Building Your Team - Recruiting the Right People for Your Project

Recruiting for any company, or project for that matter, is a difficult demon to master. Now I’m not trying to say I’m a master, but GravTech Games has drastically evolved in the way we recruit our team. When Brandon and I first started GravTech we were fresh out of college and didn’t know what we were about to get ourselves into; the endless days, the countless meetings, and the repetition of explaining your vision to people over and over again. It can be a grueling process to build up your team at a start-up indie studio, but as we learned early on, "vision without execution is hallucination."

When we started GravTech we were working on a very large project, too large for our resources. We soon realized that there was no chance of finishing the project, in a timely fashion, so we switched gears to a “smaller” project. I remember the original pitch for NORA… and how far it’s evolved since then. What was supposed to be a “small project” quickly became another large project and we soon realized it was time to bulk up and find the people we needed to get this done.

It was a slow process at first, granted we had our focus on other priorities early on, but we started to get the hang of it as time went on. Along the way we’ve picked up some tips I think any start-up could appreciate.

• Don’t hire your friends!

This is one of the first rules they teach you in business school, but I never took too much stake in it until we built the original team. When we started the project we reached out to those around whom we got along with and who had enough skill to get it done. While at first everything is great, you’ll quickly learn that seldom do friends and business go hand in hand. While some can conquer it, a lot of people are unable to separate their personal lives from a work setting when dealing with friends. To be fair, this isn’t always the case (i.e. we have multiple team members we share a friendship with), but you should proceed with caution.

• Stick to the Script

This one didn’t click with me until recently. I have a background in marketing and sales and one would think scripts are my one of my key tools. Fun fact: I hate them. But to the same extent, I need them. Scripts minimize deviations and allow you to navigate and lead through the conversation. Once you start doing 3-4 30-minute interviews a day next to the million other things on your to-do list you’ll be grateful you’re following a page.

• High Versatility = High Priority

This is a pretty simple one. When you’re just starting out you learn quickly that specialization is not the best thing to look for. We seek out people with high versatility, the more hats they can wear the better. Yes, people who specialize tend to have high quality work in their area of expertise, but they tend to be limited in these roles on an indie team. We’ve learned early on that it’s better to have a jack-of-all-trades that can pick up any remaining slack.

• Don’t Judge an Applicant by Their Resume Alone

We recently conducted an interview with a prospective artist for our team. We reviewed their portfolio and after a few minutes of looking it over we didn’t have high hopes for them. We still decided to conduct the interview and within 5-10 minutes in we realized that we were simply misled. This person had been working on projects that are still in development and they couldn’t showcase any of the artwork on their portfolio. There of course is a balance and standards that we look for (e.g. we don’t interview 8-Bit Artists for a 3D game), but remember, until you talk to someone, you really don’t know what you’re dealing with.

• You Can’t Take Them All!

I personally believe that anyone, regardless of skill/experience, can be of great value to a project or team with proper coaching and leadership. One of the hardest things to deal with when recruiting is to make a proper decision on which applicants to select. Sometimes it’s more obvious, then not, but a lot of times you have to sit back and think over everything. While personally, I have seen potential in everyone that we’ve talked to, I also understand that we need the right people for the team and company. It’s a juggling act, because you end up doing off-the-wall things like choosing a lesser skilled person because you know that team coercion is just as important as experience. You have to find the balance your team needs.

Side note: Be polite and send the people you’re rejecting an email saying you’re not moving forward with them. Especially those you may consider in the future.

To summarize, recruiting is a long process. It takes a while to find the right people for your project and for good reason. You should look for qualified, versatile people and only recruit to the needs of the project. It took us a while to get the hang of it, but now we, well at least I, enjoy the process.

