Building Your Dream Team – Executive Roundtable

This month we’re focused on building your dream team. So far you’ve heard our own dream team extol the virtues and challenges of hiring entry level people and bringing in leaders from the outside. Now hear directly from some of the companies we work with about how they’ve built their dream teams.

We spoke with Elisabeth Duncan, director of Human Resources at Evive; Jen Meza, vice president of People at Yello; and Jane Price, director of Talent Acquisition at VillageMD. They each share what’s worked, the challenges they’ve faced and what they’re most proud of.

What has worked best for you in building your team?

Jane shared that leveraging VillageMd’s current employees for recruiting has been really helpful. She works with an amazing team of people who live and breathe VillageMD’s core values. She added that they don’t even have a formal program to utilize employee support for recruiting the best candidates. There’s nothing to incentivize employees for this support. It’s just a formal thank you. Employees play a role because they feel strongly about the mission of the company.

For Jen it’s about bringing on what you don’t already have. At Yello, individual teams take the Myers-Briggs, and assess which skills already exist. For example, if someone has a whole team of introverts or extroverts, they can look for other skills when recruiting new members to achieve balance.

Jen rigorously focuses on what’s important to the role she’s looking to fill, but also what’s important to the candidate. Just because someone can do the job doesn’t mean they can be successful. Jen stresses that companies don’t spend enough time on this. They don’t look to explore people’s motivations and drivers. What will light a fire? She also likes to ask candidates what drove them to leave any jobs they’ve left. And when was the last time they felt joy at work?

Final Thoughts

What can you learn from how these HR leaders built their dream teams?

Take your time.

Put the proper interview processes in place and ensure your team is trained to execute them.

Determine which skills you’re missing, seek clarity in the role and job description you’re looking to fill, and focus on alignment with your company’s core values.

Make data-driven decisions.

Provide professional development opportunities to your hires once they’re on board.

And when you need support identifying the best talent available to you, give us a shout, because we’re happy to help.

Matt Massucci