How to form a team of testers?

Question

Business Informatics

I work in the field of software testing. I want to form my own team of testers. To do this, I plan to:
1. Develop a website to receive orders.
2. Launch of project advertising.
3. Search for candidates to fulfill orders remotely.
In general, I plan to deal with organizational tasks.
Question: What pitfalls can arise? How to organize such a project? Does anyone have similar experience in creating such commands?

Answer 1

As for the selection and motivation of the team, recently in our video podcast we recorded an interview with my friend, the head of the testing department, who shared his principles for building a team. How to build a team? Conversation with Head of QA [Interview] . Vasya now has several people in the department who have been working with him for many years and not in the same company. You can't just get that kind of loyalty.
As for the pitfalls - in my experience, they are usually not in the organization and not in the technical aspects, but in:
1. Is there a team, how ready is it to go towards common goals,
2. How to position yourself so that the activity is needed by the market. If you know the pains of the target audience and offer solutions to specific problems, then there are chances. And if you just do what is interesting, with the hope that there will just be a website and there will be advertising (and the analysis of the audience and its needs has not been done, there is no understanding of what people will pay for), a demand study has not been conducted (offering a minimum product, for which people pay), then you can do something for a long time without much success. This is such a resourceful approach. And, unlike the market one, it often turns out that no one is ready to pay for your offer (people do not understand / do not need the value). It happened to me in my projects/startups. :(
Usually, all sorts of startup gurus advise you to make the most minimal product (in your case, a description of testing services with a clearly defined Call to action - what a person / company will receive from you), place an offer where there is a target audience (for example, make an offer on Upwork) and then see if people are willing to pay. If you are ready, then you can recruit a team and take orders. In other words, in most books on startups, it is advised to first check the demand (collect pre-orders), and if it is, then recruit a team for it and organize its work.
You can also look for your competitors (other companies that offer testing services as outsourcing) and see where they are represented, how they are looking for clients. For example, do they have high profiles on LinkedIn? Or on Upwork? Or a lot of publications in the media / speeches at specialized conferences / expert content in social networks (to show your expertise)? Or do they go (judging by the photos on social networks) to industry events (automotive, medical, etc.) to find customers there? In short, when you understand what communication channels bring them customers, you can try to use these same channels.

Answer 2

Install JIRA or something like that, it's a very good system for tracking work

Answer 3

See my answer on team building for beginners