The 'Signs of Excellence' Hiring Playbook
by Luc Levesque • Chief Growth Officer at Shopify
Luc is the Chief Growth Officer at Shopify and a veteran growth leader who was personally recruited by Mark Zuckerberg to lead growth for Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp. He previously served as VP of Growth at TripAdvisor and has advised major tech companies like Twitter, Pinterest, and Canva.
🎙️ Episode Context
Luc Levesque shares deep insights on high-stakes growth leadership, offering specific playbooks for hiring top 1% talent and structuring growth advisor relationships. He breaks down SEO strategies for different company types and emphasizes the critical importance of rigorous self-reflection routines for personal and professional scaling.
Problem It Solves
Identifying top 1% talent effectively and filtering out candidates who look good on paper but don't deliver outlier results.
Framework Overview
A hiring heuristic that predicts future performance based on past outlier achievements. It looks for evidence of repeated success in diverse areas (work, sports, hobbies) and specific social signals like former bosses attempting to re-hire the candidate.
🧠 Framework Structure
Seek 3 Signs of Excellence: Look for ...
The Poaching Signal: Verify if a form...
Involve the Spouse/Family: For senior...
When to Use
When hiring for critical roles where 'good' is not enough and you need 'company-changing' impact.
Common Mistakes
Over-indexing on public persona (Twitter famous) rather than actual operational excellence and grit.
Real World Example
Luc looks for patterns like a candidate being a gold medalist or a founder, and notes that when he was recruited by Zuck, they involved his wife to solve relocation blockers.
The best predictor of future performance is past performance. I'm looking for signs of excellence... repeated success, not just once.
— Luc Levesque