Strategy Survival Guide

Recruiting a team
In Practice: SU GM Crops & Disability Projects
The clear lesson from both the GM Crops and Disability projects is that team recruitment needs to be an
integral part of project planning. The skills, backgrounds and experiences of all the team members –
especially the team leader – will play a major part in determining the success of the project and the tone
/ content of any outputs.
In the GM Crops project, the SU identified early on that the project team would need to be seen as
objective, with no pre-conceived positions on the many controversies arising from the GM debate. For
this reason, the SU deliberately recruited a team containing no experts on GM issues, recognising that
there was no such thing as an expert perceived as “neutral” by all sides. However, the SU ensured that
the team members contained the right set of skills and experience – economic, scientific and policy
development – which would need to be brought to bear in the project.
The SU adopted a somewhat different approach in recruiting the team for the work on Disability.
Drawing on an early draft of the project’s terms of reference and workstream structures, a list of
essential and desirable team skills was identified. This was then matched against a list of known
candidates, drawn from inside and outside the SU. Where candidates possessed the right skills for the
project, interviews were held, led by the team leader. Where gaps were identified in the necessary skills
mix, new candidates were identified through contacts across Government and elsewhere. At all times,
the overall balance of the team was of paramount importance – as was the need to include experts from
inside and outside Government. Although this thorough process proved to be time-consuming (as much
as 12-14 weeks from initial identification of skills to arrival of the final team member), it was essential in
creating the right team for the project.
Strategy Survival Guide – Strategy Skills
Page 48