Google’s carrots to attract the best
If Google is the best search engine in the world, with 8 billion indexed pages and 250 million requests per day in 35 languages, it’s machine for recruiting and developing the best talents works through a sophisticated cocktail of work conditions and benefits reserved for the stars. This cocktail of work life conditions aims to develop creativity.
Salaries and Stocks
If salaries are average for the IT sector, 85 000 dollars per year for a programmer, stock options respresent a gold mine for all employees, from the switchboard operator to the product developer. In the seven years of the company’s existence, 1200 “googlers” would today be millionaires, 500 would have tens of millions and 100, hundreds of millions.
The perks; 4000 employees at headquarters have the right to a 2000 dollar bonus if they buy a hydrogen car and 200 dollars for a top of the range hybrid bike. In Europe, “Googlers” have three weeks paid holiday from their first year. There is the free “All inclusive” breakfast, lunch and dinner including organic dishes and drinks, massages, daycare, sport complex etc. The Google restaurants, it seems, are the best in Silicon Valley. All this to make sure the “googlers” are creative and eager at work.
To better utilize their potential for innovation, the engineers have 20% of their work time, or one day per week, to dedicate to personal projects. “Google news” for example, was born out of this freedom.
Non-conventional recruitment methods
To go from 9 workers in 1998 to 6000 in 2006, you have to fish for candidates in every corner of the planet by using bait adapted to each speciality;
For example, in 2004, bill boards on the 101 between San Francisco and Silicon Valley featured an equation followed by .com. By decrypting the math formula, the most talented viewers found themselves on a site proposing an even more difficult equation. The correct solution resulted in a list of the positions available at Google.
80 Google recruiters have 1500 to 2000 interviews in 40 countries everyday. To discover the “IT geniuses,” the hunt begins at college. In offering free pizzas, they are rewarded with information from the best American colleges;
Several hundreds of University professors across the world seeking the future “cracks in IT or math.”
The most radical recruitment mehod is the Google Code Jam, a huge worldwide programming competition. It attracted 14 000 participants from more than 30 countries in 2005. The 100 finalists are invited to the headquarters in California for the final, the winner receiving 10 000 dollars.
Being a “genius” in your subject is not enough. You have to speak three languages, be creative, have an extended general culture and above all have the “Google attitude.”
Google HR Video to convince the sceptics (7 minutes)