What if there was a single question that could tell you NOT to hire someone?

I’m fascinated by this thought.

Is there a specific question that can help you understand who not to hire if you are focused on building the highest performing team in the world?

Recently, I had a conversation with former Navy Captain David Marquet. He told me about a 10 year study where they set out to find a sole question that could determine if someone was not going to be a top performing member of a world class team. Think a Navy Seal unit.

Note: This is solely looking for top 5% performers, this does not mean that someone will not be a good team member.

They uncovered that the question to ask was:

“Did you feel at your last job that you were appropriately appreciated?”

Any person that says no, they didn’t appreciate me or they were lucky to have me is a fail to the question. It indicates entitlement mentality, this behavior cannot be fixed.

Even if people were actually treated poorly, the best team players and performers in the world never cast blame and always take the blame.

It’s an interesting thought experiment to say the least.


Assist is the leading platform powering automation for businesses on messaging and voice. Say hello hi@assi.st or check us out here http://assi.st.

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Jamie Larson
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