Maaz Shoaib

20191-25355
Summary of case study:

The crux of this case is how Google has the world’s first recruiting culture, pros and cons of it
and an insight of how it works?

Google has achieved something which other corporate doesn’t have in a short span of time.
Google has created a recruiting process which can only be categorized as recruiting machine
and is better than others.

As a result of this culture not only does Google fund recruiters to the extraordinary point but
also makes incredible change in the way employee works in order to attract and retain the best.

Many organizations have upgraded their pay, benefits and reward policy to attract best
candidates for them and for employee contribution recognition to retain them but none has
worked on their job description. Google has changed the nature of job for their every
professional.

Google introduced “20 per cent work’’. The key element of this idea is to make it attraction and
retention force and to fuel innovation and motivation. There is no specific definition of what 20
percent work means but it is clear enough to communicate that employees have to work
equivalent to one day per week on their own. Larry page and Sergy brin crafted every
professional job description to make people feel motivated their leadership team worked on
every element of workplace so that employee work on challenging and interesting project,
learning continuously, and motivated to do more by thinking they are adding value to
organization.

Google group and Google news both products are started as a result of 20 per cent work. The
best value of this is that it drives innovation and creativity throughout the organization.

The world’s largest recruiting budget is for Google recruiting process although it was an
unbelievable job to convince senior management to fund the recruitment process. At time
Google’s recruitment ratio was 1 recruiter for every 14 employee i.e. (14:1) that surpasses the
previous record of (65:1) held by Cisco.

Google offer spectacular benefits not only for recruiting process but also to encourage
collaborations, reduce barriers between functions. These benefits do attract “wrong people”
who are talented but they are there not for an opportunity but for benefits only and it makes
recruiting process a bit challenging.

Recruiting structure which Google follow to enable the growth in future is primarily “centralized
operation model” as many other organizations do. The key tenet of any recruitment process is
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20191-25355
the executive search. At Google, recruitment is responsible for filling executive leaders and top
technical positions s well.

To ensure that company has capability to recruit the required talent, recruiting model has
broken into distinct roles. These activities are organized in choreographed manner and the
roles are: recruiting research analysts; candidate developers (sourcers); process coordinators;
candidate screeners; specialised recruiters for college; specialised recruiters for technical and
leadership executive search. Many consultants argued that having such large number of
specialized professional indicates inefficiency, but Google valued the quality over the cost.

Google has successfully implemented many of the standard best practice tools found at other
companies. It also has some standard recruiting tools like; Employee referral, college
recruitment, professional networking like LinkedIn and recruiter training.

Wow recruiting tools: Google’s first wow approach is to utilize its own search engine to find top
candidates. They also attract top performers by placing ads of their job vacancies through
Google ads when specific keywords are used these ads appeared in search.

Second idea of clever recruitment is use of contest as recruiting tool to identify and attract top
notch software engineers. Google choose its engineers from a global writing contest in which
7500 people participate each year, through this online writing contest top 25 candidates are
being called on campus to compete and to avail the chance to work for Google.

Third wow aspect of Google recruitment process is creative use of roadside billboards and
magazines to attract the mathematicians and programming wizards. By placing mind boggling
puzzles on roadside and in magazine Google very cleverly attract its target employee by
challenging them although on these magazines and billboards Google is not mentioned but the
interested candidate eventually lead to Google site through puzzles.

Finally, Friends of Google is the last tool which is a network of email to connect with them.
Google used this tool to create a long term relationship with thousands of people who are
interested in Google and its product not specifically interested in working with the company but
with people that likes the firm.

Google is renowned as best search engine as best employer as well but it has few weakness
although these weaknesses can never be a threat for Google, but there are some grey areas
recruitment management and HR needs to work on; Google is already known as best employer
but recruitment management should come up with the idea of employment branding strategy.
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20191-25355
Another weakness is poor metrics; it’s insane and almost unbelievable how a company staffed
largely with mathematicians with highly experienced HR and a huge recruitment management
is still unable to keep track of on-the-job performance of new hires.

Having no clear recruitment strategy is another drawback of Google recruitment process

although it undoubtedly does great things but as far as good recruiting strategy is concern there
is no clear well communicated strategy for hiring.

Speed of recruiting process at Google is very hurtful for some candidates, almost every person
that has been a candidate does comment about their time taking process of screening,
recruiting and interviewing. Moreover the fact that all new hires must be approved by senior
management also hurt the recruiting efforts.

Apart from others, Google has multiple contractors in recruiting function; company is reluctant
to give permanent jobs to recruiter right after the selection which may reduce the ability to
attract seasoned and experienced recruiters.

Emphasis on youth is also considered as weakness of company because youth culture might
cause inability to attract more experienced professionals. Company is also accused of doing age
discrimination by former employee.