenging the candidate. Assign them a small test or work sample to see how they may perform in the future.

Team Members Planning

7. Seek Proactive Members

Proactivity is an essential component of each successful team. Your project heavily depends on the combined activity of each of your team members.

Employees who take action on their own are helpful assets.

Seek this in your employees, and your project will run smoother and faster than you would expect.

8. Truly Listen to Your Candidate’s Words

While your candidates are speaking, are you truly listening? Do you genuinely care about what they want to say? Or are you just hoping to hear the things you want to hear?

To start, analyze the candidate’s first interaction pitch. See how they approached you in the beginning. Secondly, assess the discussion you had.

Lastly, listen carefully while the person talks during the interview.

9. Prioritize Skills and Knowledge Over Certifications

Seek skills, knowledge, and experience over certifications. Never choose solely based on certifications, as you risk getting unskilled and inexperienced project members that will only ruin your plans.

The candidate should prove they are capable of being productive by displaying their skills and knowledge, and not just a paper that only states the achievement of finishing college or courses.

10. Find People That Are Willing to Commit

For your project to launch and grow successfully, you need people who are willing to commit to work, including risks, setbacks, fear, boredom, and the other negative feelings and situations that can come as a result of hard and smart work.

Gary Michell, an IT Specialist and project manager at Superior Papers, believes that without committed members, every project team sets itself up for failure.

Here’s what he had to note: “During the interview, let candidates know what to expect from the role. Once they have acknowledged, ask them directly whether they feel challenged (and why?) or motivated (and why?) by the project’s goals and by the culture of the company and team that’s going to be present for a probably long time in their lives. Always seek committed individuals!”

Takeaways

Always be careful when choosing your project team members. This is the first key to a proper business foundation that’ll last and prevail. Each of your employees’ unique contributions counts and matters in the end.

When the line is drawn, and the results are visible, you’ll be able to acknowledge the value of your team and the efficiency of your recruiting.



How Do You Choose Effective Team Members?

If you have ideas you feel like sharing that might be helpful to readers, share them in the comments section below. Thanks!

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Alexandra Hayes on Twitter
Alexandra Hayes
Alexandra Hayes
Alexandra Hayes is a social media marketing specialist and creative writer. She enjoys visual arts and yoga. She is also a start up photographer.
  • I love that you mentioned the importance of the communication skills of team members. We want to find a more effective team for our business, and it will be important for us to be confident in who we choose to hire. When we look for members, I will be sure to consider their communication skills.

  • Muhammad Irfan says:

    Hi Alexandra Hayes
    I read and very support me your creative writing about effective team coaching. thanks

  • Your article is really great. Thanks for sharing valuable information with us.

  • Michelle Catapang says:

    These are very useful tips! Thank you for content

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