Randy Mott built GM's IT engine

General Motors has accomplished more with its information technology transformation in the last five years than many thought was possible.

The programs and initiatives being developed by the operations, detailed in a two-part series in September by Automotive News, are helping position the automaker to be a leader in mobility, autonomous vehicles and transportation as a service.

But first, GM had to overcome one of its biggest challenges: talent acquisition.

IT professionals are in high demand, and they haven't typically chosen the Motor City over Silicon Valley. GM's tumble into bankruptcy in 2009 only highlighted the contrast between the plodding auto business and the dynamism of the tech and mobile communications industries.

In that context, what GM Global Chief Information Officer Randy Mott did is remarkable: attracting nearly 10,000 new IT professionals, including 3,000 recent college graduates, as part of the insourcing program that began in 2012.

GM did so by actively recruiting at 40 of the country's top IT universities. Rather than plead with recruits to settle in Detroit, it placed development centers in strategic locations across the country. The centers are in Austin, Texas; Chandler, Ariz., near Phoenix; Roswell, Ga., outside Atlanta; and at GM's r&d headquarters in Warren, Mich. — near well-known IT incubators and within 200 miles of more than half of the top computer-science universities in the U.S.

"If you're really going to build a ground-up IT organization to support a global company, and you're really going to build it for innovation​ ... you want the ability to have reach around talent," said Mott. "That's really what we created."

The facilities work interchangeably and are tightly connected by telecommunications systems, allowing IT employees to choose where they would like to work and participate in day-to-day meetings. At the facilities, it is not uncommon to see employees working in lounges and speaking different languages.

It's the kind of freedom and flexibility that has allowed the automaker to build a stable of diverse professionals and a level of talent that once seemed out of reach.

People such as Joseph Brown IV, a 25-year-old California native who had never thought about working in the auto industry until being recruited out of college in 2015. He's now a software developer based at GM's IT innovation center near Atlanta.

"I've always been interested in cars, but I was not assuming I would be in the automotive IT space," Brown said.

Zach Grantham worked for a defense industry startup before becoming a senior development manager for GM in Austin. "Something I didn't think about is that people are actually using these types of technologies," he said. "To me, it's been something that's really satisfying."

At the top of the recruiting chain is Mott, a 40-year IT veteran who has worked at Wal-Mart, Hewlett-Packard and Dell. Many of the top IT executives leading GM's efforts were recruited by Mott or hired by someone he has worked with in the past.

"GM has done a masterful job of bringing in some of the best talent on the planet in the big-data analytics space," said Les Copeland, GM CIO of global data strategy and services. He has worked at all three of Mott's former employers.

One challenge for GM's IT operations has been getting its teams to think more about automotive innovations, according to Darren Meeks, a domain director whose team runs service experience and e-commerce operations.

"It's all IT people here, and our business partners are typically in Detroit," said Meeks, who is based in Austin. "How do we get that automotive brain down here? It's a battle."

It's a problem many of GM's competitors would like to have.