Abstract: We model the interplay between the evolving status of an organization (a “team”) and the talent pool of those willing to work for it. The team’s status, and so the benefits to membership, improves if and only if it attracts talented recruits. If there is noise in a team’s evolving fortunes, then there is a unique equilibrium in which such recruits join the team if and only if its status exceeds a unique threshold. This threshold responds to the benefits of membership, the recruits’ outside options, the recruitment procedure, the heterogeneity of recruit types, and their preferences over playing, winning, and losing with different competing teams. Applications extend beyond firms to include the participation of good politicians in governments, the relative performance of sports teams, and rivalry between academic departments. Most importantly, our leading application is to the endogenous formation of a cabinet’s talent pool.