When I saw this session on the accepted session list, my heart melted. 🥰 This session was not in a track that I reviewed, so I had no idea it was even submitted. However, it’s presented by one of my bosses, so I knew I had to go to this!
Note: It wasn’t something where our bosses told us we had to be there – my teammates and I wanted to be there to support Dr. Michelle Smith! It’s that kind of environment where we really do want to support each other when we can!
Not a Gratuitous Dog Pic – She’s a Veterinarian!
Wait… what?! Yes! Dr. Michelle Smith is one of the co-founders of NimblePros, and she is the Managing Director, overseeing the operations. You can also hear Michelle on Julie Lerman & Steve Smith’s DDD Fundamentals course on Pluralsight – as she’s the client in that course! She’s a veterinarian, business co-founder, managing director, conference speaker, has served on non-profit boards, and still has other roles – like mom and wife – too!
How Do You Hire for Dream Teams?
Michelle has been involved in hiring in various roles, especially with both iterations of NimblePros. She talked about this process and how they used to hire when in-person. There were day-long interviews – you’d meet with the team, meet with the hiring manager, have lunch, play games, ask questions, and go through some other interview stuff. At some point in the interview, you’d meet with the team without the bosses in the room, so that you could get feedback from the team without them feeling any pressure from the bosses. After the interview, they would talk as a team about whether their candidates would be good fits. From there, they make their decision.
Did I say “play games”? Yep! When they did in-person interviews, they would play board games with their candidates. As it’s stated on their Who We Are page:
*In our spare time, we like to play board games. Which, coincidentally, is a great way to build teams.
NimblePros website – Who We Are
Yes, it’s costly to bring in many candidates for this process, so you have to be selective with how many people come in for the full process. But of the candidates you’re really sure about, you bring them in and have them go through the process.
How Do You Keep Dream Teams?
You take care of them! How do you do that? Pay them fairly. Give them the feedback they need when they need it rather than waiting for just a yearly review. Get them the training they need to do their jobs. Remember that you have humans working for you – so give them grace and room to do their jobs. Support work/life balance. Remove roadblocks where you can.
In the human part, one of the things that NimblePros does is gives you your birthday off (or as a floating day off if needed). They also do ornaments at Christmas. Something I’ve also gotten in some deliveries have been handwritten notes of gratitude and appreciation!
So, Sadukie, You are on this Dream Team?!
Yeah! 😁 I started with them in March 2023, and they’ve brought me in to work on some awesome ideas. It’s been a great adventure so far. I love that I can work in a place where I don’t have to panic when I have to take time off because I’m sick or my kids need me for . If I’ve encountered an issue with a client, I can talk with leadership about what issues I’m running into and we can have honest conversations about what’s working, what’s not, and how do we get better/move forward. As we’re a consulting company, I have teammates on different projects and am on multiple projects as well. I know though that if I have a question and someone else has expertise on it but isn’t on the project, they’d still offer their skills to answer questions and get us the guidance we need to get stuff done. So not only am I on a dream team – I also work for dream leadership.
Conclusion
I’m glad I was able to catch this session, as I got insight on how the interview process worked in-person. Michelle also mentioned using a similar process for interviewing candidates on another board she’s on. It was great to hear the stories and see the pics – especially of my co-workers who were part of NimblePros v1 and how long ago that was! If you want to know their secrets to hiring, their real secret is on that Who We Are page. 😁