Google's Answer to Filling Jobs Is an Algorithm 330
An anonymous reader tipped us to a New York Times article about Google's newest HR tool: an algorithm. Starting soon, the company (which gets roughly 100,000 applications a month) will require all interested applicants to fill out an in-depth survey. They'll be using a sophisticated algorithm to work through the submitted surveys, matching applicants with positions. The company has apparently doubled in size in each of the last three years. Even though it's already 10,000 employees strong Laszlo Bock, Google's vice president for people operations, sees no reason the company won't reach 20,000 by the end of the year. This will mean hiring something like 200 people a week, every week, all year. From the article: "Even as Google tries to hire more people faster, it wants to make sure that its employees will fit into its freewheeling culture. The company boasts that only 4 percent of its work force leaves each year, less than other Silicon Valley companies. And it works hard to retain people, with copious free food, time to work on personal projects and other goodies. Stock options and grants certainly encourage employees to stay long enough to take advantage of the company's surging share price. Google's hiring approach is backed by academic research showing that quantitative information on a person's background -- called 'biodata' among testing experts -- is indeed a valid way to look for good workers."
Bias (Score:4, Insightful)
"But the computer chose them! You're not going to sue my computer, are you?"
Re:Bias (Score:5, Insightful)
(OK, so it's a trivial case, but you get the general idea)
I suspect there could be plenty of arguments in court about whether some nuance of the algorithm treats some group unfairly or not...
Only useful if... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Bias (Score:2, Insightful)
Only 4% turnover? It's going to rise (Score:5, Insightful)
A lawsuit waiting to happen (Score:5, Insightful)
The questions range from the age when applicants first got excited about computers...
This question doesn't directly reveal your age, but a clever interviewer can glean much from it. "Oh, got excited in computers at 22, eh? Probably older than I thought. We don't want old employees we want young ones."
It is illegal to ask some questions in an interview. Age related questions are one of them. You are only allowed to ask questions that pertain to your performance of the job at hand. For example, I can ask someone "would you have a problem lifting heavy boxes?" but I can't ask how old you are and make a judgement because you are 40 that you can't lift heavy boxes. The above question you as a logical geek might think is iffy, but to a lawyer, it's shark bait and they'll be all over it, so don't ask it. If you ask a question that falls into this category, you open yourself up to a gender/age/racial discrimination lawsuit. These and many others are protected classes under the law.
And there's a great reason why an interview is a poor indicator of performance... because people lie!!! It's a sales process. They want your job, and you want the best candidate. Last two people I let go both gave great interviews, but when they actually worked, they sucked. They had all the right answers in the interview, but there is no escaping performance reviews.
0% firing rate is impossible, as is 100% retention. 96% retention is a stellar figure, even for silicon valley. I think they should be pretty happy that number.
They're not losing money fast enough... (Score:2, Insightful)
10,000 employees??? What the heck are they doing? 20,000 employees next year? How the heck do they manage to coordinate anything??? Do they even -have- a corporate culture, or agenda?
Lets see... 10,000 employees, on average, costing the corp ~$200k each... that's... $20 billion a year... in salaries/benefits/office space/etc. Are they even making that much? Are they paying their workers with ``profits'' from stock sales?
Either their salaries are low (and employees work for stock options), or something is fishy.
Re:How do you feel about personality questions? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Bias (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless of course, as someone pointed out earlier, you have access to statistical and demographic data that lets your algorithm figure out religion, race, sex, etc indirectly from the answers with an acceptable margin of error, say +/- 3%?
A telling comment: (Score:2, Insightful)
> "More and more in the time I've been here, we hire people based on experience as a proxy for what they can accomplish," he said. "Last week we hired six people who had below a 3.0 G.P.A."
Arrrgh! It's like saying: "Last week we hired six people who weren't white."
Augurs poorly for GOOG.
Re:A lawsuit waiting to happen (Score:2, Insightful)
Good example. What about when you're hiring a receptionist though? You want to present a certain image for your company when clients come to visit. In other words, you want someone attractive and reasonably young there and, oh yea, female. What if some fat disgusting old dude applies for the position with great office skills, can you turn him down and give the job to a dumb blonde instead?
Hrm... now there's an idea... gain 50 lbs, grow an unruly beard, skip a few showers, and then go interview for a receptionist job... I could retire with the dough I'd make on the lawsuit, cha-ching!!
