How smart recruitment catapulted Hootsuite from start-up to $1bn business
Ambrosia Humphrey admits it was an inauspicious beginning to an ambitious new leadership role when she first saw her office at tech start-up Hootsuite. Inside was a single desk she was expected to share with CEO and founder Ryan Holmes. Theirs was the only door in the entire building, and the office doubled as a meeting room, meaning they needed to vacate at short notice if employees wanted a catch-up.
Just three years on, such teething troubles are a distant memory for Hootsuite, which describes itself as the “world’s most widely used social relationship platform”, combining users’ social media accounts, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+, into one web-based dashboard. With 10 million users in 175 countries, it is feted in the business press and adored by the tech literati.
But Humphrey’s formative experiences with the Vancouver-headquartered business are an instructive example of the challenges and opportunities facing people leaders in fast-growing start-ups. A former teacher in London, she returned to her native Canada to work in the fashion industry before taking a chance on Hootsuite. “When Ryan told me ‘we’re going to grow, we’re going to hire people through social media and we’re going to show our customers how to do this,’ I knew I couldn’t screw up,” she says.
With no marketing team or recruitment budget, Humphrey had to “get back to the trenches” and learn to connect with people through the company’s own software.
The team created a #Hootsuitelife programme across social media channels to disseminate employee-created and curated content, giving potential recruits an inside look at the business and acting as a forum for employees to talk about their experiences. Staff are also expected to enrol at Hootsuite University, to become intimately familiar with the dashboard and understand how to harness social communication.
With 600 staff, Hootsuite’s recruitment issues today are very different. In 2013, it picked up $165m (£105m) in venture capital funding, handing it a platform to grow even further. Over the next year, Humphrey – now global vice president of talent – plans to add 150 people across its offices in Canada, the US, Europe and Asia. She receives 700 CVs a week.
But getting the right talent is still a juggling act. “When do we cap out a market? When do we have to look at getting a new place?” she asks. The solution is to partner with educational institutions and government agencies to help locate skills, and be proactive in networking. “We haven’t gone into a community yet that didn’t have a very strong, supportive network of HR professionals you could reach out to.
“I’ve spent years building relationships with people I think would be fantastic for our team,” adds Humphrey. “But one of the challenges of hyper-growth is making sure you don’t over-hire, or grow for the sake of growing. We need to make sure we temper the people we bring in with the ability to absorb talent, and the change management that comes with welcoming new people.”
Recruitment, she says, has taken second place to retention, career development and building a culture. “Having great growth opportunities and being very employee-centric, empowering our people and leaders with what we know, has helped us create a vision of what success looks like and, I think, has helped us retain our talent.”
The reward comes via an attrition rate of under 5 per cent, a third of the industry average. Perks help, Humphrey admits – one department per month receives $500 to throw a company-wide event, and staff enjoy a nap room and 24-hour on-site gym in many offices – but she is clear they aren’t a magic wand. “HR can’t just walk in, open a beer and say ‘there’s your culture’. Staff have to create their own culture. You can play the perks game forever and not win. We’re not Google… it’s more important for our employees to feel empowered.”
It’s a message everyone in the business now understands, she says. And that includes Holmes. “I shy away from saying that I’m the reason Ryan believes in HR, but he has freely admitted that he didn’t get it at first. I asked him: ‘What’s your people philosophy? What are your company values? Who do you want me to bring in here and who are you scared we’ll become?’ And in that way, HR kind of snuck up on him…”