_YO
August 24, 2011, 1:03am
20
bcpid:
First, I think you are too inexperienced to do what the in-house team wants, although maybe you know something we don’t. If the CEO gives you the resources and authority to hire a team of people who are more skilled and more experienced than you, it could be a good opportunity. One thing I would also get some specifics about in your conversations with the CEO is the evaluation metrics and timeframe. How quickly are they expecting results? Since you have relatively little experience with implementation, product launch, etc, and their company has relatively little experience with design-driven work, and NPD takes a long time, are their performance evaluation criteria realistic, e.g. they’ll measure you based on how your work, maybe first 3 or 4 pieces, performs in the first three quarters after launch or something along those lines. And if they sell $X of product today, but they expect your work to result in $10X, you need to know they are being realistic with themselves. With so little experience, you need some solid performance metrics in place so you don’t find yourself swimming or working toward completely unrealistic outcomes.
good advice… on the flip side if they have no performance metrics in mind, they may not know what to do with you, how to judge and just tire of the whole thing in time.