Hiring staff at google and hiring staff in general.

Our friendly geeks muse upon the hiring process at Google and offer thoughts on how to find a person with that spark of something that will make them just right for the job.

I would like to hear from both sides of the desk, so what do others think is a good way to hire staff for both IT and non-IT areas of work?

 

I can't see any major issues with it myself. A company takes a huge risk in employing new personnel, if they believe that testing each and every applicant reduces this risk then so be it.

The more comprehensive the interviews the more both sides will discover about each other, which must be a good thing.

Weather you believe testing to be a worth while exercise is really not important, if you want to work for a company then you must (most of the time) play by their rules.

 

Good results in well designed aptitude tests do correlate pretty well with what a persons IT skills might be like and are especially useful for testing people with no IT experience looking to get into IT. Technical IT jobs (programming, design etc) are jobs you can design fairly specific tests for to find out a persons level of knowledge and skill which is useful but they won't tell you anything about how that person will work in a team and all the non-technical aspects of the job.

Unbiased interviewing is fairly tricky. I recently went on a course about it at work and it's surprising how easy it is to reject people based on criteria that have nothing to do with their likely ability to do the job in question.

Michael.

 

I've been through the mill several times in the past few years...

Most comprehensive was BAE Systems. Two day assessment centre, in which I had to create and give a presentation in under an hour, two interviews, group presentation project and numerical and verbal tests.

Least rigorous was our friends at future publishing. One short interview and I was offered the job the next day.

I think that google seem to be taking things on a case-by-case basis. That can only be a good thing because if they understand the individual and the individual understands the company better, it's much more likely to have a good outcome. I wonder how google's staff turnover compares to the rest of the industry?

My experience so far is that the less rigorous the process, the higher the staff turnover is. Not an earth-shattering concept for sure...

 

one thing, loosely connected to the above is that if an employer is going to require multiple interviews and callbacks or 2 day interviews then they should pay for travel at least if not overnight accomodation in the 2 day case. to be honest if i was unemployed and most likely skint i'd be wary of embarking upon a long interview trail if i wasn;t going to be re-imbursed for some of my out of pocket costs.
i've come up against a few tests, wheter aptitude or personality, they seem fairly reliable.
cheers


julian

 

Michael,

Well said, I feel it is all too easy to fall into the trap of hiring from a pool of "people who look and think like us" and in so doing you may well miss someone who is just what you wanted and could have brought so much to your company.

Julian,
I agree throughly and would expect any company to promptly give a cash re-imbursed to cover the cost of the interview for each interviewe, after all this is such a small amount when set against the cost of not hiring the right person it is an utter no brainer. It is just a cost of doing business.

 

This is why I am not going to bother with the big companies. I am sure I will be able to find a company that likes my personality but I unless you're one of the best I think its pointless sitting through millions of interviews and tests to be told go away and don't bother reapplying.

This is why I have not applied to any graduate schemes, the competiton is to fierce. I am just going to apply to normal jobs when they come up. A lot of jobs in my area of expertise don't require that much experience either, in the last few months I have seen many jobs that say two years experience required but this can be included in a degree.

This is because .NET is still modern technology is like what Java was 5 years ago. Now Java jobs are harder to get because there is much more people with the skills.

 

Prehaps offering Internships to the few people who look like they might be what you are looking for may well be the way to go as over the period of the internship both learning and people skills could be judged and good people could then be offered a job at the end of their internship.