How To Know You're Hiring Great People

in ,

Recently someone asked me how I get comfortable that I'm hiring great people. Obviously there’s a ton of work that goes into making a hire so I won’t go into all of the detail. But just before I’m ready to pull the trigger there are four checkpoints I use to make sure I’m making the right call.

  1. I can clearly point to something about them (beyond functional expertise) that they can do (or I believe they will be able to do) at a world-class level.
  2. Credible, smart, successful people say amazing things about them.
  3. If I strip away their credentials, I'm still really fired up about making the hire
  4. The reason they bounced from one job to the next doesn’t concern me, it inspires me.

There are obviously lots of other things I could add to this list but I’ve found that I'm generally making a great hire when these four things are in place.