A630.9.4.RB - Hiring and Recruiting

Does Schmidt's description of the Google Culture make sense to you?  Mr. Eric Schmidt’s discussion on the culture of Google was very enlightening.  Although, I would agree that Schmidt's description does make sense to me I have a hard time picturing it in full application.  Eric admitted that Google is virtually a self-managed company because of their unique hiring practices.  The Hiring and Recruiting presentation by Eric Schmidt was a model that I think many companies could copy.  I appreciate that Mr. Schmidt and Google seek driven, self-motivated employees, which if correctly empowered, can manage themselves and produce.  From a personal perspective, I wish more companies, including the government, would actively discriminate (not by race, sex, religion, etc…) but by personal values, drive, motivation, competence, by our internal values that would make employees an asset and not a liability and not by whom you know.  I guess Mr. Schmidt is correct in the fact that Google employees are not really managed because they are very self-motivated and invested in their role at Google.

Is this a reasonable way to view the work that most people are doing in your workplace?  No I don’t think so.  This may be what everyone would like to see in the way a company should work, but to be honest it is not reality.  Sure, work gives us money as well as other things as Mr. Eric Schmidt mentioned.  I often hear people say I don’t work for the money; I work because I love my job.  However, ask them to take a pay cut or even work for free for a day and they will not be very happy.  It is unreasonable to compare Google to the federal government; it is like comparing apples to oranges.  There is a similarity between both entities in the fact that both organizations want people who are competent and empowered.  The main degree of separation is that Google practices what they preach while the government’s hiring practices are based on whom you know and whom you are related too.  Google prides itself on hiring talent and letting these people take on their own direction, with management taking the sideline.  The federal government, on the other hand, is very rigid and does not allow the creative freedom that Google does. 

As a leader, does it take courage to have and to implement this point of view?  I do not think that to implement a culture such as Google’s takes courage as a leader.  It’s not about courage, it’s about organizational culture.  Now, the leader may need courage to try to instill such organizational change because there is going to be resistance.  In this course, we have studied numerous cases in which a leader wanted to instill change but ran into numerous obstacles.  I think any business leader knows that it is the people of the organization that make it succeed or fail, not the name on the sign; however, they also know the most unpredictable aspect of any business is the people.  That being said, Eric Schmidt’s business approach on hiring may not fit all companies.  Finding the balance of people skills and personalities is critical to the culture envisioned for the organization, but having the right skill set and attitude may carry more emphasis.

Could this approach backfire?  Nothing is 100% guaranteed in today’s business environment and as I stated earlier the employee is the most unpredictable aspect of any business culture.  We all want to hire the right types of people, but it is not as easy as it seems.  Even Eric Schmidt admitted that sometimes the person may not have the right personality or even be the picture-perfect team player, but they may have an exotic skill set that is needed.  So I would say yes, it is possible for even the best-laid plans to backfire; but Google has been very successful with what they are doing for a long time.  I think one of the keys to the success of Google is their willingness to adapt to an ever changing environment.  Another aspect that may have been downplayed is the importance of middle management’s role in the hiring process.  If the managers involved in the recruitment process are not hiring individuals that match the values of the organization and these same managers are not being held to the Google standard, then failure is a high possibility.

What can you take away from this exercise to immediately use in your career? I cannot really say that I learned any new information from this exercise.  However, Mr. Schmidt did give me a new perspective on how to view some things when it comes to the hiring process.  He reinforced to me that not every organization will hire and retain the same types of employees.  Google has had success with their hiring processes and I as well as other organizations can learn from them when it comes to hiring, leading, and retaining employees. 

Once you have reflected upon these questions, list any other questions or insights that have come to you as a result of this exercise.  After learning about Googles hiring process, I would love to have a case study where they compared Google to other giants in the technology industry such as Yahoo, Amazon and even EBay.  The case study was very good, but it is also creating a rather glamorized picture of the company itself and the information it shares.  Surely, Goggle has had some tough times.  How many top executives have they lost in the last 10 years and what is their history of retention like with the various levels of the organization  No company can get it right every time.  Has Google ever hired someone and later found they could not handle all that creative freedom and lack of structure in the work environment?