Human Resource Management at Google

Introduction

Recruitment and selection is one of the most important aspects in the Human resource management context. In the modern economy, human resource is considered to be the most valuable asset for any organization. Acquisition of exceptional talent pool proves the sustainability of every business. Looking at these aspects it can be easily assumed that the processes involved in the recruitment and selection have to undergo tremendous change to ensure quality of talent acquisition. However the processes involved in the recruitment and selection is misunderstood by the people who find it difficult to derive the technical difference between ‘Recruitment’ and ‘Selection’.

Recruitment is the process of attracting individuals or groups on a timely basis, in a sufficient number, with appropriate qualifications to apply for a job in an organization.

Selection is a set of processes to scrutinize the recruitment process and filter the most appropriate profile for the vacancy.

Organizational image Vs Recruitment and selection

Organization’s image plays a vital role in the recruitment and selection process.

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There is a greater involvement in decision making for recruitment and selection process as the recruitment and selection procedures are directly associated with the brand image and brand equity of an organization. A good image of an organization reflects the organizational culture and work processes with attracts the candidates to join.

An insight of recruitment and selection at Google

Google being a monopoly in the web based search engine market follows a very rigorous and quality assured process for its internal vacancies. Unlike other IT companies, Google tries to fulfil its resource requirements by developing the skills of its existing employees.

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As soon as there is a vacancy, Google’s HR department tries to find out the suitable existing employees who can be replaced in the vacant position. If any additional training or functional knowledge development is required then Google ensures that the resources undergo proper training and development program before joining in that position. If the HR department fails to identify such profiles existing within the office then they go for talent acquisition from the market. Before commencing the recruitment and selection process the HR managers ensure that proper documentations are in place describing the roles and responsibilities for the vacant positions and other requirements as well.

For this the HR managers conduct several meetings with the Line managers or head engineers to know the technical know-how expected from the candidates. This leads to generation of a developed competence analysis report. The reports cover different aspects like “reports to, tenure, compensation package, scope of responsibilities and duties, authority, priorities, budget, staff team, location, conditions, knowledge, skills, experience, values, performance standards, problems/objectives, results/priorities, ideal candidate profile”

Then the rest of the process is commenced in three procedural steps

  • Suitable profile search.
  • Challenging interviews and selection process. · On boarding of the candidate.
  • Suitable profile search

Once the competitive analysis report is prepared, HR managers hire a third party or agency to provide suitable candidate profiles for the vacant position. The responsibility of the HR manager lies in providing the requirements expected out of the recruitment and selection process. Challenging interviews and selection process:

Google is known for its rigorous selection process. Normally the recruitment process at Google involves 4 to 12 rounds of interviews and apart from initial 2 rounds of HR interviews, rest all are highly technology oriented. In most of the interviews candidates are asked to demonstrate their technological skills and other proficiencies. In typical Google interviews candidates are asked to write everything that they have learned in their academics regarding the technologies they have and the interview questionnaires revolve around those aspects only. In some cases candidates are even asked to write complex programs. Observing the candidate’s approach towards a solution, the interviewer gauges the employability of the candidate. On boarding of the candidate:

Normally the people who know Google’s operations deeply are allowed to take care of on boarding process. Google follows its best practices to give the candidate an amazing experience. The new employees are clustered into several groups so that they would sooner understand Google’s work culture and group coordination. Apart from all these typical recruitment and selection process Google also recruits through its innovative recruitment process. Google code jam competition and offering any amount the candidates ask for finding out the loopholes in Google’s products, to name a few.

Recruitment process for Google

Rounds

JAM Just a minute: Talk about a topic continuously for a minute, this tests your skills of communication which are very important. JAM topics - Pollution; describe your student life, Youth politics, IPL scandals, Metro-rail: boon or bane. Some time topics may be given by HR or may ask you to speak about your favourite topic. After preliminary evaluation of language skills, elimination of few people may take place. Written Test: This test will have questions of various types like GK (general Knowledge), Geography, Natural wonders, Google products-Android, Nexus, Maps, Picasa and others. Duration of 1 hr, spot evaluation will occur at vendors location. If your score meets the average selection score your profile will be forwarded to next section i.e. Client Location rounds (Google India). Before you go to clients location vendors will ask you to note down few topics which are frequently asked by Google HR’s. Frequently asked topics by Google HR’s:

  • Google founders
  • Google Products
  • Google maps mainly
  • Latitudes and longitudes
  • Natural wonders
  • Continents and countries
  • Current affairs

Client Rounds

Written test: Same topics as covered at the vendor location, at the end there may be letter writing and paragraph writing to test your writing skills Evaluation of written test at client location(Google India) may take 4-5 business days result will be informed to your vendor POC (point of contact).

Personal HR interview

Main round that will decide your capability to take up duties at Google, You will be grilled about your education, goals and long term commitments. Verbal skills will be tested along with your spontaneous nature, Current affairs and topics mentioned by your vendor as frequently asked topics will be also asked. After the personal interview (PI) the selected candidates will be intimated by mail, Background verification will be conducted by Google India before an offer letter is issued to the selected personnel.

The technology, the culture, the success story and the huge recruiting machine that operates within this goliath organisation make it the most powerful talent magnet on Earth. Each year, Google receives more than 2 million CVs and hires somewhere in the region of 6,000 to 8,000 people. In the first half of 2013 alone; the workforce at Google was increased by over 2,500 people to 40,178. Google employs in the region of 750 internal recruiters, the majority of which may well be on short term contracts. The ratio of employees to recruiter at Google is in a different stratosphere to most other companies. The attitude and enormous effort being made by Google to hire only the very best people for the business is nothing short of mind-blowing. Google loves analytics. Their use of algorithms to monitor everything they do is well documented, and they are taking the results seriously when it comes to recruitment. Google has rethought how it handles hiring since its early days, and a lot has changed.

