(From LinkedIn)—It’s been a great year for sports fans here in San Francisco. The Giants won the 2012 World Series in baseball and the 49ers took their season all the way to the Super Bowl in football. These are two great teams that share one trait that has been instrumental to their success. The management and coaches of both franchises focused relentlessly on bringing in world class talent, nurturing their people and getting the best out of them as individuals, and more importantly, as a team. Winning, whether in sports or in business, always comes down to one thing: people. Hiring the right people and growing the talent quotient is therefore one of the most important responsibilities and might I add moral obligation for every manager in every organization. It is the one part of the job of every leader that will have the biggest impact in the long term.

These are the eight strategies that I use to build championship teams:

1. Never stop looking

A pipeline for finding and bringing in top talent should be ongoing. There has to be investment in an ongoing process for continuously seeking and hiring the next star performer. This goes beyond your recruitment team - everyone in the organization should be empowered to look and incented to bring in talent. One of our best candidates recently came to our attention when a scientist from our team happened to see them programming in a local Starbucks. He was impressed with the code and invited them to visit us and meet with the team. LinkedIn is also an invaluable tool for our recruitment team to spot great talent.

2. Invest in the interview process

A typical interview is usually inadequate in screening the right talent. In the short amount of time allotted for interviews, a company has to decide on hiring someone they hope will spend many years working for them. It doesn’t add up. That means you have to spend the effort upfront and go where the talent is and evaluate their real work. Competitions at sites like TopCoder.com, American Regional Mathematics League, Google Code Jam bring talented people together where you have more of a chance to see what they’re made of. This is exactly the reason EA is hosting its first hackathon on March 16, it gives us a chance to get to know the talent pool better that goes beyond the short interview process would.

3. Hire for UNCOMMON strength

This is an old Peter Drucker principle that is an anchor tenet in my organizations. Most often interviewers try and hire for minimal of weaknesses, but everyone has their share of blind spots. Focusing on finding candidates who have the least amount of weaknesses will lead to mediocrity. Hire for uncommon strength and then put the person in a role that uses that muscle.

4. Don’t throw new employees into the deep end

As important as the hiring process is the onboarding systems of an organization. Many companies bring in new hires and after a brief orientation of the company policies and benefits, drop them into the deep end. It is expected that the new employees will learn on the job, or by working with an assigned mentor and by finding and reading anything they require. This is like hiring the best quarterback for the team and not teaching them the playbook. A structured onboarding process is instrumental to transform a new hire into a star member of a team.

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