Recruiting A World Cup Winning Squad

Filed in:
Insight

With the Rugby World Cup in full swing (and many of us at Beringer Tame having already been to the opening matches), we thought we’d have a look at how you can make a winning squad out of your digital team.

Like the Head Coaches of the world’s top 16, there are lots of things to think about when choosing your winning team. It’s not enough to say you want the best, most experienced people. You’ve got to think about how they’re put together, how they’re motivated and how you can be sure they’re right for the occasion.
 

Training camp

Picking the squad starts with the training camp. You’ve got a number of talented, experienced players, all of whom could do the job. But how can you refine them into a perfectly hewn, world cup winning first fifteen?

We’re not suggesting that you whisk candidates away for weeks of intensive physical punishment. But neither do the head coaches sit each player down and ask them why they think they should play for their countries.

Traditional interviewing has its place but shouldn’t be treated as the be all and end all (in our opinion). Task-based selection not only proves who has that little extra to bring to your business, but also who is committed to coming to work for you. Send candidates on treasure hunts round your stores or websites; ask them to present a mock-campaign; have them produce a video about their life and personality. These are all things we ask of potential employees at Beringer Tame, and find it a really effective way of sorting those who are committed and driven from the more pedestrian applicants.

 

 

Team structure

Getting the right ecommerce team structure is vital. It’s no good having lots of nippy players but no one to bulldoze down the opposition. Before you start hiring it’s vital that you know your strengths and weaknesses, where you need to inject some power and how all the members of your team will need to fit together.

For example, do you have an analyst who can feed vital data to the marketers and leadership to help them make the right decisions? Do you have a conversion specialist who can get customers over the line after your marketers and UX people have got them up the field? And do you have performance marketers who can generate play and traffic out of nothing?

 

 

 

 

Complementary characters

As we all know, it’s not enough to just have outstanding stars if they don’t work as team (England football we’re looking at you). Personality and culture fit is just as important.

Personality testing is a great way of seeing how someone will sit on paper; what kind of management style do they have? Will they clash with other members of the team?

Something we do at Beringer Tame is have a mandatory ‘pub interview round’ where the potential hire and the team meet at the pub for lunch and drinks and a couple of light hearted (and sometimes risqué) questions. This is great for seeing whether they slot into the team dynamic or are just not on the same wavelength.

 

 

 

 

Strong leadership

Every Head Coach puts his faith in his captain on the field. The captain is the team’s rudder directing, chastising and inspiring all at once. Having great leaders, or potential leaders, in your team is wildly underestimated.

Not only do they steer the ship on a day to day basis but they directly affect the motivation and well-being of the rest of the team; a bad captain can have disastrous affects on morale.

More than that, however, leaders drive innovation. They inspire the team to go above and beyond, to come up with new ideas and create inspiring plays which might just win the game (and make a lot of money).