Slashdot Mirror
You're Only As Hirable As Your Google+ Circles
theodp writes "A pending Google patent for Identifying Prospective Employee Candidates via Employee Connections lays out plans for data mining employees' social graphs to find top job candidates. According to the patent application, the system would consider factors including the performance of the employees at the company whose circles you are in — under the assumption that the friends of top performers are more likely to be top performers themselves. It's the invention of three Googlers, including an HR VP who was quoted recently in an article that questioned the wisdom of certain Google hiring practices said to encourage 'echo chamber' hiring."
Ah, so you won't get a job unless you're in the IT IN crowd.
All of my friends outside of work are mostly non-IT people. Then again, I don't consider myself a top performer - I've known some incredibly talented people and I am definitely NOT one of them. Some of THEIR friends, on the other hand, were strippers, drug users and drunks.
So guys, there's a good chance that Google+ will get that hot chick in your department - she won't code worth a damn, though.
What's Google+?
Give them a yardstick and they think they can measure anything. Lines of code, number of published papers, gene sequence. The clearest result of risk management is that you stop taking risks: You're getting old, Google.
The Linux followers like to do stories on how git is the main thing employers look for. I will never have an employer. Does God know you?
Sounds like technological quasi-nepotism to me.
The work place becomes EVEN MORE of a popularity contest. Linked-in is already there with this bullshit. Google wants to make it worse 3.
...and I don't have connections with top performers, because I've never had a chance to work with them!
All this overhyping and overvaluing is an important stage in the development of any technology, but I can't wait for social media to be just another thing that we do, and not something that has to be commoditised at every opportunity. I hope that in 10 years, data-mining social media is going to be looked down on the way spam and chain-emails are now. I'm not so unrealistic to imagine it will go away, but I hope it will become socially unacceptable behaviour.
Infinite computing power to apply analytics to hiring practices, and they end up with nepotism. Truly garbage in, garbage out. I bet the friends of the HR VP are all top candidates...
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
I would have hoped that a HR vp (FFS) would have realized the horrible issues that this system will cause
It's who you know?
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
It's something they keep hammering you on when you get a gmail, YouTube, or shop at a "Google Approved" store or whatever it's called. They send you little notices of people you might know - and it looks like LinkedIn notices. I almost went for it one morning before I had enough coffee.
Google is trying to be Facebook + LinkedIn + some other evil purpose all rolled into one.
I'm surprised Google hasn't bought Dice.com with a small part of their toilet paper budget - or just Slashdot.
I deleted my Google+ profile a couple months ago when I posted (what I thought was) a private video to YouTube. It was a demonstration of a new feature I created in a website for a side-job of mine. Suddenly all my Google+ knucklehead friends started posting, "I don't get it - why is this funny?" and other stupid things.
I don't want one company getting all of my data sharing it in ways they want to.
I'm a big tall mofo.
thank you Google, once you have that patent other companies won't be able to use this stupid concept for hiring without breaking the law - and I guess every failed candidate will be first up to call in the lawyers if if becomes apparent this bullshit was used against them.
Well, I can dream that a the patent system has some valid use, can't I?
....especially if they are from a hip, young person oriented city and live their lives through social media where they express all their zany stories through photo sharing and short status blurbs. It just so happens that Google is based in (or very near) such a place.
A fundamental flaw in Google's logic!
It called the 'Yes men' syndrome.
How is this even a patent? Okay, besides the obvious "well they filed it". IT is describing the general practice of investigation for hiring that HR departments do across the country. So now what, when some checks out a person in google+ they have to pay for the license to do so?
The system was broken...now it is defiled.
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
worst way possible, I would hire based on montecarlo sampling in a strongly willed pool of applicants, I am sure it will lead to better results and everyone will have their chance after a uniform time t.
Google considers Google Apps a viable replacement for Microsoft Office, so I can see where they would think Googe+ circles are a replacement for real interviewing and hiring skills.
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
A week ago, I was logged into Gmail and looking at Youtube when this window popped up asking which name I wanted to use. I didn't look that closely at it, as I was busy. Just quickly clicked on what I thought would maintain the status quo. Now my Youtube handle has replaced my name in Gmail. I didn't want my Youtube and Gmail accounts linked. It seems the actions that one time popup started can't be undone. Attempting to delete the Google+ profile that was automatically created somehow isn't working.
How did you delete Google+ without losing Gmail? Or did you delete everything?
