Did Xero Make a Mistake?
A look at platform professional job titles and descriptions
Last week Xero posted a position from its Denver office with the title Strategy Manager. The role seeks candidates with 4-7 years of experience from “a top tier strategy consulting firm or corporate strategy team.” The role comes with a base salary of $120,000 to $150,000, depending on experience, along with an annual grant of Xero shares, calculated as a percentage of base salary.
The post caught my attention because of the contrast between how the role was presented and the opportunity. The rather dull title stands in contrast to the New Zealand company’s amazing story of success. Despite the trials of the global pandemic, Xero’s shares are up 80% over the last 12 months.
But there is more. Since Xero was founded in 2006, the company has built a community of 70,000-plus active users of its open API and a community of more than 800 app partners. It was the world’s first small business platform with an open API. Its app marketplace and overall platform strategy is credited with the company’s success in reaching more than two million global subscribers.
Xero has a dedicated ecosystem team focused on building a network of innovation for small businesses and their accountants, all over the world. The company runs a Xero Developer center that plays a central enabling role, by attracting third-party innovation and continuously improving the content, tools and experience across the customer journey.
The company is well-aware of its platform identity. It’s website states: “We’re laser focused on helping our community realise the power of our platform and the potential building to our open API offers.” It goes on to say: “Platform thinking drives everything we do.” See: https://devportalawards.org/nominees/2020/xero
By contrast, the strategy position posted in Denver makes little mention of the important place that platform strategy plays in the company’s history or future. The only place platform is mentioned is in the first sentence of the job post, which reads: “Xero is a beautiful, easy-to-use platform that helps small businesses and their accounting and bookkeeping advisors grow and thrive.” See above.
The roles and responsibilities section of the job post makes no mention of platform experience or the importance of strategic platform thinking. The job post states:
What you’ll do
Lead projects end-to-end: identifying and structuring problems, analyzing root causes, developing solutions, communicating project results, and getting buy-in for change
Work closely with business experts across product, sales, marketing and education
Conduct strategic projects evaluating the performance of current business operations and recommend strategies and tactics to achieve business goals
Build detailed competitor, market and customer segmentation models
Support go-to-market initiatives including customer segmentation, interviews, and market research
Support strategic partnerships and M&A opportunities
Create and deliver high-quality presentations to senior executives
Support internal and external communications, including CEO-level and investor presentations
This reads more like the elements of a conventional strategy position than a platfrom strategy position.
The Xero case raises questions around what it takes to attract professional platform talent. Will the hiring manager get the slate of top tier strategy consulting firm or corporate strategy talent she is seeking from this job post? How important are job titles and descriptions of roles and responsibilities in the body of the post to catch the attention of high caliber platform talent?
Should Xero be happy to land strong conventional strategy talent and then train them up on platform strategy? If this is the expectation, how long would that take and how would the specialized platform competency be developed?
Xero, of course, is not alone. Many job posts have lackluster titles that do not convey the complelling context around the role, or present the opportunity in such a way it would win the attention of top platform talent.
What is your experience with recuiting platform professionals? What job titles and descriptions have you found attact the best possible pool of applicants?
They are an interesting company.
As a startup, we use Xero, I wish I had never started to use them to be honest because I find them incongruent with their so-called values to support those in need.
Xero management has also made it quite clear that they are "profit at all cost" and are prepared to run over the smaller people to attract that growth.
Arrogance will be their downfall eventually