How to hire best-in-class players for best-in-class teams

I am, by nature, a 100% team player. I love the energy of watching a team search for solutions to difficult problems. I love seeing people think about one another, challenge each other, argue, inspire each other, and bring different strengths to the table. There is something incredibly rewarding about feeling part of a shared result while clearly understanding your own contribution to it.

And I absolutely love building high-performing teams. And I’m good at it.

Most of my people are top-tier players. My teams have consistently been among the most visible, effective, and high-performing teams in the companies where I have worked. I have continued working with many of the people I hired for years. Some have followed me from one company to another. Others still work on my projects as freelancers. We recommend one another, stay in touch, and keep finding ways to work together.

Of course, I have made hiring mistakes too. But that is a story for another day. Today I want to share the four rules that help me hire exceptional people and build teams that actually perform.

Rule 1: Define your ideal candidate

The first step is understanding exactly who you need. It sounds obvious, agreed, but it is not always as clear as it seems.

Once, I was hiring a product manager for a new team responsible for launching new products. I was covering most of the strategic work myself, so initially I thought I simply needed an extra pair of hands: someone who could break my ideas down into user stories and move them through to release. Similar to all the other product managers in the company. Nothing new at that point.

But I did not like any of the candidates.

I put our poor HR manager through endless rounds of searching and interviews before finally realising what the actual problem was. What I really wanted was a senior product manager capable of independently owning the entire process, from discovery to delivery. Someone I could confidently hand over the work I was currently doing myself. And that was a completely different candidate profile.

This is why I never start with a generic job description. Instead, I describe in detail the kind of person I need, the exact responsibilities I want them to own, and how the ideal candidate profile looks to me.

Yep, it is basically a Tinder profile screening.

Rule 2: Be honest about what it is like to work at the company

My former boss called this part of the interview process “The Intimidation Stage.” I loved the phrase and immediately stole it for myself. (Thank you, Alexandr.)

I now make this stage mandatory. If there is a difficult colleague the candidate will need to work with, I tell them. If overtime sometimes happens, I tell them that too. My goal is to give the candidate maximum transparency. No fine print that later grows into an elephant in the room.

Of course, as a cunning hiring manager, I balance the “Intimidation” with “Promises” and “Opportunities.” Because lots of them are there.

After that, the candidate can either accept the reality of the role or decide that it is not right for them. And that’s fine. I am not looking for average. I’m looking for an ideal match.

Yep, again — Tinder-style hiring.

Rule 3: Run an AI bullshit check

We recently hired someone at VP level. Not into my team, but someone I have to communicate with a lot.

Her résumé looked excellent. She performed brilliantly in the interviews. A month into the job, she generated an official company document for clients.

Honestly, I’ve no idea how it was even possible to make it that bad. Perhaps she somehow still had access to GPT-3. But the document was not only full of grammatical errors. She had not even bothered to remove the garbage tokens left in the generated text.

Fortunately, we identified the problem quickly, and she had to be let go.

The way a person uses AI is a perfect indicator of how they approach work. If someone generated a CV and did not even bother to read what it said, or at least make the AI-generated nature of it slightly less obvious, how are they going to build a best-in-class product? And how could they possibly set the right direction for an entire company?

So we had to introduce an AI bullshit check for individual contributors, VP-level hires, and even C-level candidates. I really recommend that you do the same.

Rule 4: Try the candidate on the team

I learned this from one of my colleagues during my time at Semrush. Before making an offer, he would say: “Try the person on the team.”

In other words, look at the team and the candidate together and see whether the person fits — like a piece of a puzzle.

That is why the final stage of our interview process brings the entire team together with the potential candidate. We observe how the conversation flows and whether the person genuinely fits into the group.

One more tiny trick: the team knows that they can say the final “no.” And if the team says no, I will accept that decision. Even when I personally loved the candidate. Even when we urgently need to fill the position.

In the end, the newcomer starts out as part of the team and performs from day one.

The main point

A great team is a business superpower.

But there is something even more important. We spend a huge part of our lives at work. I want to create an environment where people genuinely want to spend that time, where work feels good — if not 24/7, then at least eight hours a day, five days a week.

So far, it seems I am doing something right.