Google made a mess, and I'm not happy about it. Keep hearing all these stories about Google doing questionable things, even slightly evil things, but until this happened to me, I didn't pay much attention. And now they're rolling out this tool that could unfairly affect employment prospects. What are they thinking these days?
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
I don't want to work for a company that filters their candidates that way. I wouldn't want to work with someone whose only skill is hanging out with the right people. That is, I don't want to work with a John Spano.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Spano
Isn't that a culture? People with a similar vision that get along are likely to be friends. A good culture will have people with a similar vision that get along. You're saying that's bad?
Yes, a company culture without diversity is a very bad thing. It leads you to stick on the same narrower and narrower paths (hello Microsoft) instead of being open to the needs of your future customers. In science it can slow progress to a generational level where you have to wait for the old guard to pass before new ideas can get a fair hearing.
"Diversity" isn't about the color of your skin or whether you sit/stand to pee, it's different viewpoints and different values that will help question assumptions you take for granted and maybe help identify which ones have outlived their usefulness.
Aren't they gonna miss a hell of a lot of loners this way?
If you wanna have a second-rate tech force, go ahead, Google. Make sure all your elites have lead water pipes like ancient Rome did.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
It's a sad day indeed when you're judged by you're social skills when applying to a tech job.
I know, companies love their own creation and think it's the most awesome tool and anyone who is worth anything at all must be using it already or he/she were worthless in the first place. Anyone who doesn't think like they do simply hasn't seen the light yet or is beneath their notice.
When I want to get in touch with friends I pick up the phone and/or go out with them for a beer.
Fuck all this networking shit.
I know exactly what Google + is. I was hoping to switch over to it as I closed my FB a few years ago. Not that Goggles give a crap as I'm "not in their circle" apparently, but I'm now not ever going back to gmail (switched over to yahoo mail a while back. Don't regret it), or trying Google + Very disappointed in u over this Google. Whatever. Nowhere to go but back into the dragons arms of FB. Wish there was more alternatives, but the so-called "alternatives" just aren't at the races. Stuck with eyephone, from Mom, and FB...
It's the invention of three Googlers, including an HR VP who was quoted recently in an article that questioned the wisdom of certain Google hiring practices said to encourage 'echo chamber' hiring.
Oh the irony. First he says it's bullshit, and then he goes in on a patent for it. I'll give the guy some respect if the only reason he did it is for whatever reward Google gives for patents. As my old mentor used to say, it's ok to be a whore, just don't be a cheap whore.
Seriously, the worst thing about this type of approach is that it's bias is self-reinforcing. Hire people on this basis, and surprise, surprise, surprise, your top performers will be people that passed this test. It'll also be gamed to hell. I might be able to see something like this for LinkedIn, so long as it's only used as a small part of evaluation, but social media? As has been pointed out, most of the best people I know don't use social media. Of those that do, they're more likely to use it for family and friends than colleagues. Heck, I'd be tempted to consider an absence of social media presence as a positive thing. At a place like Google, at least that would give you insight into why so many smart people avoid social media.
Diversity be damned - we're so narcissistic that we want an army of clones. "Good fit in corporate culture" is often a euphemism for groupthink.
Wouldn't someone have to use Google Plus for this to work? So this is never going to be a real thing then.
It's a pretty arrogant assumption to assume that the best are where you think they are because that's where you think the best are. I'll go back in time to make my point to a chap named Charles Lindbergh who you might recall was the first to cross the Atlantic Ocean. When he accomplished his feat it surprised many, many people because he was a former pilot for the US Post Office and not a traditional glamorous background. It turned out that flying for the Post Office back then was just about the most dangerous job you could have a pilot with 31 out of the original 40 pilots killed.
The presumption that the only people capable of doing a given thing well work at certain places is called arrogance, and that arrogance has cost entire countries their industry. History abounds with examples from the downfall of the American Auto industry to the rise of giants like Capital Group or Wal-Mart. You can't assume that just because someone didn't learn to do a given thing in a given circle of people that they can't do it. The arrogance of the circles also fails to understand that many people don't live in certain places (Silicon Valley etc) because they don't want to or because they can't. The entire concept of the social circle as being a decider for talent fails the tests of history with outsider after outsider unsurping the arrogant time and again in industry after industry.
One with all your professional contacts and your real name, and one with your personal contacts and a fake name.
The just lie and say you only have one profile, your professional one is it, and those are your friends.
Seems easy enough.
Subject says it all.
