What is the greatest challenge you have as a leader in your organization? Most executives agree that recruiting and retaining talent is high on the list. Building a research team with the needed skill sets, while also creating the right team dynamic, is like putting together a puzzle without a picture. As you think about putting together your team, consider the following skill sets – your pieces in completing the puzzle:

Curiosity Breeds Innovation
While being curious might not be listed in a job description, having a team member that is naturally curious is a must. Children have a wonderful sense of curiosity, continuously asking “why”. When considering a person for your team, you want an individual who has kept that inquisitive nature to continually drive forward thinking. Some might call this the “big picture” person and having someone thinking at a high level is great. The naturally curious person, though, is equally adept at digging into the details, consistently asking why, what, and how.

Art, Meet Science
Looking from the outside in, research quite often looks like a compilation of numbers and left-brained activity. When research is viewed in the right way, however, it is a harmonious blend of art meeting science. Data from a research study will be used to answer a question – a fact-based endeavor. How the results are interpreted and acted upon is a creative process. Perhaps you’ll find this mix in one person, or maybe there will be different team members that fill these roles, and the combination of their efforts will produce a directional masterpiece for moving your business forward.

Keeper of the Weeds
This final piece of the puzzle is not groundbreaking insight, but it is worthy of page space. If you were to rank skill sets desired for your team, having a detail-oriented project manager should be towards the top of the list. Research has lots of shifting parts that keep it moving forward. A successful research team requires team members that live and breathe in the weeds of research: someone who thinks about timelines, sample size and questionnaire design.

Recruiting the right talent for your team is most definitely a time-consuming challenge. Viewing the skill sets needed for your team as pieces in a puzzle can break the challenge into manageable parts. What have you done to make the recruiting and hiring challenge easier?

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