Building the Scratchpad Team: Part 1

Here at “Scratchpad Headquarters” (a secret classroom at UMaine in Orono)--where we thrive on seltzer water, wasabi peas, and Google Hangouts--we’ve been working to grow our team. We’ve known we needed more “manpower” to get the accelerator up and running. The challenge has been figuring out how to do that.

Like a startup, we have limited resources, limited time, and need someone on board as of, like, yesterday. We started our search before we actually had the funding in the bank; if we had waited, we’d be even further behind. Yup, it was a calculated risk, and we ran with it. We put up a few sentences on our website that described what we thought we might want and pushed it out through social media. Then we sent emails, made phone calls, and set up meetings people we already knew. Huzzah!

Then we narrowed our focus even more. We wrote down a bunch of roles and started asking each other a bunch of questions: Which roles did we want to keep? Which roles did we want to fill? What characteristics were we looking for? What does the ideal team member look like?

Interested candidates started asking questions. Resumes started rolling in. Our excitement grew...these folks were stellar, bringing lots of enthusiasm, skills, and connections to the table.

Next we wondered...how would we ever decide among them?