• We define an A player this way: a candidate who has at least a 90 percent chance of achieving a set of outcomes that only the top 10 percent of possible candidates could achieve.
• Four steps to find the A player:
  • Scorecard - document that describes exactly what you want a person to accomplish in a role. It is not a job description, but rather a set of outcomes and competencies that define a job done well. By defining A performance for the role, the scorecard gives you a clear picture of what the person you seek needs to be able to accomplish.
  • Source - finding great people is getting harder, but it is not impossible. Systematic sourcing before you have slots to fill ensures you have high-quality candidates waiting when you need them.
  • Select - selecting talent in the A Method involves a series of structured interviews that allow you to gather the relevant facts about a person so you can rate your scorecard and make an informed hiring decision.
  • Sell - selling the right way ensures you avoid the biggest pitfalls that cause the very people you want to most to take the talent elsewhere.
• A good scorecard process translates the objectives of the strategy into clear outcomes for the CEO and senior leadership team. The senior team then translates their outcomes to the scorecards of those below them and so on. Everybody in the organisation ends up with a set of outcomes that support the strategy, and competencies that support the outcomes and culture.
• Whenever he meets anybody new, he asks this simple, powerful question: ‘Who are the most talented people you know that I should hire?; Talented people know talented people, and they’re almost always glad to pass along one another’s names.
• What sets Patric Ryan apart is how he actively built his network through referrals, then followed up with high-potential candidates to maintain the relationship. He kept his sourcing network alive and constantly renewed. And because he was disciplined about doing so, he didn’t have to go looking when a position opened up at Aon, including his own job. Ryan was already right in the midst of a flow of great candidates.
• The conversation does not have to be long. We frequently begin with something simple like, ‘Sue recommended that you and I connect. I understand you are great at what you do. I am always on the lookout for talented people and would love the chance to get to know you. Even if you are perfectly content in your current job, I’d love to introduce myself and hear about your career interests’.
• To be a great interviewer, you must get out of the habit of passively witnessing how somebody acts during an interview. That puts you back in the realm of voodoo hiring methods, where you end up basing your decision on how somebody acts during a few minutes of a certain day. The time span is too limited to reliably predict anything useful. Instead, the four interviews use the time to collect facts and data about somebody’s performance track record that spans decades.
• If he or she lacks goals or sounds like an echo of your own Web site, screen the person out. You are done with the call. Talented people know what they want to do and are not afraid to tell you about it.
• Better to miss out on a potential A Player than to waste precious hours on a borderline case that turns out to be a B or C Player
• Chronological walk-through of a person’s career. You begin by asking about the highs and lows of a person’s educational experience to gain insight into his or her background. Then you ask five simple questions, for each job in the past fifteen years, from the first to the last:
  • What were you hired to do?
  • What accomplishments are you most proud of?
  • What were some low points during that job?
  • Who were the people you worked with?
  • Why did you leave that job?
• You have to interrupt the candidate, there is no avoiding it.
• It is through maintaining very high rapport that you get the most valuable data, and polite interruptions can built that rapport.
• The Five areas of selling are: Fit, Family, Freedom, Fortune and Fun.
• Emotional intelligence is important, but only when matched with the propensity to get things done.