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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?"
Tomorrow Google online dating?
Do you feel guilty when you masturbate?
Do you enjoy harming animals?
Applicant is honest in their response to the survey.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
I was one of those people who was hired with the under 3.0 GPA, and while getting the interviews was difficult, the people doing the interviewing really didn't care. They asked me to solve problems and show that I could do the job, and that was all they cared about.
Luckily for me I dont have to worry about it anymore, but especially in the technology field why should GPA be more important than actual projects and experience?
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"
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 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.
bool recommend = true;
if (surveyResults == Evil())
forwardResumeToMicrsoft(bool recommend);
hire();
ACK NAK RST
10,000 employees at $200k each is $2 billion a year, not $20 billion a year. Google is making enough to cover those costs even if they double the number of employees and do not increase revenue at all. You can look at a summary of their revenue, and their expenses as a portion of revenue here: http://biz.yahoo.com/e/061108/goog10-q.html
They are making a handsome profit.
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.
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
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