Top Traits to Look for When Adding Members to Your Team

As you’re building your new startup team, there are some things you want to consider.

You want to put together an effective team that not only has the qualities necessary to do the job, but you want a team that works well together and has strengths that are complimentary.

A good team is the team that propels your startup into the future and with maximum productivity and growth.

In this article, we discuss the top traits to look for when adding members to your team.

Strong Organizational Skills

It’s not good for your startup to have employees in chaos. You want to hire skilled workers who are capable of staying organized and on-task.

This applies not only to your leaders but to your worker-bees as well. Everyone needs organization skills to thrive.

A Commitment to Mastery

It’s one thing to learn a skill and forget it and another thing to master it.

You want to hire a team dedicated to mastery. Lifelong learners want to learn and master skills. They want to bring them to your startup to help you succeed.

Skills are constantly changing in our digital age, and you want to look for team members who want to keep learning and growing.

A Strong Work Ethic

This trait is vital to your startup and one you might have a hard time finding.

Look for this trait in every team member you hire. You want to really check references on this one as it can be the best way to gauge a potential candidate’s work ethic.

A Commitment to Integrity

Honesty is a key trait in a team that works well together.

When you hire employees, who are committed to integrity, you end up with team members who are trustworthy, respectful, and reliable.

These people take responsibility for their actions, both positive and negative. They are better able to recover from their failures and learn from them.

Bottom line – they won’t compromise you or your business.

Ability to be Flexible

Rigid employees are hard to work with and often cause conflict in teams.

Because of this, look for staff members who can be flexible. This inherently makes them more collaborative.

You can bet you’ll have office conflict many times, but if you hire flexible people, you’ll be better able to handle it.

Create a diverse team that is respectful enough to be flexible in the tough times.

Good Communication Skills

Finally, you want people with strong communication traits.

Check out verbal, written, and body language. During the interview, observe their body language and watch how they speak. Look over their resumes carefully.

You can tell a lot about their communication skills during the interview process. Be sure and let multiple people interview your candidates so you can get different viewpoints on the candidate’s communication skills.

Final Thoughts

Hiring is one of the hardest things you’ll do in your role as a new business owner.

It can be hard to find qualified, honest, hard-working team members.

You want someone who can do the job and do it well, and you want to make sure they have a strong, proven track record, too.

The resume is important but do go beyond the resume. Check references. Consider having candidates do a project so you can really see their work.

In addition, have several of your current team members present during the interview process . This helps you have several opinions and people to bounce ideas off of.

Concentrate on the interview, too. Ask the important questions like:

• What was your biggest challenge, and how did you overcome it?
• What was your biggest mistake? What did you learn from it?
• Do you think of yourself as a lifelong learner? What are your favorite topics?

Combined with the top traits to look for when adding members to your team, use the interview process and your current employees to help you find the best new team members for your startup.

 Are you a new startup ready to succeed? Are you looking to get your new business off the ground and watch it rise to success? We are here for you. We can help answer your questions and guide you through the process. Outsource your HR duties, finances, payroll and more to us. Contact Escalon today to get started.

Image: Perry Grone on Unsplash