By Kevin Gray
CEO of GravTech Games

Why You Need to Plan... At Least a Little Bit

"If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail" – Benjamin Franklin

The first time I heard the above quote, or a variation of it at least, I was sitting in a class on project management. Although it’s stuck with me in the years since, it’s a lot easier to say it than live by it. As creative people, what we want to do more than anything is create, so oftentimes we get an idea of where we need to go and then put our heads down and start running, and we don’t look up until we've accomplished that task. The problem is, the landscape can change so much when you’re not paying attention, when you finally pick your head up and look around, it takes a while just to get your bearings.

But planning is boring, and it’s a lot easier to steer a moving ship right? I won’t argue against either of those points, because to me they are both true. There are a lot of other things I’d rather do than write up policies and procedures and plan the work that needs to be accomplished for each milestone. It’s also definitely a lot
easier to maneuver when you have some momentum. As you keep getting things done the big picture starts to get a little bit clearer, almost like putting down the pieces of a puzzle.

Unfortunately, regardless of how defined your vision is for the project, it’s impossible to get the full picture at the beginning of the project (or at any point in the project really). There are two reasons for this, the first being a lack of information. It’s really hard to plan something when you have a lot of unanswered questions, and sometimes the only way to get answers is to start working on it. The second reason is change. It’s impossible to avoid in any project that takes longer than a few hours because, guess what, we can’t predict the future. You can spend weeks making this amazing, detailed plan that carefully plots out who’s doing what for the next 6 months and the day after you finish, something happens that sends you pretty much back to the drawing board.

So if you don’t plan, you’re going to get lost, but if you do plan and something happens, all that work goes out the window. The trick is to not get bogged down in the planning. It’s just as easy to start running with your head down planning as it is doing the “fun” stuff. You've got to keep things flexible, especially early on where change is the order of the day. A good plan doesn't have to define every step of the way. A good plan gives the team focus; it keeps the vision and goals of the team in constant view, so that when everyone comes up for air, they know where they are, and they know what the next step is. But how do you do it? There isn't a one-size-fits-all solution unfortunately because every team and every project is unique. I do, however, have some advice (and here you were thinking this was just some long rant!).

• Define your milestones – what are the BIG things you need to accomplish for each build/milestone/sprint/whatever you want to call it... And don’t just do it for the current milestone. Look ahead to the next one, and the one after that. It’s important to keep your next few steps in mind because that will allow you to prioritize what needs to get done in the here and now when change rears it’s ugly head. Don’t get too bogged down in the details, especially for work that’s months away. You’ll have plenty of opportunity to flesh that out when you have a better idea of the specifics of what will be required.

• Come up with some sort of capacity plan – how much is everyone going to be able to work this week? This month? This milestone? If you don’t know this than you can’t possibly plan for when things are going to get done. Sure not every task is going to take as long as you estimate it will (some take longer, others less time), but this will at least allow you to see potential issues before they are on top of you. For example, you can see that there might not be enough work for your art team next week, or that there’s no way the design team will get that level built in time.

• Identify your risks and come up with a mitigation plan – This one is crucial and often overlooked. You need to identify areas where problems are likely to occur early, and come up with a way to deaden the impact. This will make change hurt less and will also set you up to deal with unsatisfactory answers to your unanswered questions from earlier in the project (hint: if you have unanswered questions, those are risks).

• Identify your opportunities and come up with a plan to exploit them – Just as crucial as risks, properly exploiting opportunities can allow you to make up lost time, or give your project a boost even if everything’s going according to plan (I’m sure it happens on some projects...).

• Set up some sort of process for everyone to see who’s working on what and when it needs to be done – We started with spreadsheets, then moved to Basecamp and then finally switched to Teamwork. Each time we improved the process, we improved how much we were getting done, especially on time. You have to give your team an easy way to see the big picture, or at least a big chunk of it. Every team’s needs are different so find what works for you to keep everyone on the same page.

Just remember it’s a team effort. Good project management is good people management; the plan is there to help with that. So saddle-up, leave the ego at the door, and prepare for a bumpy ride, because no project is just smooth sailing... that’s all part of the fun!

- Brandon Carboni

Project Manager for NORA