Rebecca Haden: Crewing Up Fast

We crew up for a new project every few weeks here. Mostly it's a matter of emails or tweets of invitation. Sometimes we need somebody new, though, and then I can feel for the frustration of clients who try to put together their own teams.

If nothing else, the time involved in tracking down team members can be enormous -- more so if you don't really know where to look.

Determine what team members you need before you go looking. I do websites with anywhere from two to seven people, so there isn't a general checklist. List the tasks and then find the people to do the jobs.

Here's how to speed it up:

First, think about what you can do in-house -- really. I'm not against in-house work, by any means. I've been the in-house person before. But I've also seen a lot of projects grind to a halt while the in-house people try to do jobs for which they really don't have the time or the skill. However, sometimes you can get a lot of your jobs done in-house. I do a lot of my own photography and video work when the highest quality isn't needed, and I have very good speakers and musicians on hand. You may have workers with talents you never realized they had. Just be realistic.
Second, look at what can be bought as stock. You can buy a simple template, a good photograph, or a loop of background music. Sometimes you can even get these things for free. Sometimes, of course, buying these things doesn't solve you problem. If it takes you hours to sort through the choices, and then you don't know what to do with the file you've bought, you haven't saved anything over hiring a pro.
Third, look for a professional. Once you've narrowed your list down and determined who you really need to hire, you'll need to find people to do the work. If having a local person is important to you, type "photographer, Yourtown" into your favorite search engine. If you're flexible about location, try oDesk. I recently found a terrific video guy there -- he happens to live about four hours from me, so it may be ironic that I found him at oDesk, the global marketplace. However, the process was simple and successful. I think the key to speedy success with either approach is to know what you want and communicate it clearly.