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Google's Answer to Filling Jobs Is an Algorithm
An anonymous reader tipped us to a New York Times article about Google's newest HR tool: an algorithm. Starting soon, the company (which gets roughly 100,000 applications a month) will require all interested applicants to fill out an in-depth survey. They'll be using a sophisticated algorithm to work through the submitted surveys, matching applicants with positions. The company has apparently doubled in size in each of the last three years. Even though it's already 10,000 employees strong Laszlo Bock, Google's vice president for people operations, sees no reason the company won't reach 20,000 by the end of the year. This will mean hiring something like 200 people a week, every week, all year. From the article: "Even as Google tries to hire more people faster, it wants to make sure that its employees will fit into its freewheeling culture. The company boasts that only 4 percent of its work force leaves each year, less than other Silicon Valley companies. And it works hard to retain people, with copious free food, time to work on personal projects and other goodies. Stock options and grants certainly encourage employees to stay long enough to take advantage of the company's surging share price. Google's hiring approach is backed by academic research showing that quantitative information on a person's background -- called 'biodata' among testing experts -- is indeed a valid way to look for good workers."
It will be interesting to see if any company using this technique ever get accused of racial,sexual etc bias.
"But the computer chose them! You're not going to sue my computer, are you?"
Applicant is honest in their response to the survey.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
It's easy to maintain a low turnover of staff as long as the vast majority of your staff isn't fully vested, and the stock is moving upwards. As soon as the growth in staff numbers slow down, though, you're going to see the turnover percentage increase significantly as a larger and larger percentage of staff have been there for the full 4 year vesting period of their options, and the company starts seeing pressure for lower refresher grants.
You can't hide bad questions behind an algorythm. The interview process has lots of laws around it now, and it's well established that there are only some questions you can ask. Here's a great example:
The questions range from the age when applicants first got excited about computers...
This question doesn't directly reveal your age, but a clever interviewer can glean much from it. "Oh, got excited in computers at 22, eh? Probably older than I thought. We don't want old employees we want young ones."
It is illegal to ask some questions in an interview. Age related questions are one of them. You are only allowed to ask questions that pertain to your performance of the job at hand. For example, I can ask someone "would you have a problem lifting heavy boxes?" but I can't ask how old you are and make a judgement because you are 40 that you can't lift heavy boxes. The above question you as a logical geek might think is iffy, but to a lawyer, it's shark bait and they'll be all over it, so don't ask it. If you ask a question that falls into this category, you open yourself up to a gender/age/racial discrimination lawsuit. These and many others are protected classes under the law.
And there's a great reason why an interview is a poor indicator of performance... because people lie!!! It's a sales process. They want your job, and you want the best candidate. Last two people I let go both gave great interviews, but when they actually worked, they sucked. They had all the right answers in the interview, but there is no escaping performance reviews.
0% firing rate is impossible, as is 100% retention. 96% retention is a stellar figure, even for silicon valley. I think they should be pretty happy that number.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Everyone knows that a growing company loses money, no? (ah, Dilbert!)
10,000 employees??? What the heck are they doing? 20,000 employees next year? How the heck do they manage to coordinate anything??? Do they even -have- a corporate culture, or agenda?
Lets see... 10,000 employees, on average, costing the corp ~$200k each... that's... $20 billion a year... in salaries/benefits/office space/etc. Are they even making that much? Are they paying their workers with ``profits'' from stock sales?
Either their salaries are low (and employees work for stock options), or something is fishy.
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
I personally would not fill out a survey like that. While I'm fortunate to have a nice background of experience, so I can walk out of such an interview without feeling bad about it, there's other reasons for not filling out a questionnaire like that. For example, do you want to work at a company with so much process that hiring requires applicants not to show their ability to communicate clearly about relevant experience, but to fill out 100 question surveys? If they expect you to do them when they're not paying you anything, what kind of bullshit processes will they have once they are? And what kind of co-workers would you work with who put up with the same shit? Are these the types of people who will be revolutionaries and inspire you to be a better worker? Seems to me they're more likely to obey process ... and the company will end up going nowhere.
my blog
(last line of TFA)
> "More and more in the time I've been here, we hire people based on experience as a proxy for what they can accomplish," he said. "Last week we hired six people who had below a 3.0 G.P.A."
Arrrgh! It's like saying: "Last week we hired six people who weren't white."
Augurs poorly for GOOG.
"Piter, too, is dead."
So would these guys propose that FedEx start a new company for every 100 of their delivery drivers? How about their warehouse workers? What about the mechanics who help maintain their vehicles? They'd have hundreds of companies, the logistics of all of that would be insane. Coordinating all of them together?
I haven't read anything about their philosophy other than what you just shared, but it's hard to take seriously any sort of one-size-fits-all solution for something as broad as "all companies."
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
I'm shocked that the company hasn't yet started to fade or lose its reputation as a congregation of geniuses, given that with all the reqs they're having to fill, they're bound to be hiring in a less discriminate fashion than they used to. Those new lesser employees in turn conduct interviews, which begets another batch of lesser employees, until eventually you hire just about anybody with a CS degree. Meanwhile, your founding geniuses cash out their millions and go live in Hawaii, leaving their jobs to be filled by lesser talent. Ultimately this leveling of talent begins to show in the quality of your products, which in turn leads to a decline in your company's reputation, and before you know it Google is another bloated bug ridden software company that gets its daily dose of malignment on slashdot.
If the come to the interview dressed like crap, they're automatically out. If they turn up late, they're automatically out.
It's facinating to me the utter-crap voodoo that some people having in making hiring decisions. People like yourself actually believe there's these simple little tests that seperate the good from the bad.
Did you ever consider that all you're doing is just trying to hire people like yourself? You may think that's a great way to seperate the good from the bad... but you may eventually discover that any workplace relies on a variety of people with different personalities, attitudes, and "views of the world". Hire too many people like yourself, and you might just wind up with a bunch of people that can't see outside of the box you've built. If you want a perfect example of this problem, look no further than the Bush administration.
AccountKiller
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Did they really? How fucking stupid can such a decision be? I know plenty of people who went to Rutgers (state university in NJ) for undergrad. and are *extremely* bright. Their parents just didn't have $100,000+ to blow on a top-tier private or out-of-state education, at least not without selling their home or dipping into retirement. Not did the kids want to leave school $100k in debt.
-b.
Way to make people feel like their personal contributions don't matter. Right from day one. Amazing. Wait till Google's stock does crash (as it must) and watch the sentiment get repaid as people dessert.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer