Stop Hiring for "The Chops”

"The chops." "The it factor." You know it when you see it, and that instinct is fine for a hire or two. The trouble starts a few hires later, when you are measuring every candidate against a target that keeps moving and slowly building a team full of the same person. 

Competency-based hiring starts with one unglamorous step, which is saying out loud what "the chops" actually means for this particular role. Here’s how to do it.

When people say "the chops," what do they actually mean?

It depends on who you ask. Ask ten managers, and you will get ten answers, because the phrase's meaning shifts by market and by person, and even two managers on the same team will define it two different ways.

“Startup chops” usually means scrappy, someone who built something in the midst of ambiguity and had real impact on the people around them. 

“Technical chops” means they can actually do the work. In a bigger market, it often means pedigree, a certain school or a name-brand employer standing in for proof. 

Strip away the packaging, though, and "the chops" is almost always reaching for the same thing: competency. Can this person do the job and get things done?

Why shouldn't you hire for "the chops"

Feelings Don’t Guarantee a Great Hire

A feeling is not a hiring standard. You can’t hire consistently against a feeling. When the definition lives only in your head, every candidate gets measured against a moving target, and the safe-looking resume tends to win by default.

That is how good managers end up rewarding pedigree instead of ability, quietly hiring the person who reminds them of the last one who worked out. The whole thing feels rigorous, so nobody stops to question it, and that is exactly where it goes wrong. It is the Emperor's New Clothes, a room full of people nodding along to a word no one has actually defined.

Defining “The Chops” is Your Competitive Advantage

Most companies never do the work to understand their definition of “the chops” in the first place. They let other people (schools, larger companies, etc.) do the work. If a candidate went to the right school or worked at the right company, they assume someone else already did the vetting. The result is that everyone ends up fishing in the same small, expensive pond.

Define the real traits, and you get to fish somewhere else entirely. You start surfacing the self-taught engineer, the operator from a company no one has heard of who quietly ran circles around their peers, the strong candidate that every pedigree filter had screened out. Being strict about competency through defined traits while staying open about the candidate’s so-called pedigree is a combination very few teams actually run, which is a large part of why it works.

Don’t forget about the cost advantage here too. Pedigree carries a premium, and a good share of that premium has nothing to do with the work itself. When you hire on proven ability instead of brand names, you stop paying the logo tax, and you can bring on genuinely excellent people at a fair number, largely because the rest of the market skimmed right past them.

How do you actually define "the chops"?

Turn the feeling into a written list of traits and outcomes, and then you hire against that list every time. It comes down to five steps.

1. Start with your A-player. Name the one person on your team you would happily clone, then write down the traits that make that person effective here, in plain language, without buzzwords. Tie those traits to this role, because the same person can thrive on one team and struggle on another, so anchor the list to the job in front of you rather than a resume signal.

2. Pull out the goals and the traits. Ask what this role actually needs to accomplish in its first year, and what traits make someone good at it here, on your team.

3. Demand evidence for every trait. "Good at SQL" is concrete and easy to check. "Self-starter" is a vibe until you define the proof behind it. A real self-starter taught themselves piano, or started a club in college, or made something nobody asked them to build. Name the behaviors you want to see, and then ask the questions that will tell you if this candidate has them.

4. Hire against the list, every single time. Hold every candidate to the same bar. That consistency is what turns a gut feeling into a standard you can actually use.

5. Accept the tradeoff. A tight, specific bar means you will pass on plenty of good people, and it also means you will stop hiring the wrong ones. In our experience, that trade is almost always worth making.

What about culture fit? Is that the same thing as “the chops”?

That is a separate, important conversation. Culture fit, the vibe check, the question of whether you would happily grab lunch with someone, does matter, and it carries its own set of traps. It deserves a piece of its own, so we are giving it one. For now, the best move is to keep it out of your competency bar. Decide whether someone can do the job first, and decide whether you click second.

The bottom line

"The chops" is a real instinct that just hasn’t been defined yet. Name your A-player, write down the traits and the proof behind each one, and hire against that list every time. You will pass on some good people, you will stop mis-hiring, and you will start finding talent the rest of your market walked straight past.

If you would like a partner to build that definition with you, we are always glad to talk it through.

FAQ

What does "the chops" actually mean? Most of the time it is competency dressed up as a gut feeling, the plain question of whether someone can do the job and get things done. The catch is that everyone defines it a little differently, so it only becomes useful once you write down what it means for the specific role.

Why is hiring for "the chops" risky? It leaves you chasing a moving target. Without a written definition, you fall back on pedigree and gut, which narrows your team and hides your best options, and you cannot reliably repeat a decision you never actually defined.

How do you define "the chops"? Start by naming the A-player you would clone, then list the traits and outcomes the role genuinely needs and require concrete proof for each trait. From there, you hire against that same list every time.

Won't a strict definition make me miss good people? It might, and you should expect to pass on some. In exchange, you stop hiring the wrong ones and start finding people others overlooked, because being strict on the traits while staying open on the pedigree is the trade that pays off.

Isn't this just culture fit? Not quite. Culture fit is the vibe check, a separate topic with its own risks, so it is worth keeping out of your competency bar and handling on its own.