And I hate that G+ tries to make a mess of my Youtube profile. It won't stop asking.
Fact is, no one is not going to hire you because you don't have social media profiles. I don't and I've never had an issue. Employers with actual things for their employees to do would rather you focus on what you were hired to do than trawl some stupid series of social media sites for tripe like animal photos, narcissistic postings and other garbage. Social media belongs outside the workplace. Full stop. Unless you are a marketing or sales droid, social media for people at work is a waste of time. If I ran a business, I would block that crap at the router.
... when I thought I thoughy about applying for a job listed on their site, I was prompted on whether or not I wanted the employment information pulled from my Google+ profile. I declined.
From what I've seen of hiring practices in general, you could pretty much replace any hiring practice with a coin flip and do no worse than these companies do. Often, probably better. They do make a pretty good indicator to a potential employee -- I won't work for any company that requires a personality test. I might still take it in order to provide the most alarming possible answers, though. I suspect a few of them out there would be far more interested in hiring me after I did that.
It seems like the best possible thing IT companies could do is get their HR department completely out of the business of candidate selection. On the outside there are a lot of fantastic programmers out there which these companies are not finding. On the inside, there are a lot more mediocre programmers and H1Bs these companies are finding. It's like their HR is trolling the wrong side of the bell curve. And when your company is incapable of growth because the in-house software is so inefficient, that's a problem.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Reason for leaving last job: Fired for spending all my time updating Google+. And posting on Slashdot.
Have gnu, will travel.
I don't work with top performers because nobody performs as well as I do.
Stupid move on your part, Google.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Social media is populated by people who have nothing better to do. The programmers you want are teaching themselves something new just because it's fun, not wasting their time on social media. The problem is recruiter droids use social media, and it's all they know, so they think it's the only thing that matters.
I won't be working for Google anytime soon! :)
this should do wonders for Women in IT.
I thought it was illegal to rate the performance of someone based on the performance of someone else that is neither on their team nor supervised by them.
Great way for goog to ensure they only hire goog employees.
because if cool people follow you that means your cool too.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Google has other approaches to hiring. At one time, if you searched for topics associated with mathematical proof of correctness, you got a Google employment ad. I've been contacted by Google recruiting because of things I posted on Usenet comp.lang.c++ about how to improve the language. They do pay attention to who's doing what in computer science.
The striking thing about Google is that they've never developed a second profitable product. Revenue is still over 95% from ads, with 2/3 coming from search ads, and 1/3 from DoubleClick ("AdSense") ads. Google+, Android and Google Docs don't generate significant revenue. They're defensive measures against Facebook, Apple and Microsoft, respectively. All that brainpower, and no new profitable products in a decade.
"The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks." - Jeff Hammerbacher, Facebook research scientist
Anyone uses Google+? Just keep your top performers then. :D
Over here It's all LinkedIn. Not that it's much better...
So anyone who is a "top performer" can now charge for adding people to their circles. Star power gets you hired. Nothing new there. This is sort of the same as celebrities supporting "social causes" without understanding the underlying issues. This is just celebrities endorsing you.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
You're hired! At Google!
That sounds like a way to turn G+ into a fantastic dick sucking and rubbing contest. Good game Google, well played.
I want this account deleted.
Are you looking for a work at google?? If you don't, why do you post on this topic at all? All companies have different ways of evaluating people. If you don't want to work for google, you shouldn't probably even care about how they do search for their people. This amazes me, why would people even care about how google hires if they don't want to be hired by google at all???
I gave up with the idea of an useful sig...
Google's hiring practices have always been messed up. If you look at the talent they have brought in that really changed google, much of it was from acquiring other companies. I don't see this change hurting this. Your best chance if your a normal person of getting hired by google is through being acquired.
... and not to have to be concerned with any of this. Was always a struggle during the time, but now I can do what I want when I want, and that is lovely. Off on a 2-month holiday next week. Yay!
... is the moment you become somebody who lacks basic skills ..... because you are obvious idiot.
I had a conversation with some kid who though that using Facebook was being an expert in social networking. The thing was suggested by one of his completely ignorant college professors (who have never worked in anything outside of an academic environment). I told him that was the dumbest thing he could write in a resume and that NOBODY will call him back if he actually submitted it.
Six months later, he had no job and not even one phone call or interview. I remember about is "Facebook junk" in his resume and asked him if he removed it. He said no because that is what his professor told to write. I laughed and asked him how many years his professor worked in the real market and he didn't understand why I would asked that question. It took me over an hour of explaining why that was important. He still didn't listen and is currently working at a local fast food restaurant.
