It’s no secret that FRC teams need structure and separation between different areas of expertise. Our team is looking to select people to lead our different sub teams that include Mechanical, Electrical, Programming, and Business. We were looking for a good interview structure that would help us select the best leaders for their jobs and wanted to create a thread to display everything from other teams’ interview methods to questions that can be used to narrow down the selection process.
Thank you in advance for your contribution to the thread!
What you need to look for in leaders to lead those groups is the following:
Leadership
Communication
Knowledge of subject
Willingness to learn
Responsibility
Ask them how they display those characteristics, and if they would be able to perform well within a team to complete a common goal.
Here you can find our FIRST team management and leadership presentation which shows how to better chose and develop leaders. Full disclosure, this was to be used as a presentation at a FRC workshop, so the presentation was more personal and wasn’t just read bullet by bullet. It is probably best to show this to your prospective leaders. If you have any questions, feel free to shoot me a PM!
Our team decided to structure a little differently this year - we have a “leadership team”, but not individual subteam leads/captains. The reasoning behind this was that it would prevent people from being pigeonholed into one specific task. (Keep in mind, we’re piloting this, so you can certainly try something else).
To be part of the leadership team, students submit an application at the beginning of the school year and then use the offseason to more or less figure out where they’re best applied. Our application looked like this:
Why do you want to join team leadership?
What leadership position(s) are you applying for?
What technical skills qualify you for your desired position?.
What leadership skills qualify you for your desired position?
What other school extra-curriculars are you considering doing?
Describe what you see as the roles/responsibilities of your desired position(s), especially if this differs from the descriptions on our internal website.
Is there anything else you would like us to know?
After multiple years of working with the students who are applying for management positions I doubt there is much we’d learn from an interview. You’ve seen them in action through good times and bad. What we do is students apply in April for the following years management positions. Then the mentors and outgoing co-presidents select from those candidates.
For co-presidents (we usually have three) they give a speech to the entire team, the team ranks their preferences and gives comments, and then the mentors and outgoing co-presidents make the final selection taking those rankings strongly into account. It’s not a straight election so it doesn’t become a popularity contest.
Works for us.
Our team has five departments each headed by two directors, giving us a board of 10 people. The five divisions we have are:
-Mechanical
-Electrical
-Safety
-Team Management
-Public Relations
Within each department, there are four officers with more specific responsibilities.
When our school year starts we begin interviewing our officers in August - September. They are interviewed by our 10 directors and our mentors.
The things we like to see in an interview is how they conduct themselves, their leadership experience, their experience in FIRST, and their interest and time commitment to the team. While knowledge is important we would rather see interest and willingness to learn more about it. We like to see how they value themselves, and why they feel eligible for the position.
Here’s what our leadership structure looks like:
http://team2383.com/images/new%20organizational%20chart.png?crc=3802494027
I find that an interview structure works well when trying to locate talent which may be outside the current organization. However, when selection is inherently limited to those already on board, I prefer to let the team’s experience with the candidates be the primary guide. While I had little to do with setting it up, 3946 has had a policy for several years of **identifying **the leaders rather than **appointing **them. That is, the mentors and existing student leadership recommend candidates to each other based on leadership and peer mentoring already shown; the decision is largely by consensus, but the head coach has a veto.
My team tries to minimize structure as much as possible. For us it was a series of decisions that didn’t really need to be made and provided minimal benefit.
During the off season we try to train students into areas that they are interested in and make sure we have coverage in major areas. Students can request to move into different areas and acquire different skills as they progress through their time on the team. Eventually they obtain enough experience in multiple areas that they are able to contribute as needed instead of being limited to only one department. In build season students are grouped and assigned to various projects or mechanisms in a way that makes sense at the time and utilizes their skills. Students have input on the assignment process and in many cases volunteer for their projects. Students can be assigned to multiple projects simultaneously.
At competition is probably where the most separation and structure takes place. The entire team is divided into drive team, pit crew, and scouting/stands. There are defined handoffs and communications structures within each group and between each group.
It has worked out really well for us and helped us avoid some of the issues that come with a rigidly defined structure. A lot of the friction that occurs in rigid structures comes from not the real leaders in the initial stages and not acknowledging shifting roles and increasing capabilities of students throughout the season.
My team tries to minimize structure as much as possible. For us it was a series of decisions that didn’t really need to be made and provided minimal benefit.
It all depends on what your team is trying to do. If the goal is to give as many students as possible as broad a technical exposure as possible then minimizing structure may be a good way to go.
In our case we see FRC as much a way for students to get leadership and management experience as technical skills. In that case, they need to have something to manage hence the structure of departments each with areas of responsibility is critical.
Our team only has a single mechanical mentor, me, so everything is student managed. Our 50-person team wouldn’t be possible without student leadership of various well-defined departments. I’m basically the manager of the managers.
You could say we should get more mentors. That’s a hard thing to do with our commuter private school where kids meet from 3:15-6:30. Evenings, when most mentors are available, don’t work in our case. The mentors we do find quickly get bored because the students are so self sufficient. There isn’t much for them to do since our rule is that “adults don’t touch the robot.”
Having been a student and now a mentor, I have seen and heard of a couple leadership the selection methods. Below is the one I still prefer.
My past team had 4 elected members, a President, a VP of Business, a VP of Tech, and a secretary. The candidates would be chosen by either nomination or others asking to take a position. We would start with the highest role, President, in case someone running for the position lost and wished to run for a lower position. All in the running would go into the hall way, and one at a time, would come in and give a brief 1-5 minute speech on why they would like to take that position. A minor question and answer session followed, and then the team was allowed 5 minutes to discuss their opinions. Mentors should stay in order to keep conversation constructive. Once all members had talked, each person was given a paper ballad, and then they were collected and counted by mentors in a separate room. Winners were then promptly announced.
Other positions such as Electrical head or Programming head were assigned by experience. If a vote was needed, it was done within the sub team.
Finally, we did our elections at the beginning of the school year before new students joined so their was a set leadership for them.
I have been told by others that some team have the mentors choose completely for them. This is a method that can work, though in most cases I have seen, students do a good job of picking.
Let me know if anyone has anymore questions about what I said above.