“A small team of A+ players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players”
– Steve Jobs
We tend to view the modern company as a loose collection of functional areas — a sort of “business biome” where, as long as every function performs its individual activities, the whole entity will thrive. Everyone has their territory and the borders are well-understood (and often) well-defended bright lines. This differentiation makes sense in some cases: in larger companies there are highly technical areas such as public company finance where untrained cannot contribute. And there’s unlikely ever going to be a cross-functional committee approach to tax filings, as exciting as that may sound. But there are some activities are so vital to building a strong organization that everyone must be part of it. The first, most critical activity is deciding who gets to join the team.
The hoary mantra of the 1990s was “everyone is in Sales.” Everyone in the company — from the receptionist to the CEO — was responsible for evangelizing the company’s products and services, for turning every interaction into a sales opportunity. Today, for some of the same reasons, the better mantra is “everyone is in HR.”
Technology companies in particular thrive because of the strength of the team — and conversely fail as a result of a team’s weaknesses. Choosing the right people is critical, and in practice one of the very few truly differentiating decisions leaders make. All the tactical decisions of how budgets are spent, or which project tracking tool is employed pale in importance to selecting and shaping the team.
Consider the state of other drivers of a technology-centric business today: Hardware is a commodity. Datacenters and site hosting are leveraged like a pay-as-you-go utility. Foundational functionality such as mapping and currency conversion are pre-built services invoked over the Internet. The value for technology companies lies in creating the things unique to its market. But picking the right infrastructure, building powerful software, and making it all work in concert requires deeply talented people who form a highly-collaborative whole.
And that task has become a whole lot tougher. Competition for technology resources has returned to a pitch not seen since the height of the dot com bubble in 2000. In contrast to the infancy of the Web, this boom in tech jobs is much more broad-based as essentially every company in every industry is searching for the same talent. As the economies of the US, Canada and Europe recovered from the the 2008 recession, every metropolitan area typically has more open positions than people to fill them. From systems administrators to software engineers to UX designers, the number of openings outstrips the pool of applicants by a multiple of anywhere from two to ten.
So, why is “everyone in HR?”
Building the right technology team is much more than what we consider to be traditional recruiting. Those differences are in part driven by the hyper-competitive job market where job postings alone won’t yield enough candidates. No matter how good and how connected the internal or external recruiter is, the “search” by itself will not yield the right candidates at the right time. It requires a deep partnership between the hiring group and HR; and a commitment of all levels of leadership. This “everyone in is in HR” approach means three things:
That the existing members of the team are evangelists and through their interactions in social media, industry events, and conferences.
That the organization as whole — and not just HR and the technology team — are active participants in the selection process.
That the leadership of the company is as deeply invested in the hiring process as they are in any other facet of the organization. It should also mean that even C-level executives are involved in some way in every hire. It is for this reason I interview every candidate that comes in, no matter if what level and what role, including interns.
Finding the right people is also an exercise in cultural fit. Part of the interaction with candidates goes beyond technical competencies and into the personality and psyche of the team. And that’s an assessment that is best served by conversations with people throughout the organization. If your company is kitted out every day in dark blue business suits, the super-talented developer who has a closet full of Reddit t-shirts isn’t likely to stay very long even if she accepts; but in an abbreviated interview process a stark mismatch like that is possible.
This “everyone in HR approach” can be slower. And that lack of initial progress in filling open roles can be frustrating and lead to the very dangerous remedy of settling: just picking someone who appears to be a good enough fit. The illusion that a full team even with not quite the right people is better than having open roles is just that — an illusion. The quote above says it all.
By working in concert, HR, technology teams — and literally everyone else in the company through their offline and online interactions — help attract the right people. And those same people collaborate to ensure that the person joining is a fit in every way — from skills and knowledge, to attitude and culture. And that creates the strongest team.
