What can one do now to be more effective in hiring in the future?

Question

In the future, I hope to be a startup founder or an executive at a company. A key component seems to be able to recruit a strong team. Things are generally going well for me professionally (and I&rsquo;m happy at my current job for now), but I feel that I could be doing more to expand my network and my ability to recruit a strong team in the future. So my question to you is:What concrete steps can a person take now to improve their ability to attract and hire a strong team with a diverse set of skills in a couple years?A few ideas off the top of my head: - Try to have more ambitious and visible professional accomplishments at my current job.- Blog more about lessons I've learned at work.- Attend more technically oriented meetups / conferences (although that seems difficult lately due to COVID).- Put more effort into keeping in touch with past colleagues (although one downside is that my past peers have a similar skillset to me and I would want to find people to help balance out my skillset).- Put extra effort into trying to recruit people for my current company. - Work for a few years at a larger company where I get exposure to experts in a variety of technical roles. (I work at a small startup and get exposure to a limited number of people).- Find and attend more startup-related meetups (how to find such meetups with strong people)?No matter how I slice it, it seems like forming such connections is going to be difficult (but of course, very valuable). Especially gaining visibility in domains where I&rsquo;m not an expert. Any thoughts you have would be appreciated! If this post takes off, I'll put the results into a blog post :)

ss48 · Accepted Answer

You got the developing connections part down. In addition, I think a strong team is cultivated over time at a company, and in general is very difficult to recruit from the start. Recruiting is not just about finding the best people at the time, but about how they can fit into different areas your company needs to succeed. It's important to recruit people with experience to bring difficult processes and technical challenges under control in well-defined domains, people to communicate information between domains, and additionally people with a capacity to learn and adapt into new roles they find are lacking in a company or where there is an opportunity for things to be better. In addition to focusing on people, it's also valuable to focus on the structure of the company, the duration over which you will need those people to work with you, and the resources and opportunities they are given to support them. When those things are clearer and clearly communicated, it's easier for people to find a place and role in your company. As the company grows and develops, you will have an opportunity to adjust these to what you are looking for and with your team is and team members are looking for.