A recruiter once asked me how to spot a real ASO hire. The tempting move is to weigh their biggest past numbers — installs, a famous launch. But hand a mediocre marketer a war chest and they look brilliant; starve a brilliant one of budget and they look ordinary. So I stopped asking what they shipped and started asking how they’d build a keyword core, why the App Store and Google Play reward opposite things, what actually belongs in the first screenshot. Those answers don’t depend on whose money they were near. The trophy numbers do.