Editor’s note: This article was first published in March 2018. The figures of more than 2 million job applications a year and “more than 60,000 employees” at Google are from 2018. Laszlo Bock left Google in 2016.
According to Laszlo Bock, who stepped down as Google’s senior vice president of people operations, the company receives more than 2 million job applications a year from every corner of the world. And the truth is that Google got where it is by knowing how to hire the best. That is the question we are going to answer today.
How do you spot and hire only the best employees?
If anyone knows about this, it’s Laszlo Bock, who wrote the book Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead, a book well worth reading for anyone in business.
What we do know is that Google takes its time before making a new hire. They would rather be patient than get it wrong. A candidate has to be assessed by their possible future boss, their possible co-workers and a hiring committee.
But the truth is that it isn’t about bureaucracy.
Today Google has more than 60,000 employees, and after years of research and experimentation with different hiring methods, it has settled on four basic principles that can help any company, whatever its size, do much better at hiring.
Remember that Google eventually admitted that its brainteaser questions in job interviews were a waste of time, and decided to drop them.
See also: 6 tips for getting through a job interview, from Google’s head of HR
Google’s four principles for hiring the best employees
Some of these rules appear in Laszlo Bock’s book.
1. Set a high bar and don’t compromise on it
If you set a high bar in the job interview and don’t move it, you will find out in a first interview whether that person measures up.
Before you start recruiting, you need to decide precisely which attributes you want in the person. Bock has a rule of thumb: he only hires people who are better than he is.
And this should apply to every position. If you are looking for an administrative assistant, don’t look for someone who can only answer the phone and schedule meetings. Look for someone who can make your job easier by organising your time and priorities better than you could have done yourself.
If finding an employee takes longer than you would like, be patient and never commit before you are sure.
See also: 10 things you shouldn’t do before and during a job interview
2. Find candidates yourself
Google works with recruitment firms, but only in specific situations where outside expertise is a requirement, such as building a new team in another country.
In the past, Google used third parties for hiring. One of the companies it worked with was Monster, but it stopped mainly because it found that many users of these sites sent out generic job applications en masse.
Google now relies on its own recruitment and careers portal.
If you want to work at Google…
Where do you send your CV to Google? Visit its jobs portal, read through the vacancies and check whether you meet the requirements for the position. Once you’ve done that, attach your CV and you’re done. My advice is to keep the CV you send to Google clear, direct and concise. In fact, you can use what we consider the perfect CV as a model.
Bock’s advice for small businesses when hiring employees
Be patient with hiring in the early days, and when your company starts to grow, ask your best-connected people to devote even more time to making better hires.
Bock also recommends that managers use social networks such as LinkedIn and alumni databases, as well as professional associations, to discover talent.
3. Put checks in place to assess candidates objectively
An organisation the size of Google can afford to have a large group of people and professionals spend time with each candidate, but Bock advises even the smallest companies to avoid leaving the decision to hire an employee to a single individual.
His advice is to include subordinates and peers in the interviews, make sure the interviewers write good notes, and have an impartial group of people decide whether or not to hire the person.
4. Give candidates a reason to join
A company like Google cannot afford to hire the wrong person, and people who are capable and competent very often have offers from other companies. Google knows how important it is to make the candidate understand that this is not about selling time for money.
Bock says that one method he used, and that worked all along, to convince and motivate a strong candidate was to show them the people they would be working with. The candidate would see Google’s remarkable collection of people, from the inventor of JavaScript to Olympic athletes and founders of tech companies.
With this exercise, Bock simply wants to make clear to the candidate why the work they are going to do matters and helps society.
See also: The only two ways to keep your best employees (and it isn’t money)
Featured image: David Nagle, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