Candidates' past academic performance wasn't predictive either. Google is increasingly hiring candidates who have no formal education, to the extent that you now see teams where 14 per cent have no college background. The company will shift towards behavioural interviews that will emphasise the candidate's own experience. Google has also simplified the interview and decision making process - shortening the time it takes to make a hiring decision. Previously it took as long as six months from application to hire; we are told it now only takes about a month and a half. And where it was once commonplace for a candidate to undertake 10 interviews, they found that every interview after the fourth only increased useful knowledge about an applicant by about 1%.

The company now caps the number of interviews at five. Google recruiters tend to take a proactive approach, hunting out the best candidates through internet search, social media and CV databases. They know what they are looking for and how to find it. Whilst searching Google’s career portal and applying online is the most obvious route; with only one in approximately 250 who apply actually getting hired, and I'd estimate only one in every 60-80 even getting a call back, it may well feel like a futile exercise. Getting your profile out there through the right social media channels and niche job boards may well prove to be far more rewarding. Inside Google's recruiting machine

Named Fortune’s Best Company to Work For in 2012, the search giant made a record 8,067 hires last year. The thirteen-year-old firm’s recruiting has an almost mythical quality about it, particularly for the two million candidates applying to work there each year. In terms of elite American institutions, getting a job at Google ranks with being admitted to Stanford Graduate School of Business or becoming a Navy Seal. Behind the glitz there are a few Googley basics at work: data, money (lots of it), sophisticated programming, and an army of young, eager recruiters. In 2009, the company revealed that there were about 400 internal recruiters. The number across all departments and countries is closer to 1,000, with about 300 full-time recruiters in the U.S. and more than 600 contractors. More conservative estimates put the tally at 500. Even if the lower figure was correct, Google would have one recruiter for every 64 employees.

Who are Google’s recruiters? They’re young, highly paid and, often, on a six month contract. There’s a lot to be said for new people trying to prove themselves in the first six to 12 months. It’s difficult to find an accurate or exact employee-to-recruiter ratio at the company, the number of recruiters varies dramatically. At any given time, 70% of the recruiting staff might be on contract. That changes, though, as Google feels the need to gear up or cut back on hiring. This lends the company considerable flexibility depending on its staffing needs. If you need to scale down, you fire 50 people and it’s fine. In two months you hire 50 to 100 and get it going again. It’s very efficient and very effective, but the thing is, it’s also very expensive. Calling Google’s recruiting efforts a machine is not much of a stretch. Google’s recruiting budget is the largest he has ever seen at a private company. The decision to pour in such resources comes, from a calculation the company made early on that a top-notch engineer is worth dramatically more than an average one.

If a great employee is worth 300 times more than average one, it makes sense to spend 10 times more on recruiting. That also partially explains why the company provides lavish perks, job flexibility, and time for personal projects. One common complaint is that the process is so well thought out, and so mechanical, that it gets boring for the human beings involved. Instead of relying just on seasoned, full-cycle recruiters , Google breaks down the process into different functions — sourcing, coordinating, college-only, etc. There are jobs for a wide variety of specific roles. Many companies use similar strategies, but Google’s trademark analytics have made it into something resembling art. “Get guys up to speed very quickly and you just plug them in. It’s really what they do at the infantry level in the army. Keep feeding them into the machine.” Individually, they’re good. But working within the Google system? “They achieve stuff as a group that exceeds anybody’s expectations. And joining the Google recruiting machine can be a very appealing proposition for budding HR professionals, even if the jobs aren’t permanent.

Former employee who declined to be identified says she “loved” work and the company, where she was a full-cycle recruiter for about 11 months. Plus she added, “It will probably never be easier to get someone to respond to a cold call.” Like so many projects at Google, data pumps through the recruiting organization’s veins. An internally designed candidate-tracking program used by recruiters is said to be a thing of mathematical beauty. The company eschews job boards and embraces direct sourcing, to the point where many engineers in the Valley regularly hear from the company. So giant and so aggressive is Google’s machine, a possibly apocryphal but no less telling story goes like this: a happily-employed Google engineer finds a recruiting e-mail in her inbox — from her own employer.

The system does have its flaws. Employees have complained that hiring is too focused on coding, that the emphasis on analytics misses creative talent, and that the interview system can be badly disorganized. A widely circulated 2008 e-mail thread of exiting Google employees excoriated the hiring process for being unnecessarily bureaucratic and arduous. The company, Carlisle counters, is constantly reworking the mechanics. In the last year, Google has changed a few of the distinctive features of its hiring process. It scaled back the focus on GPA and standardized testing scores. They no longer ask candidates for the GPAs if they’ve been out of school for three years. Standardized test scores are no longer required for any candidate. Perhaps most importantly, Google has drastically cut the time it takes a candidate to wend his way through the process. Where it once took as long as six months from application to hire, it now takes about a month and a half.

The previous average time was about 100 days. And where it was once commonplace to sit for 10 interviews, they found that every interview after the fourth one increased useful knowledge about an applicant only by about 1%. The company now caps the number of interviews at five. Google is famous for hiring talent for talent’s sake, even when there aren’t any openings. The philosophy is cut-throat. The company is thinking, not only do I have the best, but you don’t. As in basketball, if you have all the 7-foot centres, you’re going to win a lot of games. And they have the math to back it up, nowhere near a universal feature in HR departments. Many Google recruiters are on a six month contract, but stay longer.

Updated: Jul 06, 2022
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Human Resource Management at Google. (2016, Apr 27). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/human-resource-management-at-google-essay

Human Resource Management at Google essay
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