How the Raptors Pick Players: Build a Hiring Process That Tests
What's this episode about?
A good selection process tests every competency you say you're hiring for. This episode walks the Toronto Raptors from strategy to the knowledge, skills, abilities and personality traits they need, then shows how NBA teams test prospects through film, the Draft Combine, interviews and workouts, and how the Raptors used Summer League and the 905 to test players inside the job.
Key takeaways
If you can't say how you'll test a competency, you're hoping for it, not hiring for it.
Break competencies into knowledge, skills, abilities and other characteristics like personality and coachability.
Standardized tests work because every candidate gets the same test under the same conditions.
Unstructured interviews predict poorly. Structured interviews were the strongest single predictor in a major 2022 review.
Stack several tests, each aimed at a different ingredient, and keep testing through the first 90 days.
Full transcript
This is Hiring Without Regret. I'm Ashley Wesley.
Raptors, 2019 champions. Still not tired of saying it.
Last episode I said personality was next, and that I meant it this time. I did. Personality is in here... but inside a bigger question. How do you actually test for any of this?
Here's my call for today. If you can't say how you'll test for something, you're not hiring for it. You're hoping for it.
Let's rebuild the Raptors one more time, all the way through.
The strategy: long, athletic, switch everything on defence.
The values that strategy needs: effort every possession, and no ego about guarding the other team's best player.
Then the competencies, broken into the pieces HR people call knowledge, skills, abilities and everything else. Knowledge... reading an offence, knowing the scheme. Skills... switching footwork, talking on defence, hitting an open shot. Abilities... length, lateral quickness, the engine to do it for forty minutes. And everything else... coachability, how a guy handles a bad night. That last bucket is where personality lives.
Now, how does an NBA team test all of that?
First, film. Scouts watch prospects play real games, over and over. That's the closest thing to watching someone actually do the job.
Second, the Draft Combine. Every top prospect goes through the same measurements and the same tests... size, strength, agility, shooting. Same test, same conditions, for everyone. That's what makes the numbers comparable.
Third, interviews and personality. Teams sit down with prospects, and some bring in psychologists. But here's an honest note from a former NBA front office analyst, Ben Falk. Those combine interviews are mostly unstructured, and unstructured interviews have a pretty weak track record of predicting success, in basketball or anywhere else.
Fourth, medicals and private workouts. Teams bring players in and put them through drills that look like their own system.
Then the Raptors did something extra. They treated the first stretch of a career like a long, real-world test.
Fred VanVleet went undrafted in 2016. The Raptors brought him to Summer League. He earned a two-year deal, and then spent a big chunk of his first season with Raptors 905, their G League team in Mississauga. The 905 ran the same offence and the same schemes as the Raptors. So it wasn't a guess about whether he could do the job. It was the job, at a lower level, with the lights on.
Same with Pascal Siakam. Plenty of draft analysts had him in the mid-forties. The Raptors took him twenty-seventh. Nick Nurse later wrote about how the draft experts wrote both of them off... too old, wrong body type. The Raptors looked past it. A year later, Siakam was finals MVP of the G League championship. Three years later, both of them were key pieces of an NBA champion.
So what does your version look like?
Film is their track record... not the résumé, the actual results, and how they got them. References who can describe what they did, not just whether they were nice.
The combine is a validated assessment. Same test, every candidate, scored the same way.
The interview is where you beat the NBA. Make it structured. Same questions, same scoring, tied to the competencies you picked. A major 2022 review of hiring research found structured interviews were the strongest single predictor of job performance.
The workout is a role play on your real product. Give them a discovery call with a realistic buyer and watch.
And the 905 is your first ninety days. Clear milestones, real deals, regular check-ins. You're still testing, you're just doing it inside the job.
No single test gets it right. The combine misses guys. Interviews miss guys. The trick is stacking tests, each one aimed at a different ingredient.
So what do you do on Monday?
First, list your four or five competencies, and next to each one, write how you'll test it. Anything without a test next to it is a guess.
Second, same questions and same scoring for every candidate.
Third, add one work sample. Just one. You'll learn more in twenty minutes than in an hour of chat.
Next episode, the personality question everyone gets wrong... are extroverts actually better at sales?
If you can't test it, you're not hiring for it. You're hoping for it.
Quick note. This is general information, not legal advice. Before you change how you hire, run it past an employment lawyer. I'm Ashley Wesley. See you next time.
Frequently asked questions
How should I test candidates for a sales role?
Match each competency to a test: track record and specific references for past performance, a validated assessment for traits, a structured interview for behaviour, and a role play or work sample for skill. No single test is enough, so stack them.
Why are structured interviews better than unstructured ones?
Structured interviews ask every candidate the same job-related questions and score answers the same way, which makes results comparable and less prone to bias. Research reviews have found them among the strongest predictors of job performance.
What is a work sample test in hiring?
A work sample asks the candidate to do a realistic piece of the job, such as running a discovery call with a mock buyer for your real product. It shows how someone performs, not just how well they talk about performing.
Work with Ashley
Ashley Wesley is a Fractional Sales and HR Executive and retained-search partner based in Guelph, Ontario. He helps owners design selection processes that test the competencies their sales roles actually need. Learn more at ashleywesley.com.
References
CBC News. (2019, June). Raptors' minor-league team has paid big dividends in championship pursuit. https://www.cbc.ca/sports/basketball/nba/nba-finals-raptors-905-1.5154648
Falk, B. (n.d.). The combine's context. Cleaning the Glass. https://cleaningtheglass.com/the-combines-context/
Fox Sports. (n.d.). Draft prospect evaluation continues to evolve. https://amp.foxsports.com/stories/other/draft-prospect-evaluation-continues-to-evolve
Frontiers in Psychology. (2023). [Article on Athletic Intelligence Quotient and the NBA draft]. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1197190/full
RaptorsHQ. (2020, October 28). NBA draft watch: On the combine, the Toronto Raptors' workouts, and what's next. https://www.raptorshq.com/2020/10/28/21499650/nba-draft-2020-mock-draft-toronto-raptors-hq-combine-nick-nurse-tolzman
RaptorsHQ. (2021, February 6). Reminder: The Toronto Raptors' Fred VanVleet went from undrafted to record breaker. https://www.raptorshq.com/2021/2/6/22269218/reminder-fred-vanvleet-undrafted-player-to-record-breaker
RealGM. (2019). Raptors 905 credited with development of Pascal Siakam, Fred VanVleet, Norman Powell. https://basketball.realgm.com/wiretap/253991/Raptors-905-Credited-With-Development-Of-Pascal-Siakam-Fred-VanVleet-Norman-Powell
Sackett, P. R., Zhang, C., Berry, C. M., & Lievens, F. (2022). Revisiting meta-analytic estimates of validity in personnel selection: Addressing systematic overcorrection for restriction of range. Journal of Applied Psychology, 107(11), 2040-2068. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000994
Disclaimer: This episode and page provide general HR and business information, not legal advice. Employment law turns on the specific facts and changes over time. Before acting on anything here, confirm it with an Ontario employment lawyer.
