Fw: Uncensored view on hiring technology/digital/analytics people

From:hdr29@hrcoffice.com To: robbymook@gmail.com, huma@hrcoffice.com, cmills.hillary@gmail.com, john.podesta@gmail.com Date: 2015-01-09 19:41 Subject: Fw: Uncensored view on hiring technology/digital/analytics people

Please read this email and give me your reactions. Alec worked for me and I highly value his opinions about technology. ________________________________ Madam Secretary, I hope those memos I sent you following our last phone conversation were useful. During that discussion, you encouraged me to pass along names of people who might be good additions to a technology operation. There are 3 main jobs that I think you should personally concern yourself with: Chief Digital Officer Chief Technology Officer Head of Analytics I could put together a list of candidates for you for each of these three jobs but here's the thing --- I think your campaign's approach to building a digital/tech & analytics operations should break with how it is normally done. Normally in campaigns, a small number of candidates with close ties to people in leadership (candidate, campaign manager, chairman, pollster) are vetted and a tech team is quickly built. There is some judgment brought to the evaluation, but the hires are normally rooted in relationships and recent performance. I think that process would not serve you well. I think that you need to cast a wider net and I think that you need something that is very unusual in political campaigns for top hires: a formal HR process. There are a lot of kick-ass tech/digital/analytics operatives out there, but most of them have become part of a new consultant class that has emerged since the 2008 campaign made millionaires out of lots of guys in their 20s. Don't get me wrong, these are good people; and many of them should be hired and/or get contracts for the technology they have spent years building and applying in actual campaigns. Many of these are also my friends --- I have lots of beer drinking buddies among them. My worry is that the real A listers from this community will want to stay at their firms and make a lot of money off of a campaign that is going to spend north of a billion dollars when what you really need are people who are going to work 15 hours a day, 7 days a week sitting inside the campaign HQ who have all the technology skills but are primarily motivated to work in a Hillary Clinton for President campaign out of a sense of mission. These may be highly skilled people from Silicon Valley who would love to be a part your campaign but who lack the relationships to find their place inside a campaign without a more formal hiring process. These folks, in turn, should manage the consultants/vendors rather than the consultants/vendors managing the people inside the campaign. In order to get people who combine both the great technology skills and the sense of mission, I'd suggest you put the kind of HR process in place that looks much more like what you'd find at McKinsey than at a campaign. The campaign manager, chairman and pollster should all be involved, but I would also bring in an HR professional to manage the process and then leverage the ties you have to people in the technology world (beyond me this includes people like Eric Schmidt, Sheryl Sandberg, Katie Stanton and Katie Dowd) who both know you and your needs but who also know how to vet technology and have relationships that go far beyond what are now the normal suspects from the "tech in campaigns world". Again, lots of those are great people, but in addition to the important roles they will play we need to find HILLARY PEOPLE. I am also always happy to put together small meetings for you with people who are a mixture of Silicon Valley and the previous Obama campaigns (from digital/tech/analytics) if you want to benefit from other perspectives. They are all eager to meet you. Apologies for the long email, but I wanted to give you my uncensored perspective. If what I propose does not work given choices you have already made, no worries, I will send in suggestions of potential hires. You will end up with great people either way. My best, Alec