Activity Assignment: Google Case Study
Purpose:
Different organization have different approaches to recruitment and selection. This exercise is to gain an understanding of process that Google uses.
Google is consistently ranked by Fortune magazine as one of the best places to work. It provides employees with excellent pay and a series of perks that are unheard of at most corporations. Some of these perks are flex hours; bring your dog to work; casual dress; on-site free massage and yoga; free snacks, drinks and meals: and a child-care center among many others. No wonder that Google receives close to 3 million job applications a year. To find the best talent, Google uses carefully selected strategies, methods and techniques. Google recruits at college and university campuses and through the Careers section of its website. Google is very selective, hiring only about 7000 of the 3 million applicants. Google uses different methods to select people for different jobs, but there are some common elements: preliminary screening, employment tests, interviews, and background checks. Google is looking for intelligence, creativity, leadership, and fit with the Google culture, as well as the role the person will play as part of Google. Hiring decisions are not made by managers but having a committee composed of peers make the decision, which is much like the process a university uses in hiring, promoting, and granting tenure to faculty, rather than hierarchical structures used in the industry. One can say that in many ways Google operates in the knowledge industry much like a university.
Instructions:
Watch the YouTube video "The Best Recruiter at Google | Talent Connect San Francisco 2014"
Read the above case study
Task
A. Is Google's elaborate recruitment and selection system justified?
B. What are the appropriate criteria for assessing its effectiveness?
C. Google receives over 3,000,000 applications for 700 positions. Is this an effective approach?
D. What is the cost, particularly the human cost, associated with reviewing all of the applications?
E. How do you reduce the number of applicants to a reasonable number that can be run through the selection system?
F. Provide examples of how technology might be used to facilitate and improve the recruitment and selection used by Google
G. What criteria should Google use in selecting "team players"
H. Does "peer based hiring" lead to better employees?
I. What is your overall opinion of Googles Recruitment Strategy and what question would you ask Laslo?