After we rebuilt CI Web Group from 320 people to 38, hiring changed completely. Not because we got pickier about pedigrees — because the job description changed. We are not hiring people to do tasks. We are hiring people to build and steward systems that replace tasks.
That filter eliminates most "A players" on paper and surfaces the ones who actually move a company. Here is how I hire them.
What is an A player in an AI-first company?
An A player is not the loudest voice in the room. It is the person who closes loops without being chased, learns tools without being coddled, and treats customer impact as the scoreboard — not internal politics.
They look like the SME Inversion in human form: expert enough to know what good looks like, engineer enough to encode it, steward enough to improve it without breaking soul. I wrote the three-hand model in Three Hands — builder, operator, steward. I hire for all three signals, even if the role emphasizes one.
When does this hiring model matter?
It matters when you are post-restructure or mid-rebuild — when headcount is down and leverage is up. Adding the wrong person to a 38-person company is not a rounding error. It is an architecture decision.
It also matters when you are still large but feel busy and broke. That is often a hero problem disguised as a talent problem. Fix the system design first; then hire into clarity.
What I stopped doing
- Hiring for keywords. A résumé full of tool names tells me what someone sat near, not what they shipped.
- Confusing culture fit with comfort fit. Culture is accountability — see Culture Isn't Perks. I want people who can handle direct feedback, not people who laugh at every joke.
- Letting managers hire alone. Managers hire for their kingdom. CEOs hire for the architecture. I stay in the loop for every leadership hire and many individual contributors.
- Promising stability theater. I tell candidates the truth: the industry is changing, the company is built for that change, and evolution is the job.
What I look for instead
- Evidence of ownership. Show me something you built, fixed, or improved end to end — with metrics or customer story, not adjectives.
- Curiosity under pressure. I ask what they learned last month that changed how they work. Silence is an answer.
- Client-first reflex. I pose scenarios from The Client-First Inversion. Do they reach for customer benefit or internal convenience?
- Systems thinking. Can they describe how their work connects to data, handoffs, and follow-through — not only their inbox?
The interview question I keep asking
"Tell me about a standard you enforced that made you unpopular." A players have an answer. Comfort hires blink. I am not looking for cruelty — I am looking for ownership. Culture is accountability, and I need leaders who can carry that without me in the room.
Proof it works
The 38 people running over ten million in revenue are not a random elite. They are the ones who stayed, evolved, and rebuilt with us — plus deliberate hires who wanted the future more than the old agency model. Chris and I align on technical bar; I align on values bar. Cousin or not, fail either bar and you do not stay.
Women We Admire and Women in HVACR keep inviting me to speak because I tell owners the truth about talent: your next decade is not "find cheaper labor." It is "find better leverage."
Action
Rewrite one open role as a stewardship brief: what system this person owns, what customer outcome proves they are winning, what they must learn in ninety days. If every role still reads like a task list, you are hiring for 320 — not for 38. Need help retooling hiring for the rebuild? Work with me. Need the room aligned first? Book a keynote.