In the hyper-competitive, rapidly moving world of technology…expect to lose employees quicker than your kid cousin lost their pet hamster. According to one cursory Google Search, data shows companies might expect to keep employees for an average of ~2 years. And those are for well known, growing companies!

So, provided you’ve been tasked with the herculean effort of recruiting, building and maintaining a team – what is there for a manager to do?

Build a bench of course.

From the perspective of someone who has had to build, and then struggle to rebuild teams, here is a process with some guiding questions to help one’s efforts:

• What are the roles on the team?
  • How many functions need to be filled?
  • What are the different levels per function?
    • Ex. Entry / Mid Level / Senior / Team Lead / Manager
  • What constitutes the attributes and skills of team members at each functional level?
  • How many positions needed for each level?
    • Ex. Team of 10: 1 Manager, 1 Team Lead, 2 Senior, 4 Mid Level, 2 Entry – likely no perfect answer here
• Who is on the team today?
  • How do the current members of the team index against the function & seniority model?
    • If it’s 80%, let’s keep going. If it’s <60%, probably time to make recruiting the #1 goal and save this exercise for later 🚫
  • How would one rank the current team members?
    • Be honest! No need to share this with anyone. In fact, don’t. It’s for your eyes only
      • Who needs to be retained and can grow into more senior functional levels?
      • Who should be retained as a solid contributor?
      • Who might not be a fit for the mean, lean, fighting machine outfit you’re putting together?
• Who is needed on the team tomorrow?
  • Based on open roles & growing team members, leave some space for both. Keep bringing in strong new candidates and resist putting a ceiling on high performing current team members
    • For personal growth, promoting internally is a weapon to leverage for high performers without having to look externally
• What are the scenarios when the plan goes to hell, every 1-2 years?
  • Visualize the model above and play with it – what if Katherine leaves? How about Tommy? Peter? Mary?
    • Better yet play the scenarios through with your boss / department head. Because one of them will come true..

Hope for the best and prepare for the worst. And pack for the long unpredictable journey. Good luck!