The number of 'employee referrals' who seem to wind up in well-paid positions in SV for which their distinguising qualification is their friendship with a current (usually over-rated or calculatingly self-promoting) employee. This is the reason that impenetrable political layers and alliances form that will make it impossible for these bloated, self congratuatory entities to accomplish anything resembling 'innovation' within a few years.
When will this sinking ship of fools figure out that you shouldn't make management decisions based on whatever or whoever gets the most 'likes'? They make my head hurt!
SV's hiring problem isn't that they don't have visibility to their friends' social networks - just monitor their facebook activiity and start sending out offer letters out, you idiots! It's the groupthink and circle jerking that pervades any orgnization that is stupid enough to encourage the hiring of new employees from within their current employees' social networks.
Doomed. To. Fail.
Top performers burn out fast and do not return to the IT field.
And now they get ripped off, too.
People with links to other talented, employable, people have been getting finder's bonuses from their employers for recommending a good candidate.
Now Google has patented mining their email and social network metadata so THEY can get a hiring fee. They just monitized the money out of their subscribers' pockets into their own.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Didn't Dave Eggers describe this in his book The Circle? It's about a fictional Bay area tech giant everyone loves that uses social media to monitor and evaluate everyone, including prospective hires and current employees.
Seems like a good way for google to intimidate people into using the google+ network, which I may have considered, until now.
I was only just reading about pump.io the other day and it seemed like a more open way to do facebork and grople+ services. This seems like a better way for social network users to own their own networks and it be about them rather than the social media sites.
Perhaps this might the type of thing tech users could use to make closed social networks function together a little better. Things like this from google really signal that the dawn of the social network is over and that the time has come for opening it up to a new way, Social Network V2.0?
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Seriously, remember when we all thought Julian was batshit crazy and probably a rapist. Not anymore huh? Really, he's just the weird guy nobody likes much who knows wtf is going on more than any of us.
Well at least Google aren't bothering to pretend that the list of your friends is your private information or that they won't discriminate against you on this or encourage others to do so. Remember McCarthy - well remember from history books or something?
Note also if you happen to be a bright, self-taught person from a poor background that's where your friends are likely to be and hey, they might be good and kind people too and that might not matter a damn whether you can program. (Yes *do* think ethnic minority groups, like being the son of a farm hand and a waitress in Indiana qualify you for this - what if they're even divorced nowadays?) Google will jump in, jack boots and all and discriminate the hell against you and assist others to do it. But not "because you're blick" a la Lethal Weapon 2, or because you're poor, or grew up somewhere remote, oh no *anything* but that. You see because they've given themselves a free pass to do it because your friends are, so that's much better, isn't it? Heck they're so evil nowadays they've actually patented this.
They should just go all the way and get the patent on nasal measurements as a predictor of whether you deserve the rule of law.
Sibling gets arrested - everyone unfriends you for their own safety, coz they need a job. Yah.
Get falsely accused of something? The same.
Piss off Sergey, you're f**ked.
Report a crime committed by someone with friends in high places and it sucks to be you. Be safe, be complicit in the crime.
Power indeed, huh?
google circles don't matter. at all. Linked In? that matters. Google+ circles are meaningless.
Planet temperature is increasing day by day specially on the earth & causes damage to our environment.
They have *PATENTED* hiring people based on their "social graphs". That means that other employers aren't allowed to do this... without forking over royalties to Google.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
"Oh, you lost your job, so I'm gonna have to delete you from my social media 'cause I can't have that show up when looking for a promotion"
Lovely stuff they're doing...there are credit score programs that use this, too.
Suddenly, one bad turn of luck will leave you totally isolated, no one will want to "add" anyone with anything negative at all.
Years I avoided facebook and the wife creates on FOR me. UGH!
Anonymous is certainly the way to go.
Got all the basement nerds feathers ruffled.. "Now that you've made a mess, clean up this mess before dinner young man!"
You went to the same school as a top performer
Unlike in Capitalism, you need be to a "highly skilled wage slave" to get a job in Globalization
Casteism
finding out if the actual candidate is qualified. I mean, I have LinkedIn connections who are college students, unemployed, etc. Having me as a connection doesn't make them IT engineers and me having them doesn't make me unemployed. And I just don't add work-related stuff to Google+: if I ever used the thing at all, it would be for personal stuff and not work-related.