If you’ve ever been in the position to hire someone for your team, you know that it can be a fun, interesting, exciting but also a challenging, stressful and confusing process. Usually, you are pressured by your manager or time and money are limited. You might even find yourself in a position that you’re not sure what to look for.
Before you ask yourself (or, even worse, me) what does a designer have to do with this, let me clarify: A designer is a person who understands problems and tries to solve them. These problems are not necessarily “photoshop” problems, if you know what I mean (wink wink, nudge nudge).
A designer is all about communication. A designer demonstrates a can-do attitude on a daily basis. A designer, ladies and gentlemen, is a risk taker, a passionate, dependable force of Good, a knight in shining pink armor!
In all seriousness, dear manager, if I were you I’d look for a person that is:
1. Humble
You don’t hear that very often, maybe you even disagree with the concept, but let me explain. People who know what they’re doing, people who love what they do, people who are truly successful, don’t make much noise. They do the work. The actual work that you need them for.
Some honest advertising is welcome, but shameless self-promotion, as we’ve come to call it, is quite suspicious to say the least. Humble people will gladly explain their method and their working process, they should be able to describe their successes as well as their failures, they will share their personal vision with you and they will let you decide whether you want to work with them or not.
As team members, they will demonstrate the power of listening, they will be able to give and receive constructive criticism without unnecessary drama and they will be more than happy to cooperate and work within the team. That doesn’t sound bad, does it? Besides, a humble person is more likely to be…
2. Coachable
The person we just talked about looks good for the job. They seem to have the skills and an attitude that you like. But can they get better? Everyone about to get aboard your team will carry with them whatever knowledge, experience and personality they have.
But since your company is an ecosystem, it needs to evolve and grow and that burden falls mainly on you, dear manager. Therefore, you need people that will want to sharpen their skills, learn entirely new things and accumulate new experiences. The way to encourage that is coaching.
Coaching is a critical management skill, a difficult and demanding art that can lead to extraordinary results. It’s self-explanatory, I believe, that a coachable person will be a delight to work with in this quest. Besides, a person who gets better and better, eventually becomes…
3. Assertive
There is nothing that can make you more assertive than the confidence in your own skills and value. An assertive person, will stand their ground and possibly stand up for other people in a calm way, with the right body language, the right tone of voice and the right way to work around difficult issues.
No matter how laid back your everyday routine in the office might be, it’s inevitable that difficult situations will arise. The dreaded groupthink loop, a conflict among team members, a difficult client or a very stressful deadline for example, can bring out the worst in people.
Besides, an assertive person is more likely to be…
4. Proactive
Team members with a proactive personality will engage often and quickly with anything that business-life throws their way, either good or bad. They are blessed with the magical ability of foresight, they get involved in decisions and they take action.
Proactive people tackle problems as if those problems were entirely their own. Proactive people are likely to correct faulty practices, suggest new procedures and speak up with new ideas concerning all kinds of projects. Simply put, they get things done to the best of their abilities. Quite heroic, noble and knight-like!
One last sneaky and invaluable and shameless little tip from yours truly: TalentLMS provides pre-employment, onboarding, compliance and lifelong training solutions.
Oops! Somebody just dropped the mic.
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