This is how Google hires the best talent

We all have heard great things about what Google is and why it’s one of the most sought after employer in the world, and have often wondered how do they do what they do. Laszlo Bock, Google’s Vice president for People operations (till recently) was asked this question almost every day and hence he decided to write a book on how Google became the no. 1 employer in the world.

Work Rules is a great book for every start up entrepreneur, HR enthusiast and for every Google aspirant. It gives you insights into how the business grew so big, the thought process of founders and why being employee-centric matters to them so much.

Today, I am going to cover excerpts from the book which talks about Google’s hiring process.

First, look at this table that draws the comparison between a typical hiring process and Google’s hiring process. If you are a recruiter, you would completely relate to the left side of the chart.

Now, let’s look at details of their hiring process that make them hire the best of the best.

• Hiring decisions are taken by committees (taking away right to hire from just the hiring manager or his functional head), the foundation of which was laid down by the founders themselves. Two teams of senior leaders, one for product management & engineering roles and another for sales, finance & all other roles select candidates. Larry Page reviews every candidate in the end.

• Reference checks are done for candidates, but also with internal employees of Google. If the applicant once worked in the same company as a current employee, or went to the same school or college with, then that employee is asked for a reference on the applicant.

• Hiring packet of fifty pages or more per candidate is made, which is reviewed by the hiring committee.

• Using a homegrown tool called gHire, recruiters tap into brilliant candidates, who may not be active in the job market. They call this Knowable Universe, where they systematically locate every person within a universe of job types, companies or profiles.

• Employee Referrals and Google careers website are their best sources for hiring

• They don’t hire much from recruitment firms, because “the stringency & peculiarity of our hiring standards and process, combined with our existing capabilities in recruitment, mean that there are only a handful of situations where recruitment firms help us.”

• Their hiring rates from posting jobs on job boards (Monster/Indeed etc.) were so low that in 2012 they stopped posting jobs in them. Their belief is also that someone who really wants to join Google, would keep an eye on relevant openings on their careers website, otherwise that candidate is just spamming the job market by applying everywhere.

• The goal of their interviews is to predict how candidates will perform once they join the team and this is achieved by using behavioral & situational structured interviews with assessments of cognitive ability, conscientiousness and leadership. All their technical hires go through a work sample test, where they are asked to solve engineering problems during the interview.

• Candidates are assessed on four key attributes by each interviewer: General Cognitive Ability, Leadership, Googleyness and Role Related Knowledge. At least two independent interviewers have to assess each attribute. With an internally developed tool, qDroid, interviewers can pick the job for which they are interviewing and check the attributes they want to test. They are then emailed an interview guide with questions designed to predict performance for that job.

• Answers to the questions are then rated on BARS (Behaviourally anchored rating scale), also known as rubric. The interviewer has to write how exactly did the candidate demonstrate the attribute for which he was being assessed. The notes are then discussed with other reviewers on the hiring committee.

• Each interviewee is given a survey in the end with a tool called VoxPop (Latin word for Voice of the people), asking them on what they thought about the process. The feedback received from the candidates is then used for process adjustments.

• They revisit the applications of rejected candidates to assess if they made mistakes. They have recalled some of the earlier rejected candidates and given them offers.

• Interviewers are given feedback on their personal ability to judge whether someone should be hired. Every interviewer is given a record of the interview scores they have given in the past and if the candidate was hired.

• A candidate’s problem solving & learning ability is assessed in the initial round which is done by Google’s recruiters and not line managers. These recruiters also have the visibility of all jobs in the company and hence they pass on candidate profiles to the other job if they see more fitment there.

• The candidate will be interviewed by the potential boss, peers, the team that would be working under this position holder and a cross functional reviewer (someone with little or no connection to the team for which the interview is happening.

It all looks pretty daunting, but as Lazlo says, the intent to hire best comes first and hence nothing seems difficult. It’s in fact the talented employees who have taken Google from a garage to such great heights.

Stay tuned to our updates, to read how Google does its Performance Management and Learning & Development.