• Hi, I’m Brad Abare

  I'm a make-it-happen guy working with big idea people. I design teams and orchestrate strategy so that great ideas I believe in get done.
  
  I am Jamaica's husband, Foursquare's comm director, Personality's founder, and a catalyst for CFCC.
  
  
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Had breakfast today with James Craft, following up with details for the Foursquare NextGen Summit event next year. I was telling James about the new hire I just made to come on and support the event from an administrative perspective. While filling him in on the details of the new team member, I was also explaining some of my philosophy for hiring. In general, I try to always:

• Hire up. I like to find people that are better/smarter/faster than me.

• Hire trouble makers. I prefer people that will take the ball and run, not stand back and wait for the pass to come. This almost always results in people that stir up trouble, but I’d much rather clean up a few messes than spend my time trying to get people to work.
• Hire strengths, manage weaknesses. I’m all about playing to people’s strengths. This often results in people who are not well balanced. The designer who designs well, but is bad with deadlines. The project manager who is a detail monster but is not good with people. It’s much easier for me to manage a weakness when I know the strengths are being lived out large.

While this is not my definitive hiring process, these are some key components for me.

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