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."
Re:Psychological profile included ala The Game? (Score:2, Interesting)
How do you feel about personality questions? (Score:2, Interesting)
At the time I thought it was kind of rude, really. What business is it of yours if I "consider myself an outgoing person"? After asing me a few preliminary questions he left the room and had me fill out responses on a computer program. I specifically remember one screen with something like 50-100 checkboxes that asked you to check which ones you felt applied to your personality type. It was then followed by the identical screen, this time to be filled out with "how you thought people saw you". A good half hours worth, many more screens, a personal essay, by the end I was rather ... pissed, actually spent about half of my time deciding whether to be polite or not (I'm sure the test was sensitive enough to detect this and needless to say they didn't call me back). At the time I thought the the HR guy had convinced the company to buy him a new toy and was busy tormenting all the new hires with it.
In any case I'd be curious to hear people's responses to such. Do you think this is fair? As is probably clear from the above, I think it's way out of bounds and personally intrusive.
Lest you think the Google stuff is all technical, here's a quote from the article:
"Some questions were factual: What programming languages are you familiar with? What Internet mailing lists do you subscribe to? Some looked for behavior: Is your work space messy or neat? And some looked at personality: Are you an extrovert or an introvert? And some fell into no traditional category in the human resources world: What magazines do you subscribe to? What pets do you have? "We wanted to cast a very wide net," Mr. Bock said. "It is not unusual to walk the halls here and bump into dogs. Maybe people who own dogs have some personality trait that is useful."
Re:Thankfully they changed the GPA thing (Score:5, Interesting)
note: These are my opinions and not necessarily those of Google's. And I try not to post on Google articles nowadays, but this doesn't pertain to our business strategy so I'm comfortable sharing it. BTW we had an awesome free lunch today here in Kirkland, Washington [blogspot.com].
You mean something like this? (Score:1, Interesting)
The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire... (Score:1, Interesting)
This to me is a clear indication that something seriously messed up inside Google HR right now.
I have a 3.65 GPA and couldn't get an interview at Google New York. And they are hiring sub 3.0s now ? LOL
Either there is a rotten apple syndrome, where one dude is helping all his friends get jobs there and hitch onto the Money Train.
This is the start of a trend, that if unchecked, will ultimately result in bankruptcy of this overpriced POS.
I eagerly await the day when Wall Street bends Google over and destroys 30-40 percent of market cap (billions) in a single bloodbath.
In the meantime my browser default search engine is happily set to Yahoo search !... I haven't missed big G for a picosecond !
Re:A lawsuit waiting to happen (Score:5, Interesting)
Google knows AI and machine learning; even if they don't use it they'll have people who know about it.
Suppose by asking certain questions, and doing some initial research and calibration, I can determine your age within two years with 97% certainty. Or marital status, or race, or any of the other protected categories. Have I broken the law? What if I don't actually do the computation? What if my computers do the computation but no human ever sees it? What if I do the computation and no human ever directly sees the result but the computer has enough power to say "No" to a hire in practice, thus still incorporating this potentially "forbidden knowledge" into the hiring decision?
(After all, asking someone about their marital status may actually be less reliable in the end; I can easily imagine 1 out of 40 people lying about something like that, or their true age/race/etc. if asked.)
This is extremely likely to be possible, and probably downright easy for Google, so this isn't just a hypothetical. And the problems this raises extends beyond this exact instance into any domain where for legal reasons, we have to cultivate ignorance; exactly what constitutes "ignorance" if you get right down to it?
Re:A lawsuit waiting to happen (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't be over 40 (Score:1, Interesting)
Usually for something that makes no sense.
My younger friends get in with no trouble, and advice me to die my hair etc to look younger.
Nice company, nice people but all very young.
20,000 vs 200 x 100? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know that Google would be better served as two hundred smaller companies, but at the same time, it's hard to imagine managing 20,000 employees would be any easier.
Re:Bias (Score:5, Interesting)
What if google's statistical data (drawn from its database of performance reviews) shows that some ages, genders, races, and cultures are objectively better at a particular job than others?
Google's test will obviously avoid asking any direct questions about age, gender, and race, because that's illegal (even when objectively justifiable). However, if the test is powered by a statistics engine drawing a database of past performance reviews, then the test could unintentionally evolve to ask about such things indirectly.
An example: perhaps cat-ownership is correllated with femaleness, and femaleness is correllated with superior performance in writing technical documentation. An automated test-generator would unwittingly evolve to ask applicants about cat-ownership, in order to unwittingly select superior female candidates.
It's an amusing possibility. Indeed, it would be the free-market's way of legitimately selecting candidates based on age/gender/race while remaining underneath the legal radar.
Re:How do you feel about personality questions? (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't have any sort of degree in HR, but I own a small health care company and do all the hiring myself. And I mostly ask very tough questions to gain insight into the other person's personality. How they view themselves. How they view the world. Why? Because it's all I really care about.
If the come to the interview dressed like crap, they're automatically out. If they turn up late, they're automatically out. The resume is usually full of a lot of BS anyway - I check on the real important stuff - like - do they actually have the degrees they say they have.
Letters of recommendation are usually from work buddies, after all, you're not going to ask the supervisor who hates your guts for a recommendation, you'll ask the other one who really likes you. So I'm left with personality - self esteem, self confidence, ability to take the time to LISTEN, and ability to adapt. It's kinda rough on the guys, but hey, an interview is an interview. I have my patients to protect. And I think I've done ok with this technique so far.
