What exactly is a key player? A "Key Player" is a phrase that I've heard about from employers during just about every search I've conducted. I asked a client - a hiring manager involved in a recent search - to define it for me. "Every company has a handful of staff in a given area of expertise that you can count on to get the job done. On my team of seven process engineer and biologists, I've got two or three whom I just couldn't live without," he said. "Key players are essential to my organization. And when we hire your company to recruit for us, we expect that you'll be going into other companies and finding just that: the staff that another manager will not want to see leave. We recruit only key players.