How to Build a Talent Pipeline of A Players

Most businesses are in reactive mode when hiring and settle for B Players. Predict when vacancies are going to happen through continual and vigorous coaching of your team and build a talent pipeline of A Player candidates who will raise the talent bar in your organization.

• Define the A Player standard—those in the top 10% of the talent pool. Without it, you’ll default to average and mistake familiarity for excellence.

• A Players don’t show up through job postings and Indeed. They’re discovered through active rifle-shot and guerrilla recruiting.

• Hire a talent coach, a resource dedicated to the attainment of 100% A Players through recruiting and coaching.

• Reactive hiring limits velocity. The best companies always recruit top talent, whether they’re hiring today or not. Constant, measured coaching by your managers will enable you to forecast where you have B Players you need to upgrade.

In the Scaling Up framework, there are four critical decisions every business must master: People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash. While Strategy is the first conceptual decision—defining the company’s direction and competitive position—People must come first in practice. Without the right team in place, you can’t execute the strategy, drive flawless execution, or generate the cash flow needed to scale.

Unfortunately, most businesses don’t have a talent pipeline, let alone a talent pipeline strategy. When a vacancy comes up, most go into panic mode. Instead of a targeted direct sourcing process led by a highly skilled recruiter who can spot a Rembrandt in an attic, a hastily constructed job description and posting is cobbled together by “HR,” hoping to attract some retread on Indeed who is not at all engaged in his present company’s success. You rationalize that bad breath is better than no breath, and that mistake keeps you playing small and not attracting the top talent that becomes a flywheel for success.

It doesn’t have to be this way!

At A Player Advantage, we’ve built the world’s most rigorous and results-driven People practice within Scaling Up. Our clients don’t hire reactively. They understand how to build a talent pipeline grounded in operational excellence, real performance data, and a culture of accountability.

Creating your talent pipeline starts with a mindset shift: you don’t scale a company by hiring on hope. You scale by engineering a system that continuously sources, assesses, and develops top 10% talent. This system includes clear A Player standards; ongoing assessments; role clarity through Job Scorecards, Performance Profiles, and A Player Agreements; and relentless discipline in recruiting and development.

The payoff? Velocity. Valuation. Culture. Margin. Our clients routinely increase EBITDA while reducing headcount—because they’ve built a business that runs on A Players—fewer, better people making more money for everyone. These elite talent pipelines make all the difference.

Most CEOs have a blind spot. They assume that tenure equals performance (and compensation), and confuse “nice” with “necessary.” But when we begin working with a leadership team, we usually find that only 10–30% of their people meet the A Player standard.

That’s not an indictment. It’s a wake-up call.

At A Player Advantage, we begin every engagement with a quick Scaling Up Talent Assessment. First, the CEO and their executive team grade all current employees using a 3×3 performance/core values matrix. Are they meeting or exceeding their goals? Do they live the company’s core values? We then overlay leadership self-ratings to surface blind spots and misalignments.

This process reveals the true talent density of the organization—and provides the roadmap for coaching up, coaching out, or doubling down.

And we don’t stop there.

A Players aren’t subjective. They’re measurable. They are the top 10% of the industry for the compensation you can offer. They model your core values and behaviors. Finally, the quick acid test: You’d enthusiastically re-hire them.

Using Scaling Up’s proprietary A Player Talent Analyzer™, we assess team members across ten dimensions, including productivity, coachability, cultural alignment, consistency, and team impact. This is not a personality test or a 360-degree review. It’s a scorecard-driven diagnostic tool tied directly to business results.

Once you’ve run your team through the Analyzer, patterns emerge:

• B Players who “do just enough” but never shine.

• Toxic high-performers who hit numbers but damage morale.

• Loveable slackers who skate by on tenure and likability.

You begin to see how many of your team members you’d actually enthusiastically rehire—and how many should be seeking out other job opportunities.

And that’s the ultimate test: If you wouldn’t enthusiastically rehire them, why are they still on your team?

Most job descriptions are HR formalities. They’re vague, outdated, and often written after the hire. That’s backward.

Instead, we build Job Scorecards—strategic tools that inform the hiring process and define success before recruiting even starts.

Each Scorecard includes:

• Strategic Importance of the Role—What this role exists to do.

• Key Outcomes—Measurable 90-day and annual results.

• Competencies—What potential candidates must be able to do.

• Core Values Fit—How they must operate and collaborate.

This clarity becomes the standard by which you select potential candidates and coach employees. It also becomes the basis of our Performance Profile and A Player Agreement, a mutual commitment to outcomes, values, and performance. Combined with the Job Scorecard, this trio of performance tools is the best in the industry for fast-scaling growth companies (they are also better than the Fortune 500s).

There’s no ambiguity. No wiggle room. Just aligned expectations and measurable results that drive your business goals.

