Yesterday at an event, a graduate of our accelerator said that the most difficult and important task for a startup in the early stages is conducting interviews. And I would add that the most commonly voiced problem is not conducting them, but finding experts.

I often come up with ideas for my own startups, and I also test them through interviews and look for experts. There hasn't been a situation where I couldn't find them. How to proceed? A fresh example - I needed people who select locations in films and TV series, i.e., production designers or location managers. Not the most trivial profession. How did I search?

1. I sent a request to my friends and acquaintances, but almost everywhere I got refusals. Only one cameraman promised to connect me with his acquaintance, but we never found the time. This is the simplest method and usually works, but apparently the request was too narrow.

2. I went looking for communities. It took me a couple of days. Because you need to choose the right wording, and often the names of communities don't reflect their activity (everyone loves creativity in naming). This is no exception - the needed group on Telegram is called kinomesto, which, of course, I typed in last. Then I opened the list of admins and wrote a message to one of them (in the photo). He immediately agreed to help me, we conducted an interview, then I wrote to a couple more people from the community, referencing the interview with Alexander. No one refused. And Alexander, during the interview, agreed to give contacts of people and later look at our final product.

I rarely get to the second method; usually, the needed specialists are found among friends of friends. But the second method also works great.
I will gladly analyze difficult situations regarding finding experts in the comments.