A-Players: Who Are They?

Who is an A-Player?

They are the top 10% of talent in the market. A-Players are the cream of the crop. Ones who excel at their current job and are always hungry to learn, do more, and make a contribution.

How to recognize them?

There’re several criteria that help to do that. 

A-Players are:

✅ Smart, deep and curious. Their general intelligence level is high. They ask deep and interesting questions.

✅ Have high standards. They like quality, expect a lot from themselves and others.

✅ Self-starters. They don’t need to be micromanaged (and don’t tolerate it).

✅ Self-motivated. Their inner motivation is enough to achieve great results.

✅ Achievers. They have examples of what they improved in (each) company they worked for. They have a history of promotions at their previous companies.

✅ Have an extremely high sense of ownership. They treat a company/product/project as their own.

✅ Have a high level of integrity. They care about who founded a company they work for and why / what product the company develops and if it’s doing good for people / whether their values align.

✅ Agile, critical and global thinking.

✅ Like their jobs. They are not doing it just/first of all for money but because they enjoy doing it.

✅ Their LinkedIn/Facebook/other social profiles supports fitting criteria above.

If you look at their profile, you’ll notice some of these points:

🔲 The experience is described from a product and business perspective, not just from the technical side.

🔲 High GPA or incomplete education.

🔲 Top university.

🔲 The duration of work in the last three companies is 1,5+ years.

🔲 Positive recommendations in the profile.

🔲 Entrepreneurial experience.

🔲 Volunteer experience.

🔲 Other rare qualities. For example, the experience of living in another country or knowledge of a rare language. Usually, this is an indicator of something "extra".

What can attract A-Players to work for your business?

1️⃣ A company’s mission. It’s a huge motivation. Top talent wants to work with people who have a vision, know where they’re moving, and aim for long-term development.

2️⃣ Level of the company’s management. Intelligent people want to work with intelligent managers. They want to learn, complement and create synergy.

3️⃣ Financial stability (specifics of 2022, it was not so important before).

4️⃣ Opportunity to share knowledge with a team.

​​5️⃣ Opportunity to learn and constantly improve their skills. Both hard and soft.

6️⃣ And the team itself. We always make introduction calls with future colleagues. It often affects a candidate’s decision whether to accept an offer.

Already excited to collaborate with such talent? Contact Maryna Kutko, our acting CEO, to share your request: marina@a-players-recruiting.com