A Players don’t apply to job ads. They’re not lurking on job boards. These top potential candidates are busy creating results for other companies—often right under your nose.

That’s why our talent pipeline is fundamentally different. We don’t wait for resumes to come in. We don’t outsource culture to generalist recruiters. And we don’t rely on hope.

Instead, we use a direct-sourcing rifle-shot and guerrilla recruiting model powered by a dedicated Talent Coach.

This dedicated role proactively builds a bench of high-potential talent, yielding potential candidates who are:

• Sourced through networking, referrals, and research.

• Warmed through strategic outreach and content.

• Assessed through the A Player lens, before there’s even a job open.

Over time, your company becomes the place A Players want to work—not because you posted on LinkedIn, but because you built a reputation as a high-performance team that gets results. That’s the magic of a well-honed talent pipeline.

It’s the same proactive approach a world-class sales team uses to build a pipeline of leads. We just apply it to talent.

Most hiring mistakes stem from poor interviews. Too much small talk, too few data points, and way too much reliance on “gut feel.”

We implement a Topgrading interview process, which includes:

• A well-thought-out Job Scorecard, Performance Profile, and A Player Agreement™, all prepared in advance using Real Intelligence (RI) so we know exactly who we are looking for.

• Topgrading career history forms completed by the candidates in detail, highlighting their proven performance in roles similar to yours.

• Topgrading interviews done in chronological order to surface patterns of bottom-line results, not rehearsed answers.

• Real reference interviews—arranged by the candidate, conducted by your team.

The best companies don’t treat hiring as a one-off event. They build their talent pipeline into their operating system.

Here’s the cadence we install in our clients:

• Annually: Strategic talent and development opportunity planning are aligned with revenue and margin goals.

• Quarterly: Progress towards building a team of 100% A Players is reflected in the One Page Strategic Plan (OPSP) in terms of metrics and rocks. In addition, key hires for the quarter are identified.

• Monthly: The talent coach calculates the percentage of A Players using the A Player Talent Analyzer™.

• Weekly: Managers are held accountable for the quantity and quality of the coaching sessions they hold with their direct reports. The talent coach updates leadership on the talent pipeline, sourcing, and hot prospects.

The talent pipeline becomes a rhythm, not a reaction to vacancies. It’s incorporated into your strategic planning, financial reviews, and customer success meetings.

Here’s what we see time and time again:

B Players don’t cause a crisis. They cause drift. They meet minimums. They keep their heads down. You justify, they’re “not that bad.” But they stall innovation. They pull focus. They lower the ceiling of your entire team.

One of our sharpest clients’ insights was this:

“At some point, you can’t drink them pretty.”

Exactly. And the longer you tolerate B Player mediocrity, the harder it becomes to build an A Player culture. Because A Players leave when they’re surrounded by average.

Our colleague Dom Monkhouse states this well:

“A nice side-effect: when you stop tolerating mediocrity, your A Players stay. Nothing drives great people away like watching you protect passengers. Keep the bar high and consistent, and you retain the folks who raise the average.”

So we coach our clients to make the hard decisions early. Promote only those who meet the A Player standard and drive your business performance forward. Coach up, or part ways. Hold the line. Your future team is watching.

Everything changes.

When you build a talent pipeline of A Players:

• You don’t panic when someone leaves. It’s the opportunity to upgrade that you really should have acted on before.

• You don’t waste months replacing key roles.

• You don’t dilute your culture with “safe,” average hires who are actually quietly killing your business.

• You move faster, hit bigger goals, and raise your company’s valuation.

Most importantly, you create a business that’s actually fun to run again—because you’re surrounded by people who execute, grow, and inspire.

This is not just theory. It’s what we help our clients do every day.

If you’re serious about building a high-performance business with an elite talent pipeline strategy, you need to be equally serious about the people driving it.

At A Player Advantage, we’ve built the leading People practice inside the Scaling Up framework—one trusted by growth-stage companies and private equity-backed firms alike. Through our Talent Assessment, A Player Analyzer™, and rifle-shot recruiting system, we help CEOs build teams worthy of the future they’re trying to create.  

Through this approach, our clients who have been diligent in creating an A Player talent pipeline are making record profits and are having a blast working with high-performing, self-motivated people.

Are you ready to stop hiring on hope and start recruiting like a growth company?

Let’s build your talent pipeline.

Rick Crossland is an internationally known expert and thought leader on A Player talent. A leading certified Scaling Up coach and the author of the acclaimed business book The A Player, Rick’s innovative approach to recruiting, interviewing, validating, and developing high performers—A Players—has been featured in leading business publications such as Inc.com, Entrepreneur.com, Fortune.com, Recruiter.com, Columbus CEO, and Leadership Insights. With clients around the world, his expertise helps businesses scale by building high-performance teams that drive superior results. Follow Rick on LinkedIn and X (Formerly Twitter).