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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."
I've been working at Google for four months, and of all the companies I interviewed at, Google seemed to care the least about my past projects, experience, or my GPA. Google's interviewing process is all about finding very smart computer people. You simply must know the core computer science principles, but it does not matter if you were able to regurgitate them on your college exams. It matters that you can explain them in an interview and use them towards solving a problem. Once I got here, I can understand the reasoning behind the hiring process: Lots of Google infrastructure and technology is unique to Google. Look at the published articles on Bigtable and MapReduce to get a glimpse of the unique systems used every day here. For people to learn these systems and begin being productive quickly, Google doesn't care if you have an MSCE or know the syntax of Apache's httpd.conf. Google just needs you to be smart.
:)
note: These are my opinions and not necessarily those of Google's. And I try not to post on Google articles nowadays, but this doesn't pertain to our business strategy so I'm comfortable sharing it. BTW we had an awesome free lunch today here in Kirkland, Washington.
my blog
Your post triggered an interesting thought process.
Google knows AI and machine learning; even if they don't use it they'll have people who know about it.
Suppose by asking certain questions, and doing some initial research and calibration, I can determine your age within two years with 97% certainty. Or marital status, or race, or any of the other protected categories. Have I broken the law? What if I don't actually do the computation? What if my computers do the computation but no human ever sees it? What if I do the computation and no human ever directly sees the result but the computer has enough power to say "No" to a hire in practice, thus still incorporating this potentially "forbidden knowledge" into the hiring decision?
(After all, asking someone about their marital status may actually be less reliable in the end; I can easily imagine 1 out of 40 people lying about something like that, or their true age/race/etc. if asked.)
This is extremely likely to be possible, and probably downright easy for Google, so this isn't just a hypothetical. And the problems this raises extends beyond this exact instance into any domain where for legal reasons, we have to cultivate ignorance; exactly what constitutes "ignorance" if you get right down to it?
At the height of the dotcom bubble, Bill Gross & Idealab! had the philosophy that no company should have more than 100 employees. If your business model got above 100 employees, there was a high likelihood that you were better off dividing and spinning off other business units. (Don't know if they still preach that or not, but that was the thinking "back in the day.")
I don't know that Google would be better served as two hundred smaller companies, but at the same time, it's hard to imagine managing 20,000 employees would be any easier.
This sig intentionally left justified.
What if google's statistical data (drawn from its database of performance reviews) shows that some ages, genders, races, and cultures are objectively better at a particular job than others?
Google's test will obviously avoid asking any direct questions about age, gender, and race, because that's illegal (even when objectively justifiable). However, if the test is powered by a statistics engine drawing a database of past performance reviews, then the test could unintentionally evolve to ask about such things indirectly.
An example: perhaps cat-ownership is correllated with femaleness, and femaleness is correllated with superior performance in writing technical documentation. An automated test-generator would unwittingly evolve to ask applicants about cat-ownership, in order to unwittingly select superior female candidates.
It's an amusing possibility. Indeed, it would be the free-market's way of legitimately selecting candidates based on age/gender/race while remaining underneath the legal radar.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
What made this interview notable was that he was largely questioning me on personality.
I don't have any sort of degree in HR, but I own a small health care company and do all the hiring myself. And I mostly ask very tough questions to gain insight into the other person's personality. How they view themselves. How they view the world. Why? Because it's all I really care about.
If the come to the interview dressed like crap, they're automatically out. If they turn up late, they're automatically out. The resume is usually full of a lot of BS anyway - I check on the real important stuff - like - do they actually have the degrees they say they have.
Letters of recommendation are usually from work buddies, after all, you're not going to ask the supervisor who hates your guts for a recommendation, you'll ask the other one who really likes you. So I'm left with personality - self esteem, self confidence, ability to take the time to LISTEN, and ability to adapt. It's kinda rough on the guys, but hey, an interview is an interview. I have my patients to protect. And I think I've done ok with this technique so far.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Except "people with less work experience" is not a protected group, so it's not unlawful to discriminate on the basis of previous work experience, unless you do so with the intent of discriminating against an actual protected group. I'm just guessing, but I'd say it would be awfully hard to win a case based on such "discrimination", short of someone admitting that they did it to avoid hiring women.
As I read it, Griggs v. Duke Power applies more specifically to selection requirements rather than ranking, but I guess I could see it made into an argument about the later if the proper context was presented.
Still, "years of related work experience" is pretty easy to put into the "reasonable measure of job performance" bucket, and given that, the requirement of intent to discriminate against a protected group stands.
But eventually, profits will level off and then start to decline. Nothing goes up forever. And when the money gets tight, Google will suddenly realize that they've got a whole bunch of people that they don't really need.
The solution to this is to interview with them, and somehow screw up.
;-)
Google has a strange recruitment process, they never ask what you are currently doing or where you live, they just find a few old web pages in their cache and assume they're current. It was on the 5th interview when the Google interviewer suddenly realised I wasn't a programmer, but I knew enough CompSci to have struggled through 4 interviews. They had the idea I was a major F/L OSS programmer based on all my activity in mailing lists, not a guy just helping test one project. They had also found an old Irish mobile phone number that forwards to my current phone, and assumed I lived in Ireland.
After a few mumbled promises to send my current CV to the right group, within hours I received a "No Job For You" form letter and I seem to have been put on a black list internally. The stream of recruitment emails have trickled off to maybe one every two months.
It's funny, because I run into senior Google people at trade events who try to recruit me because they know my reputation. When I tell them I've already been rejected for a junior level programmer position in an HR blunder a couple years ago, you can see their faces fall. They know that once Google rejects someone, there's little chance of getting them in past HR, but some senior guys are working to reform their broken system.
Getting rejected is a great solution if you never want to work there and limit those spammish requests. Since they are offering you a job, tell them you want to be head of HR
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on