Re:20,000 vs 200 x 100? (Score:4, Insightful)
I haven't read anything about their philosophy other than what you just shared, but it's hard to take seriously any sort of one-size-fits-all solution for something as broad as "all companies."
Re:Bias (Score:5, Insightful)
My understanding (IANAL etc) is that you are supposed to assess only the skills, aptitude, etc. that you can defend as related to the job. If that happens to be correlated with sex, race, age, etc., the correlation is not a problem, but you cannot use those things as a proxy for what you're really interested in. For example, in a job that requires quick responses, you can test people's reaction times, but you cannot automatically exclude people based on age (even though age may be correlated with reaction time).
More direct assessment is better anyway. Suppose you are hiring for a job that requires math skills, which you believe is correlated with gender, which you believe is correlated with cat ownership. Even if those correlations exist, you'd still get more accurate results measuring the math skills directly rather than measuring cat ownership which is correlated with something that is correlated with what you need.
Quality of hires (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Bias (Score:4, Insightful)
The law does not assume that there's no relationship between job performance and age/race/etc. What the law assumes is that the relationship is not causal. That is, just because you're over 50 you can't do the job, even if most 50-year olds really can't. Therefore, we protect the one 50-year old who could from unfair discrimination.
Another voodoo interviewer... (Score:4, Insightful)
If the come to the interview dressed like crap, they're automatically out. If they turn up late, they're automatically out.
It's facinating to me the utter-crap voodoo that some people having in making hiring decisions. People like yourself actually believe there's these simple little tests that seperate the good from the bad.
Did you ever consider that all you're doing is just trying to hire people like yourself? You may think that's a great way to seperate the good from the bad... but you may eventually discover that any workplace relies on a variety of people with different personalities, attitudes, and "views of the world". Hire too many people like yourself, and you might just wind up with a bunch of people that can't see outside of the box you've built. If you want a perfect example of this problem, look no further than the Bush administration.
Re:Only 4% turnover? It's going to rise (Score:3, Insightful)
Huh? Most people don't try to get hired or stay at a job just because of stock options. It is a nice perk, but if a company treats you like crap or you feel what you are doing is not appreciated or useful in some way then you are going to quit regardless of how much money they throw at you.
And if you are one of those people who stick around for the money even though you loathe the job, then it will suck to be your coworker, underling, or even manager of you because your performance is going to reflect your true feelings.
Which in turn results in more people leaving the sinking ship...
So rather than throwing wheelbarrows of money at employees to buy their loyalty, you'll succeed more by having a productive and worker friendly workplace.
Heck... If Google asked me I would work for them for minimum wage if they could cover my minimum living expenses otherwise (Well to fair... That would one helluva thing to have on a resume).
Re:A lawsuit waiting to happen (Score:3, Insightful)
Consider the stereotypical Slashdot geek, who is so very single that they are 25 and haven't had a date yet. If I establish that you are an anime geek, who knows 10 programming languages, plays video games, and so on down the list of stereotypical behaviors, and in addition, that you don't like sports, have a pimply complexion, etc. etc. I may be able to build a model that correctly guesses that you are single 97% of the time.
(I'd like to emphasize that this says nothing about how that is done. There's a lot more to it than this. You'll have to take my word for it that this process is more sophisticated that a set of "if then" clauses, and it's not as doomed to failure as a naive conception would lead you to believe.)
Basically, what is boils down to is: Which is more important? Acting in a way that we currently obtain by forbidding employers to know marital status, or simply not knowing? The actions, or the state of knowledge in human heads? The law basically assumes the two are the same, but they don't have to be.
Re:Bias (Score:3, Insightful)
I think what you mean to say, is that the law assumes the relationship is not universal. Even if a causal relationship is shown, the law still protects. For example, it's well known that there's a causal relationship which causes women (in general) to be unable to lift weights as heavy as average men can. But we also know this relationship is not universal. Therefore if a woman is rejected from a job requiring lifting because she is female, then this is illegal, but if a person is rejected from such a job because of failing a required strength test, then this may be legal if done in a non-discriminatory fashion.
Re:The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:They lower standards because people are leaving (Score:3, Insightful)
Did they really? How fucking stupid can such a decision be? I know plenty of people who went to Rutgers (state university in NJ) for undergrad. and are *extremely* bright. Their parents just didn't have $100,000+ to blow on a top-tier private or out-of-state education, at least not without selling their home or dipping into retirement. Not did the kids want to leave school $100k in debt.
-b.
Dehumanising (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Bias (Score:3, Insightful)