TSG: You’ve had great depth in your career with ex-perience at talent incubators like PepsiCo, Microsoft and Google before your current role at a (relative) start-up, Pinterest. How does HR at a “start-up” like Pinterest compare to an established Talent Manage-ment incubator like Pepsi?MD: They share some things in common. First, I work with an amazing People team who wants to build an incredible compa-ny and do progressive work. And we have a CEO and lead-ership team who are open to being progressive and pushing unique approaches to HR. The difference here is we’re building a lot from scratch and it gives my team a chance to invent and try high beta bets that we think will make a huge impact.

TSG: The tech space is known for experimentation, innovation, and disruption. Do you find this holds true for the field of HR?

MD: I think it’s really company specific. But there are a num-ber of companies in the space that I think are really pushing the envelope. It comes down to the CEO and founders and how much they see culture as a means to build an amazing compa-ny and product. I’ve always felt like our CEO Ben Silbermann is open to trying bold things to build an amazing culture that builds the world’s best product. Some examples are our ap-proach to stock options and Diversity.

TSG: What lessons can a CHRO in a more established industry/company learn from studying the experi-ments of the tech space, and in particular, Pinterest?

MD: My best advice would be to build a culture over time of people launches as “People Products.” No v1 product that ships is ever perfect. It only gets to world class over a constant loop of feedback and tweaking. So, we try to approach our People launches the same way. My People Development leader has

built performance management from scratch here. I think we’re on v4 after lots of refinement, but I’m really excited at where it’s at right now. And that’s a testament to him plus the compa-ny’s ability to continue to experiment with us.

TSG: How do you manage the sig-nificant growth Pinterest has expe-rienced from a peo-ple standpoint?

MD: I was employee #180 around 3 years ago and we’ve grown 7x since then. The first thing you need to get right is to nail Recruiting. I’m fortunate to have a great leader there and a super strong team. But my team is only half of it and you need to ensure you have really high engagement from the

InConversation highlights the experiences and approaches of successful CHROs globally.

Michael DeAngelo CHRO, Pinterest

Michael has led the People function for Pinterest for the last 3 years. He came to Pinterest via Google where he led HR for the majority of the Technology organization as well as being Head of People for Europe/Mid-dle-East/Africa region for Google based in Zurich. Before Google Michael was an HRVP at Pepsico in New York and Chicago.

His earlier roles included leadership positions in Compensation, Labor Relations, and Organization Development for Microsoft, Merck and Allied-Signal.

Michael lives in San Francisco with his 9 year old daughter Chloe.

“I’ve always felt like our CEO Ben Silbermann is open to trying bold things to build an amaz-ing culture that builds the world’s best product.”

The opinions stated are the interviewee’s and don’t indicate endorsement by the Talent Strategy Group Executive Search. InConversation is produced by Talent Strategy Group Executive Search, www.talentstrategygroup.com.

clients. That was our biggest learning this year as our hiring numbers grew over 50% on an already high employee base. It’s not just sourcing and interviewing that you need from the clients. It’s their active involvement in the middle of the funnel so that someone from the function is the person who is guid-ing them through what it’s like to work at Pinterest.

From the Recruiting team side, we’re competing in proba-bly the most challenging time of my career in finding great functional talent in Tech. At the same time we are selecting for those who meet our cultural bar and our goals to make progress in bringing more folks to Pinterest from under-rep-resented groups.

TSG: What resources do you use when planning your people strategy at Pinterest? Who do you look up to (companies or individuals) in the field of HR?

MD: At a compa-ny-wide level, we have a strategy we call Culture@Pinterest which outlines 6 as-pirations we have for our People. That’s the wrapper that drives a lot of our work at a company level. We also use a pretty traditional approach to people strategy for our functions where we take their annual or bi-annual strategy planning processes

and integrate the skills, capabilities, leadership and organi-zation design they need to execute. That then becomes our strategy plan for supporting that organization.

In terms of who I look up to, for progressive work I’ve obvious-ly learned a lot from Laszlo from my time at Google. I think companies like Intel are doing great work in the Diversity space so I see them as a benchmark. I love the work Michael Ross and Visa are doing on culture transformation.

TSG: What portions of your career do you feel pre-pared you for a role like Pinterest, and what por-tions did not?

MD: The advice I give to folks who want to be a CHRO is to do deep-dive experiences in different HR functional roles. And to see at least 3 different industries in your career path. The first is really important because I feel like every day I tap into my experience in HRBP, Comp, OD, recruiting and People analyt-

ics. You can’t get the same experience just being a generalist and dabbling – I think you actually need to do the COE work to build the skill in it.

On seeing different industries, I think it makes you a better business person. Train yourself to learn different business models (how they make money and cut costs). Learn how to determine which roles in each business are the key differen-tiators for the product or revenue. And understand how HR functions build scale to support a huge employee base.

TSG: How is Pinterest embracing the developing field of People Analytics?

MD: My People Operations team has led the way in investing early here (almost 3 years ago). My leader there rolled out Workday when we were under 200 people and we built a data warehouse to bring in combine data sources from many of our People platforms (including org health, recruiting, diversity). That gave us a really powerful set of analytics tools that we can use to gauge progress and pivot quickly. I still feel like we have a long way to go but I think we’re in great shape for a startup.

TSG: Diversity is seriously lacking in the tech space. Do you believe diversity (or lack thereof) is impact-ing the industry? And if so, what are you doing to address this issue?

MD: I’m really proud of my team’s work on this. We were the first company that I’m aware of who set public goals on the annual hiring rate we want to achieve for under-represented talent. That’s been galvanizing for us. We’ve done quite a bit to change the way we source, develop and create an inclusive environment for under-represented talent.

One creative sourcing channel my team built is an Apprentice-ship program where we develop under-represented folks in a 9 month program to build their coding skills to be able to get a full-time engineering role. We’ve had our first graduate and we’re super excited about the future of this program.

We’ve also focused on leadership hiring as well and imple-mented the Rooney rule for all senior hires. Happy to share that our new Head of Engineering is an amazing engineer, Li Fan, who also happens to be a woman. In addition, our newest Board member is also an amazingly talented woman leader in Tech, Michelle Wilson.

TSG: Thank you, Michael! Tremendous insights!

MD: Thanks for the opportunity.

“We were the first company that I’m aware of who set public goals on the annual hiring rate we want to achieve for un-der-represented talent.”