Book by: Lazlo Bock
Presentation by: Susan Schilke
Google’s Beliefs
- Culture eats strategy for breakfast
- If you give people freedom, they will amaze you
- Have a mission that matters
- If you believe people are good, you must be unafraid to share information with them
- All of us want control over our destinies
- Give people slightly more trust, freedom and authority than you are comfortable giving them. If you’re not uncomfortable, you haven’t given enough
Insights from Inside Google
- Focus on the user and all else will follow
- It’s best to do one things really, really well
- Fast is better than slow
- Democracy on the Web works
- You don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer
- You can make money without doing evil
- There’s always more information out there
- The need for information crosses all borders
- You can be serious without a suit
- Great just isn’t good enough
Google’s mission & values
- To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.
- Mission is simple and doesn’t mention customers, market, market share or profits and is unattainable so there’s always motivation
Transparency:
New employees have access to Google’s code base from day one; all employees see the presentation to the board
- TGIF all hands meeting with open Q&A
- Emails that complain about another team member get forwarded to the team member
- Bridgewater – records all meetings and makes them available to all employees
Voice:
- Bureaucracy busters
Work Rules for Hiring
- Invest a disproportionate amount of resources on recruiting
- Work to hire 90th percentile performers versus working on training average performers with the hope they will improve
Hire the best by following these rules
- Hire slowly
- Hire people better than you
- Don’t let managers hire their own people (manager’s hate this rule!)
Google’s Self-Replicating Talent Machine
Early days
- More methodology to referrals
- Candidate database – colleges, other firms
- Applicant tracking system – internal reference checking
- Billboard and puzzles
- Lengthy, painful interview process
- Open new offices and get teams of people (from sold companies)
Today
- Every employee is a recruiter
- Excruciatingly specific in describing what they’re looking for
- Still try crazy things to get the attention of the best people
Don’t Trust Your Gut
- Confirmation bias gets in the way of interview success
- Case interviews and brain-teasers don’t work
- Best predictor of performance is work sample test
- Second best is general cognitive testing
- Add structured interviews with behavioral and situational questions
Four attributes that determine success at Google
- General Cognitive Ability – how candidates have solved hard problems in real live and how they learn
- Leadership – particularly emergent leadership – not formal. Bias against the ‘I’ focused.
- Googleyness – fun, humility, conscientiousness, comfort with ambiguity, courage
- Role-Related Knowledge – least important and potentially a negative…want curious people, but technical expertise important in many roles
Team Interview Approach
- Each interviewer assesses the four attributes
- Written feedback compiled on question/answer and assessment of answer
- Limit of four interviews
- Constant check of the hiring team and process
http://www.amazon.com/Work-Rules-Insights-Inside-Transform/dp/1455554790