Chapter 6. Pillar One: Write the Scorecard

Part 8 of 20 in How to Hire A Players: A Guide for Indian Founders← Part 7Part 9 →

This chapter explains how to create a scorecard for hiring A Players in your company. It helps Indian founders understand the importance of results-focused hiring.

A job description lists activities. A scorecard lists results. Activities are how B Players stay busy. Results are how A Players keep their jobs.

Write the scorecard before you speak to a recruiter, post on LinkedIn, or message that batchmate who “might be open”. If two co-founders cannot agree on the scorecard, you do not have a hiring problem. You have a strategy problem wearing a hiring costume.

Part A. The mission

Five to eight sentences. Why this role exists. What would break if it stayed empty. Who the person serves. What “done well” means in one breath.

Weak mission: “We are looking for a passionate sales leader to drive growth and build a high-performance team.” That sentence could be nailed to any door in HSR Layout.

Stronger mission for an Indian SaaS firm selling to manufacturers: “Own new-logo revenue from mid-market factories in Gujarat, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. Build a repeatable motion that a future team can run without heroics from the founder. In eighteen months this role should produce a predictable quarterly engine, not a scrapbook of relationships.”

Part B. Outcomes

Three to eight outcomes, ranked. Each one is observable. Dates and numbers wherever you can do so without lying to yourself. Outcomes are what must get done, not a diary of tasks.

Examples for that same sales role:

• Close ₹3 crore in new ARR from manufacturing logos in twelve months, with at least forty percent from outside the founder’s personal network.
• Hire and ramp two account executives who each run their own pipeline by month nine.
• Cut average sales cycle from 160 days to 110 days by installing a written qualification process the founder no longer has to invent on every call.
• Keep logo churn of the new book under eight percent in year one.

If an outcome cannot be reviewed in a quarterly conversation, it is a wish. Rewrite it.

Part C. Competencies

Eight to twelve behaviours that predict the person can hit those outcomes inside your company, not inside Infosys. Mix craft and character. For many Indian early-stage roles I look for some version of the following, then edit ruthlessly for the seat.

• Ownership: finishes things without a chase on WhatsApp.
• Intellectual honesty: will say “I do not know” and “this is going badly” early.
• Coachability: changes behaviour after feedback the first time, not the fifth.
• Bias for action in ambiguity: ships a version instead of waiting for a perfect brief.
• Respect for the frontline: can sit with a store manager or a ward nurse without condescension.
• Frugality: spends company money as if it were a family clinic’s money.
• Hiring instinct: can tell an A from a C and is willing to say no.
• Communication: writes clearly in English or the working language of the team; does not hide behind decks.

Competencies without evidence language become posters. For each one, write what A, B and C would look like in the first six months. That rubric is what interviewers actually use.

A worked example: operations lead for a clinic-chain startup

Mission. Make three city clinics run to protocol so doctors can practise and patients are not punished by chaos. The person turns founder heroics into a weekly operating rhythm.

Outcomes. Patient wait-time under twenty-five minutes at peak. Protocol compliance above ninety percent on a monthly audit. Attrition of trained nurses under twenty percent. Unit economics of clinic two and clinic three at break-even by month fifteen. A written playbook another city can copy.

Competencies. Calm under irate families. Respect for clinical authority without becoming a doormat. Facility with basic numbers. Hindi and the local language. Integrity around cash and consumables. Ability to fire a charming-but-lazy supervisor.

Notice what is missing. There is no requirement for an MBA from a particular campus. There is no “five years in a Big Four health practice”. If those things help someone hit the outcomes, good. They are not the outcomes.

How the scorecard earns its keep after the hire

This is the part founders miss. The scorecard is not a recruiting artefact you file away. It is the first ninety-day plan. It is the quarterly review. It is the document you open when you are tempted to “give them more time”. If the outcomes were real, time is not a mystery. Either they are landing or they are not.