Papas Fritas writes:
"Tom Friedman writes at the New York Times (NYT) that Google has determined that GPA's are worthless as a criteria for hiring, test scores are worthless, and brainteasers are a complete waste of time. " They don't predict anything," says Laszlo Bock, the senior vice president of people operations for Google. "The No. 1 thing we look for is general cognitive ability, and it's not IQ. It's learning ability. It's the ability to process on the fly. It's the ability to pull together disparate bits of information. We assess that using structured behavioral interviews that we validate to make sure they're predictive [Login required]." Many jobs at Google require math, computing and coding skills, so if your good grades truly reflect skills in those areas that you can apply, it would be an advantage. But Google has its eyes on much more and the least important attribute Google looks for is "expertise." "The expert will go: 'I've seen this 100 times before; here's what you do.' " Most of the time the non-expert will come up with the same answer "because most of the time it's not that hard, "says Bock, "but once in a while they'll also come up with an answer that is totally new. And there is huge value in that."
Finally Google looks for intellectual humility. "Without humility, you are unable to learn." It is why research shows that many graduates from hotshot business schools plateau. "Successful bright people rarely experience failure, and so they don't learn how to learn from that failure," says Bock. "What we've seen is that the people who are the most successful here, who we want to hire, will have a fierce position. They'll argue like hell. They'll be zealots about their point of view. But then you say, 'here's a new fact,' and they'll go, 'Oh, well, that changes things; you're right.' " You need a big ego and small ego in the same person at the same time.""
(Score: 4, Insightful) by carguy on Monday March 03 2014, @08:59PM
Going back 10 or 15 years, wasn't Microsoft written up for something similar? As in, hire youngsters that were full of themselves (as well as quite smart academically)?
It looks like Google is trying for a few more traits as well, such as the ability to quickly back down from a strongly held belief--so this might be an improvement on the MS model.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Aighearach on Tuesday March 04 2014, @12:07AM
The difference is that MS was seen as hiring large numbers of conformists with high GPAs. Apple was seen as hiring creative people. Google is seen as hiring smart people.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Tuesday March 04 2014, @08:53AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 1) by Aighearach on Wednesday March 05 2014, @05:39PM
I don't think people are even half joking about google though. That's what sets them apart. Most companies people say it as a sarcastic insult. With Google it at least sounds reasonable.