The Best Recruiter at Google – Talent Connect San Francisco 2014

THE BEST RECRUITER AT GOOGLE – TALENT CONNECT SAN FRANCISCO 2014

This talk started with an opening speech by Vice President of Global Talent LinkedIn, Ms. Pat Wadors. She revealed top 5 companies of the most in demand employer ranking which are, Facebook, Microsoft, Unilever, Apple and Google. She then invited Google representative.

Mr. Laszlo Bock, Senior Vice President, People Operations at Google, had deeply explained about their secrets and tricks, how Google do in recruiting stage and how any organization can become a great place to work.

There are over 3 million applicants in every single year and 7000 people were hired. It is about 1 over 428 applicants ends up working at Google. He did mentioned that their top executives will spend 1 full day of week or more, to interview, assessing, sourcing and recruiting candidates.

There are 3 main secrets on how Google do in recruiting and selecting candidates.

• Set a high bar standard for quality and never ever compromise
• Assess candidates objectively - science
• Give candidates a reason to join

His first secret is about never compromising with quality. Hiring Manager is likely to be bias because they want to fill up a job vacancy immediately and they tend to hire people who are probably not supposed to or should not be hired. It is better to be slow in hiring but be good in quality which meets the company’s standard.

Second secret is assessing candidates objectively (science). Do not make inference or assumptions of people capabilities because it will lead to hiring wrong people.

Every company must have very clear criteria upfront. He then revealed 4 criteria of a Google interview which helps Google to hire better, make candidates feels that they were assesses more objectively, and the interview processes be  more fair. Google looks for 4 key traits in candidates: general cognitive ability, leadership, “Googleyness” and role-related expertise. Bock said that Google likes to hire curious, quick-learning generalists who can master whatever challenges thrown at them.