263 - Positional Fluidity - Hiring

The inverted capacity

We’re doing a lot of hiring at Mayday at the moment. It feels like a great time to write about the subject, both to share my learnings, as well as organise my thinking for practical application.

This is a post that is specifically relevant to us as an early-stage startup growing our team from 6 to 13 people. 

The inverted full-back is all the rage in top-flight football (soccer): the player who forms part of your defensive line when defending, but converts into an additional midfield player when attacking. That positional fluidity provides increased tactical options for the team.

Positional fluidity is really just another way of saying versatility. Growing from 6 to 13 enables us as a business to bring in more specialist skills than we had before. But we are necessarily still very generalist. And priorities remain dynamic at our stage of business. Some degree of positional fluidity is essential. It gives us the tactical options to pursue what needs to be done.

I’ve found a useful hiring heuristic for this. Imagine previous situations where we’ve needed to call on team members’ positional fluidity. Map those situations onto the candidate I’m interviewing. What response do I imagine I’d get? If resistant rigidity then that’s a red flag and I need to pull the thread as to why. Potentially they’re not the right fit for our stage.