A is for “ability” A is for “attitude”. The right ability plus the right attitude adds up to an A player. For the last few years, I had conducted numerous phone interviews to screen potential remote contract workers in the statistical programming area. I have to admit that this is not an easy task to do. Some candidates we identified and later found that they were just talkers not walkers. This type of workers, I labeled them as C players. B player is the one who has the ability but the attitude (I am not talking about high maintenance attitude here) may need some adjustments (for example, take more aggressive ways to make the deliverables or to update project status). From experience, we can move the B player to B+ or A- but we can never make a C player a B or an A.
It is very easy to misjudge a C player as an A. If you could share with me any questions to ask that will prevent me from hiring a C player, please respond to the post and I would like to learn it from you.