an advertising product area; we have a YouTube product area; and then we have a global sales organization—things like that.
But what’s interesting is, you can’t look at them in isolation, because there are dependencies across them. So, for exam- ple, if we want to invest more heavily in YouTube, we also have an infrastructure product area where they build all those servers and data centers to host all the content on YouTube. And if we’re going to add bodies in YouTube, you also need to add some fraction of those bodies in infrastructure, and you also need to add some recruiters to go out and find all those people. So it’s rare that we make a decision that’s completely constrained to just one unit of the organization.
Q. What is your workforce in People Operations? How many people are in your division?
A. I’m afraid we don’t share the breakouts. What I can say is that over 60 percent of
the people focus on recruiting. We
heavily skew toward recruiting because our belief is—and this is something the military is superb at, better than we are— we found it incredibly difficult to take somebody who’s an average performer, a 30th percentile performer, and make them an exceptional performer. It’s much easier to make sure you screen for only the exceptional performers upfront.
So our people investment is heavily
geared toward that upfront assessment and screening for cultural fit and capa- bility, and that’s where we put the majority of our investment, although we then have a lot of people doing lead- ership development and management development, thinking about innovative benefits, thinking about the culture we have, and so on.
WHERE WORK MEETS PLAY Google offices, like this one in New York City, have become well-known for their innovative, fun and—some might say wacky—design. Google data show that these spaces boost productivity, collaboration and inspiration. They are designed to be places that Googlers want to be to think creatively and push the boundaries of what’s possible.
Q. Which is pretty unique.
A. We try. I think people fundamentally are good, and people fundamentally, I believe, want to have some freedom to express themselves. And we try to create an environment where you recognize those facts. And if you believe those facts to be true, if you believe people are good and want to be free, then you have to act in accordance with your beliefs, which means you do things like, we have 20 percent time [the name given to Google- related projects, often called 20 percent projects, that people work on outside of their core role]; we give people a voice in what they do; we give people a voice in how the company’s run.
Q. Across all your specialties, all the people whom you recruit and hire, what would you say are the top three traits that Google’s looking for?
A. Tere are four things we look for, and I’ll give you them in order of importance.
Te number one, most important thing is general cognitive ability—not just how bright somebody is, but also how capa- ble are they of learning, and how good are they at adapting, how they think in new situations.
Te number two thing we look for is leadership capability. And we don’t necessarily look for people who have been president of a club or of a company. We instead look for people who demonstrate what we call “emergent leadership.” Tis is probably familiar to you as well, but the idea is, we don’t want to hire only people who have been the top officers in all the organizations they’ve been in; we want people instead who are able to be part of a team in an egoless fashion, and once a situation arises that needs their skills, they step up and take command or influence the team while their skills are needed—and then, just as important, they’re willing to step back when that need has passed. And that’s much harder to find. Tere are a lot of great command-and-control
types, but
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CRITICAL THINKING
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