Ethan Evans

I've interviewed, Amazon keeps good records on this.

I've interviewed over 2,500 people.

I've gone through, I estimate about 10,000 resumes, but I know I've done 2,500 interviews in my career.

Oh, I wish I could do it perfectly.

Because of course I've mishired people.

The biggest thing we've learned to look at, and with leaders you can do this more because they have some sort of track record, is almost always looking at what they have done predicts what they are going to do.

So how much can you dig into that?

My favorite trick for figuring out A players is everybody knows to give three references, if you ask.

My trick was I would call a reference and say, hey, who else knows this person that I could call?

And that way I would get out of their list of chosen references because they know somebody else who knows them.

They'd be like, oh, well, Cody worked with him.

And then I would call you and you're not expecting a call.

You haven't agreed to give a reference.

But I'd say I am considering hiring, you know, whatever, Mark Smith.

I know you worked with Mark.

Would you give me a little bit of insight?

And usually you'd be the one if you're like, Mark is awesome.

Whereas you're like, well, I could talk about Mark.

That was my real way to tell who was an A player is is what what were people who weren't sort of the listed references going to say about them?

Plus, what were their accomplishments?