Re:Bias (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Bias (Score:4, Interesting)
Still, "years of related work experience" is pretty easy to put into the "reasonable measure of job performance" bucket, and given that, the requirement of intent to discriminate against a protected group stands.
The Dot-Bomb Trap (Score:4, Interesting)
But eventually, profits will level off and then start to decline. Nothing goes up forever. And when the money gets tight, Google will suddenly realize that they've got a whole bunch of people that they don't really need.
Re:Another voodoo interviewer... (Score:3, Interesting)
Ok, so I should hire the guy who turns up 45 minutes late for the interview - whose excuse is "it could happen to anyone", who has a pierced eyebrow and orange hair, and who has no self esteem? Do you want this person touching your children? I work in health care, remember. Are you implying I should hire the first person who turns up for the job and not make any screening attempt?
Oh I agree, he might be a really nice guy despite the way he looks. I agree that appearances can be deceptive. I also understand that first impressions are important. I have actually had patients tell me in the emergency room "Doc, I do NOT want that person near my wife" when they see some of our nurses/med students with more radical, expressive attire/jewelry.
Did you ever consider that all you're doing is just trying to hire people like yourself?
Have you considered that perhaps I am hiring people who I think are best suited for the role I need them to fill? Oh, perhaps I'm a bad judge of character. In that case my team won't work, and I'll end up in bankruptcy sooner or later. It's my perrogative as an employer to hire the people I want to work with and build a team the way I think it will be more efficient.
Re:Bias (Score:4, Interesting)
On Balance (Score:3, Interesting)
I can't believe they would deliberately make decisions on the basis of anything that was not obviously going to help them. First, they are a global corporation, so institutionalizing a lack of diversity would seem suicidal. And second, leaving someone who could do something cool deliberately on the sidewalk is an invitation to them to start a competing company that does better. So I have to believe they have a genuine desire to grow.
On the other hand, while they might not do something like that deliberately, anyone could do it by accident. People have built random number generators that turned out not to be random. People have built perceptron recognizers for tanks on a battlefield that turned out to be recognizing the time of day the pictures were shot rather than the tanks. People can confuse themselves with their own "intelligence".
The weird thing is that they say they chose to use their own data to seed their algorithm with their own people. If they already have such people, why wouldn't their present hiring practices be fine for finding them? I heard a talk by Amar Bose of the Bose corporation where, among his several messages, was a catch phrase "better implies different". So if Google wants to grow and become better, patterning its growth on "more of same" seems bizarre.
I've also not seen ethical guidelines published by Google that says they're afraid to use their own data. Perhaps they do or perhaps they don't. But absent clear promises not to use data in certain ways, I'm not confident of what they're doing. Surely they receive search strings from people typing to computers at successful companies they admire and would like to emulate. A lot can be learned from examining those strings in the aggregate, I'd bet. (Even if they didn't work back from the IP addresses, they could cross-correlate the searches against "anonymous" information about "all searches from sites that seem business-related" and get similar results that were at least superficially "ethically cleaner"... though it's still second-hand use of data that others who don't own search engines don't have access to). And surely they must have their own internal search data (things their employees have typed) and the results of these profiles they asked for from their employees, too. So they can create a psychological map of the areas their employees inquire about and compare it to what the world is interested in. Surely a cross-match of that will reveal "interests" and "skills" and "areas of inquiry" and other useful stuff that they could beef up on in hiring in order to see and shore up their "weaknesses". Surely something like that would be more likely to reveal what they need to hire for. Not that I think it ethically a good idea, but given that they haven't promised not to, somehow I'd be surprised if they weren't utilizing that vast quantity of knowledge about what people search for in order to know what to hire next, if not what research areas to go into or what products to develop. Search engines already count the number of searches for various things and correlate them to events and products to find out the popularity of all manner of things in today's fashion culture. Sometimes that data is just for coffee station chatter (e.g., "more people searched for thus-and-so sport at this year's olympics than last"), but eventually (or behind the scenes already) it may be more (e.g., "people are asking awfully specific legal questions about thus-and-so kind of genetic research at thus-and-so company")...
I've discounted the hypothesis that, like the "all volunteer" US Army, they're having so much trouble getting v
Re:Hopefully ..... (Score:4, Interesting)
Google has a strange recruitment process, they never ask what you are currently doing or where you live, they just find a few old web pages in their cache and assume they're current. It was on the 5th interview when the Google interviewer suddenly realised I wasn't a programmer, but I knew enough CompSci to have struggled through 4 interviews. They had the idea I was a major F/L OSS programmer based on all my activity in mailing lists, not a guy just helping test one project. They had also found an old Irish mobile phone number that forwards to my current phone, and assumed I lived in Ireland.
After a few mumbled promises to send my current CV to the right group, within hours I received a "No Job For You" form letter and I seem to have been put on a black list internally. The stream of recruitment emails have trickled off to maybe one every two months.
It's funny, because I run into senior Google people at trade events who try to recruit me because they know my reputation. When I tell them I've already been rejected for a junior level programmer position in an HR blunder a couple years ago, you can see their faces fall. They know that once Google rejects someone, there's little chance of getting them in past HR, but some senior guys are working to reform their broken system.
Getting rejected is a great solution if you never want to work there and limit those spammish requests. Since they are offering you a job, tell them you want to be head of HR
the AC
Re:How do you feel about personality questions? (Score:3, Interesting)
Thanks,
Leabre