First-of-a-Kind Teams
- People Team
- Aug 19
- 3 min read
Updated: Aug 21
What we’ve learned hiring for the unknown.
By: Ivy Blossom, Senior Manager of Talent Acquisition at Twelve
What’s the job title for someone who builds the first of its kind?
That’s a question I found myself asking often during our ramp to build AirPlant™ One, Twelve’s first commercial-demonstration carbon transformation facility.
Because when you’re hiring in an emerging category—one that didn’t exist 15 years ago—you don’t always get a perfect match. You get builders. Problem solvers. People with transferable experience and a bias toward action. You’re hiring into motion.
We’re building a new industrial category—and that means we’re also building a new kind of team.
At Twelve, we’re not backfilling headcount. We’re building a new industrial category—and that means we’re also building a new kind of team.
First-of-a-Kind (FOAK) hiring is a different game
Traditional hiring playbooks are written for stability: known roles, mature org charts, long hiring cycles. But when you’re building something that’s never been done before, those rules don’t apply.
Here’s what we’ve learned:
There is no perfect candidate.
The best people for this work don’t always come from climate tech. They come from sectors where execution under pressure is the norm—oil & gas, industrials, aerospace, pharma, heavy infrastructure. We’ve learned to screen for thinking style, not just domain.
Org design happens in real time.
The business changes quickly. That means we often scope and prioritize roles while actively evolving the org. Instead of waiting for every box to be defined, we focus on the most urgent problems—and find the people who can solve them.
You hire for clarity under ambiguity.
In interviews, we’re not just looking for polished answers. We’re listening for signs of real-world execution. Can this person move without perfect information? Can they manage tradeoffs and drive alignment? That’s the job.
You must balance velocity with intention.
It’s tempting to move fast at all costs. But building a FOAK facility requires long-term trust and shared context. That means hiring in a way that supports not just delivery—but team resilience.
The surprising advantage of legacy-industry talent
Some of the strongest people we’ve hired didn’t come from climate tech. They came from massive capital projects in more traditional sectors—and brought the operational muscle, systems thinking, and rigor that FOAK execution requires.
And when those people also want to work on something meaningful? That’s when the magic happens.
This is a message I repeat often, especially to candidates from oil & gas, aerospace, or heavy manufacturing:
You don’t have to start over to make an impact. You just have to bring what you know—and be willing to apply it in a new way.
What it takes to build at scale
There’s a lot of excitement around carbon transformation—and rightfully so. But excitement doesn’t stand up infrastructure. People do.
And the people who scale hard tech? They don’t need everything to be figured out.They need enough clarity to move—and enough trust to build.
At Twelve, we’re hiring those people. We’re structuring teams while commissioning plants. We’re designing new roles in parallel with new systems. And we’re learning as we go—what to hold constant, what to flex, and how to build organizations that are as innovative as the tech they support.
For anyone building something new
If you’re hiring for a FOAK—or thinking about it—here’s what I’d say:
You can’t optimize for certainty. Optimize for alignment.
You don’t need to fill every box. Hire for execution.
You don’t have to know all the answers. But you do need the right people in the room asking the right questions.
That’s how you scale what’s never been built before.