The first and most important step to the start of a team is building a team itself!
Recruiting can be the hardest, longest and most painstaking process to account for and the pre-requisites you decide to be important are what will craft your future team. You want to make sure that you ring every bit of information out of your potential recruits that will matter to you. Without first establishing a set of expectations for your team that really sums up what you want you team to do and be, the candidates that come your way will be infinitely disappointing. For my team my initial pre-requisites and requirements were as follows:
My requirements for availability was Sunday-Thursday 10pmest - Midnight+ Playing roughly 10-25 scrims a week..
Special Skills: I wanted my team to do and have talents that normal players of the cookie cutter arts wouldn't normally have right off the bat. So i found most of my folks in pub rooms and taught them the cookie cutter classes after harnessing their original talents into optional plays or strategies. Thinking more inside the box a special skill relative to a traditional class could be anything from: Knowing how to strafe jump, Knowing how to use the Targe, or even knowing enough to crouch jump as a medic to escape.
Hearing: If I played one pub with them and they joked around while i was trying to not only organize my team of random people but them as-well I knew they weren't cut out for the job. For my team a good teammate needed to be able to listen without question. One direction is better than two, or zero. Often times trying out new recruits or scouting for potential players in random servers testing how they talk and listen can come in handy down the road.
Maturity: Competitive play is real, for me i'd played with to many teams, and seen to many attitudes to warrant immaturity. Age wasn't and should never be a fact but how the person acts with the team. If someone sucks one night they need to be able to hear "Yea you were doing terrible, and this is what you need to do to get better." If they couldn't take constructive criticism then i didn't want them on my team.
Personality: This isn't always a requirement with some teams, but for me i wanted a family, a team that would actually be a team, and not just a group of people. So i chose my teammates based on all the above facts plus how they were as individuals: Grumps, Trolls, Rage-dumpers, and Rage-quitters are never fun. With us all that much closer learning our play-styles, advantages, disadvantages, and communications was that much easier.
Recruitment Options: Now recruitment options can range anywhere from finding great pub players by scouring the many different servers hoping to find a pub-star. Looking for people whom know how to move around and be "scoutish" and finding a great arena player, To taking traditional league team routes like posting at the following:
For my team it was a combination of all of these ingredient not including the league experienced players because we wanted to teach and grow into competitive contenders not get someone with a napoleon complex who'd come in knowing more than us. The roster i landed on was as follows: The Knife: Originally a top shelf spy most famous for his name in Hidden Source, I found him in real life rather than in any particularly quant realm of the inter-web. We toyed with competitive spy and found a good balance of understanding and he eventually became a full time heavy in our early days. After some toying with the cookie cutter format we wound up with him on demoman. That That: Found for his great ability to handle scouts and airshot, he made a perfect candidate for my pocket in a thirty-two man server so it was only natural that after having played with him and watching him respond within split seconds to my calls that i'd recruit him. Zclipse: Originally referred to me by take that. He was referenced as the "Soldier, who taught me everything i know" he had alot of experience and amble knowledge of the competitive scene and made a great protagonist for our team. Yuwa Kaynu: Found in a pub as a huntsman sniper with several hours of experience on it. We later swapped him to full-time scout. Toaster: Referred to by kaynu as a great scout, clearly added for being a good partner to kaynu as they had a prior friendship. Of-course one thing i can immediately suggest to anyone regarding building a team is it is entirely trial and error. I see far to many new teams spring up with the first six people they just ran into with decent records, names, or prior experience and fall in a weeks time to shoddy reasons like: Availability, Skill, Teamwork, or just Attitudes. If you see that happening to you, you may want to read the above article much closer. Bottom line is recruiting and building a brand new team is time consuming, and requires a person to really evaluate everyone to the fullest to get the most out of his team. In my team alone we went through several soldiers before we landed on the right combination for our team. So keep trying!
Comments
Hah, I just figured since he's asking to have his hand held while reading, someone ought to help him out.
I found P1. & P2 informative. I've always been the one to lead and manage, but I lack perseverance. Good read, maybe I'll pickup some of my nostalgic childhood dreams and do something productive.
"what it takes to be on a team or building a team." - Goldy
He clearly stated exactly what it took: Availability, Special Skills, Hearing, Maturity, Personality, and Recruitment Options.
Forsaken, maybe you should add, "Reading comprehension" to your list.
RSS feed for comments to this post.