In The War For Talent, Google Leads The Way.
Posted on May 28th, 2007 by Simon ChenFunnily enough, I read this article via a real newspaper over breakfast this morning in London - the International Herald Tribune. God, I hope the internet doesn’t kill off great publications. Maybe it’s just me, but there’s something about picking up the Fin Review, The Wall Street Journal or the IHT that still means something.
When I was Google earlier this week, one of the guys I met with said unofficially that he thinks Google focuses too much on a persons GPA (Grade Point Average).
I agree that companies like Microsoft, Yahoo! and Google all need to work from a baseline, but to me, the recruitment process is in danger of becoming lop-sided.
For the sake of defending my own sales and marketing background, companies like the technology trio need to place as much emphasis on people who can sell it, just as much as finding the people who can build it.
Not all is rosy though for some potential recruits - as told here by Jeff Barr.
Before I left for this trip, I listened to Adrian Giles, co-founder of Hitwise talk about the 9 years it took to build his company from scratch to where he exited for US$240 million. Same goes for an old school buddy of mine, Matt Rockman, who co-founded Seek, which eventually went public and now has a market cap of A$2.1 billion.
True, both Hitwise and Seek has some talented engineers, but both founders will tell you that their respective success was built the old fashioned way. Blood. Sweat. And Tears.
I know from my own experience in recruiting and hiring programmers that the process of managing these folks on a day to day basis can be a challenge. In fact, it can drive you crazy. Our recruitment process is outlined here.
What do you think? Are technology companies focussing too much on a candidates academic score?
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May 28th, 2007 at 10:26 pm
As a coder, I was challenged by your application process, having just completed it for the first time. In a lot of ways its much easier for me to accept the age old measure of success based on the school you went to and the grades you received there, than to place all my bets on one piece of code and three reasons why its good. I think in the manic world in which we live getting a guy who was on the deans list at Stanford is easier than applying for, or processing applications using your process. But hey, thats just my 2c.
June 4th, 2007 at 11:04 am
[...] Simon Chen, just back from the Googleplex and other tech TQs in the US, says, “Companies like the technology trio need to place as much emphasis on people who can sell it, just as much as finding the people who can build it.” [...]