How to hire A-players when you can't compete on salary
Why I spend a third of my time recruiting for our 9-figure company
At Acquisition.com, I spend more than 33% of my time recruiting.
Not managing people, not setting strategy, but actively hunting for our next A-player. People think this is excessive until they see the results: A-players deliver 400% more value while costing only 20% more.
That math is why I consider myself a professional recruiter first, operator second.
Most business owners approach hiring backwards.
They wait until they desperately need someone, post a generic job, then wonder why only mediocre candidates respond. Meanwhile, 75% of top performers never look at job boards.
They’re already employed and maybe even happy enough, but they’re not unreachable.
Here’s the system that gets A-players to call you first.
1. Mine talent continuously, especially when you don’t need it.
LinkedIn’s data reveals that 75% of top performers never apply for jobs.
Which means, they must be approached… thoughtfully.
The mistake most entrepreneurs make is only sourcing when they need someone. By then, you’re competing against every other company with an urgent need.
Oof.
Here is an idea: Every Monday, identify one person you’d love to hire someday.
Send them this message:
“Hey [Name], I love what you’re doing with [specific project].
We’re working through some exciting opportunities here.
Would you be interested in having a conversation and getting to know each other?”
You’re building relationships 6-12 months before you need them.
When they’re ready to move, you’re first in line because you’re already in their network. Think about maintaining relationships with at least 3 people per role you might eventually need. If you’ll need a CFO someday, stay connected to 3 potential CFOs.
For most businesses, this means nurturing 15-20 total relationships.
In the grand scheme of things, that’s a tiny investment for the future of your company.
2. Use the “Why not me?” referral script
Most people ask their network, “Do you know anyone looking for a job?”
This gets you active job seekers, who are typically B and C players. A-players aren’t looking, they’re working.
They are crushing it… for someone else.
Here is a different script that works well: “Hey [Contact], I have a cool opportunity for a [specific role]. Do you know someone amazing who might be a fit?”
50% of the time, they’ll refer someone qualified
50% of the time, they’ll ask, “Why not me?” (This is what you want)
You’re asking for help while planting seeds about interesting opportunities
A-players are connected to other A-players who might be ready for something bigger
3. Use AI to look for the secret A-Player clues
Stop screening resumes for prestigious companies and degrees.
A-player reveal themselves differently, but you have to know what to look for.
Look for these three patterns:
Someone who left a big company for a smaller one (shows courage)
Someone who took on projects outside their job description (shows ownership)
Someone who stayed in a role for 2+ years and measurably improved something (shows results)
Ask:
What’s the biggest professional risk they’ve taken?
What did they build or improve that wasn’t in their job description?
What results can they point to that existed because of their work, not their team’s?
Let Ai do the work for you…
Can you search the web, and professional sites like linkedin and help me find a CMO candidate using this A-Player framework. Find me a hidden gem that will normally get overlooked.
Then paste in this prompt that I created based on the above notes.
# GOAL: Identify “A-player” candidates who reveal courage over credentials
# ---------------------------
# CANDIDATE SELECTION CRITERIA
# ---------------------------
- Look for **Courage**:
• Identify candidates who moved from a **large, prestigious, or well-known company**
→ to a **smaller or less-known company**, ideally with more responsibility.
• Flag career transitions that show willingness to take risk or step into ambiguity.
- Look for **Ownership**:
• Spot signals in role descriptions such as:
“launched,” “initiated,” “built,” “created,” “outside scope,” “cross-functional.”
• Highlight examples where they took on **projects beyond their job description**.
- Look for **Results**:
• Find roles held for **2+ years**.
• Extract measurable outcomes or improvements tied directly to their work:
revenue growth, efficiency gains, process improvements, product launches, KPI shifts.
# ---------------------------
# NEGATIVE FILTERS (to reduce noise)
# ---------------------------
- Exclude candidates who only list **credentials** (elite schools, brand-name companies)
but show no evidence of risk-taking or building.
- Exclude **job-hoppers** (roles <1 year with no measurable achievements).
# ---------------------------
# OUTPUT FORMAT (structured summary)
# ---------------------------
For each candidate, summarize in **3 bullet points**:
1. **Courage signal** → example of career risk or big → small move
2. **Ownership signal** → example of project or initiative outside formal scope
3. **Results signal** → measurable impact they directly drove
# ---------------------------
# SCORING & RANKING
# ---------------------------
- Assign each candidate a simple score:
• 3/3 = High Potential A-player
• 2/3 = Medium Potential
• 1/3 = Low Potential
- Rank candidates accordingly in the final list.
For one of our portfolio companies, our best operations manager is a virtual assistant in the Philippines. She doesn’t have a college degree or Silicon Valley experience. She shows such ownership that the leadership hasn’t needed to check in with her once this year.
4. Build to attract A-players, don’t post for them
A-players aren’t scrolling job boards.
They’re watching from a distance to see if you’re worth their time. This means your online presence, company culture, and reputation matter more than your job postings.
Small businesses actually have three recruiting advantages over large corporations:
A-players get more autonomy
They see direct impact on company success, and
They often receive equity upside.
Use these advantages in your outreach messages.
Here is how you can operationalize this:
Share your thinking online consistently
Write about how you solve problems, what you’ve learned from failures
Demonstrate competence and clear thinking through content
Show A-players you’re someone they’d respect working with
When you post content that demonstrates intellectual capability, A-players start following your work. They may not apply immediately, but they’re building awareness of who you are and how you operate.
5. Embrace the A-player business model
Here’s how companies compound A-player success:
Hire A-players wherever you find them
Create challenging and lucrative work (boring work loses them, low pay loses them)
Reinvest all profits into more A-players
Most businesses break this cycle.
They hire one great person, see improved results, then pocket the extra profit instead of using it to upgrade their next hire.
Here is the math:
Calculate the financial impact of your last A-player hire.
If they improved revenue by $200K annually but cost $60K more than a B-player, you have $140K to reinvest.
Track revenue per employee, customer satisfaction scores, and on-time project completion before and after each A-player hire. Most see 2-3x improvement across all metrics within six months.
A-players attract other A-players and elevate everyone around them. When you have three A-players instead of six B-players, everything becomes easier: fewer meetings, less management oversight, faster execution.
Here is something tweet-able, but also helpful:
The businesses that dominate their markets have the best people, hired before the competition knew they existed.
It’s time to dominate.
Wow! Thank you for sharing such invaluable experiences for hiring A-Players! I immediately used the prompt to find the top 3 and so surprised of the results! I never knew the playbook for A-players until now!