How to Get a Job at Google

By Thomas L. Friedman

 

1 Last June, in aninterview with Adam Bryant of The Times,Laszlo Bock, the senior vice president of people operations for Google — i.e.,the guy in charge of hiring for one of the world’s most successful companies —noted that Google had determined that “GPA’s are worthless as a criteria forhiring, and test scores are worthless. ... We found that they don’t predictanything.” He also noted that the “proportion of people without any collegeeducation at Google has increased over time” — now as high as 14 percent onsome teams. At a time when many people are asking, “How’s my kid gonna get ajob?” I thought it would be useful to visit Google and hear how Bock wouldanswer.

 

2 Don’t get himwrong, Bock begins, “Good grades certainly don’t hurt.” Many jobs at Googlerequire math, computing and coding skills, so if your good grades truly reflectskills in those areas that you can apply, it would be an advantage. But Googlehas its eyes on much more.

 

3 “There are fivehiring attributes we have across the company,” explained Bock. “If it’s atechnical role, we assess your coding ability, and half the roles in thecompany are technical roles. For every job, though, the No. 1 thing we look foris general cognitive ability, and it’s not I.Q. It’s learning ability. It’s theability to process on the fly. It’s the ability to pull together disparate bitsof information. We assess that using structured behavioral interviews that wevalidate to make sure they’re predictive.”

 

4 The second, headded, “is leadership — in particular emergent leadership as opposed totraditional leadership. Traditional leadership is, were you president of thechess club? Were you vice president of sales? How quickly did you get there? Wedon’t care. What we care about is, when faced with a problem and you’re amember of a team, do you, at the appropriate time, step in and lead. And justas critically, do you step back and stop leading, do you let someone else?Because what’s critical to be an effective leader in this environment is youhave to be willing to relinquish power.”

 

5 What else?Humility and ownership. “It’s feeling the sense of responsibility, the sense ofownership, to step in,” he said, to try to solve any problem — and the humilityto step back and embrace the better ideas of others. “Your end goal,” explainedBock, “is what can we do together to problem-solve. I’ve contributed my piece,and then I step back.”

 

6 And it is notjust humility in creating space for others to contribute, says Bock, it’s“intellectual humility. Without humility, you are unable to learn.” It is whyresearch shows that many graduates from hotshot business schools plateau. “Successfulbright people rarely experience failure, and so they don’t learn how to learnfrom that failure,” said Bock.

 

7 “They, instead,commit the fundamental attribution error, which is if something good happens,it’s because I’m a genius. If something bad happens, it’s because someone’s anidiot or I didn’t get the resources or the market moved. ... What we’ve seen isthat the people who are the most successful here, who we want to hire, willhave a fierce position. They’ll argue like hell. They’ll be zealots about theirpoint of view. But then you say, ‘Here’s a new fact,’ and they’ll go, ‘Oh,well, that changes things; you’re right.’” You need a big ego and small ego inthe same person at the same time. 

 

8 The leastimportant attribute they look for is “expertise.” Said Bock: “If you takesomebody who has high cognitive ability, is innately curious, willing to learnand has emergent leadership skills, and you hire them as an HR person orfinance person, and they have no content knowledge, and you compare them withsomeone who’s been doing just one thing and is a world expert, the expert willsay, ‘I’ve seen this 100 times before; here’s what you do.’” Most of the timethe nonexpert will come up with the same answer, added Bock, “because most ofthe time it’s not that hard.” Sure, once in a while they will mess it up, hesaid, but once in a while they’ll also come up with an answer that is totallynew. And there is huge value in that.

 

9 To sum up Bock’sapproach to hiring: Talent can come in so many different forms and be built inso many nontraditional ways today, hiring officers have to be alive to everyone — besides brand-name colleges. Because “when you look at people who don’tgo to school and make their way in the world, those are exceptional human beings.And we should do everything we can to find those people.” Too many colleges, headded, “don’t deliver on what they promise. You generate a ton of debt, youdon’t learn the most useful things for your life. It’s [just] an extendedadolescence.”

 

10 Google attractsso much talent it can afford to look beyond traditional metrics, like GPA. Formost young people, though, going to college and doing well is still the bestway to master the tools needed for many careers. But Bock is saying somethingimportant to them, too: Beware. Your degree is not a proxy for your ability todo any job. The world only cares about — and pays off on — what you can do withwhat you know (and it doesn’t care how you learned it). And in an age wheninnovation is increasingly a group endeavor, it also cares about a lot of softskills — leadership, humility, collaboration, adaptability and loving to learnand re-learn. This will be true no matter where you go to work.

 

怎样在谷歌谋得一份工作

托马斯·L·弗里德曼

 

1 去年6月，在接受《纽约时报》的亚当·布赖恩特采访时，谷歌公司的人力运营高级副总裁拉兹洛·博克——也就是负责为当今世界数一数二的成功企业招聘员工的那个人——曾提到，谷歌已经明确了一点，“平均成绩绩点作为一个招聘依据是毫无价值的，考试分数是毫无价值的。……我们发现它们不能预测什么。”他还提到，“谷歌员工中没有接受过任何大学教育的人越来越多”——在某些团队已经高达14%。现在好多人在问，“我的孩子怎样才能找得着工作啊？”我觉得去一趟谷歌，听听博克怎么说，应该会有帮助。

2 别误会，博克一开始就说了，“有好成绩当然不是坏事。”谷歌的许多工作岗位需要数学、计算和编码技能，如果你的好成绩真的能反映可以运用在这些领域的技能，那么有好成绩会是一项优势。但谷歌考察的远不止这些。

3 “我们有5个全公司适用的招聘特点，”博克解释说。“如果是技术性职位，我们会评估你的编码能力，公司里一半的职位是技术性的。不过，不管什么职位，我们首先考量的都是一般认知能力，这可不是智商。它是学习能力，是随机应变的能力，是把各种不相干的信息组合到一起的能力。我们会利用结构化行为面试来做出评估，我们对这些面试法进行验证，以确保它们能起到预测作用。”

4 他接着说，第二条“就是领导力——尤其是不同于传统领导力的自然领导力。传统领导力问的是，你是不是做过国际象棋俱乐部理事长？你是不是担任过销售副总裁？你花了多长时间升到这个职位？我们不关心这些。我们关心的是，出现问题时，作为一个团队的一员，你会不会在合适的时候站出来领导大家。同样关键的是，你会不会让开，放弃领导权，让别人来领导？因为关键的是，要在这个环境里做一名高效能的领导者，你得愿意放弃权力。”

5 还有呢？谦虚和主人翁精神。他说，“站出来领导是出于责任感，出于主人翁意识，”为的是解决问题——再就是要谦虚能退让，接受他人更加出色的想法。博克解释说，“你的最终目的是，我们大家如何一起把问题解决了。我已经出了我的一份力，然后我就让开。”

6 博克说，这不仅仅是为他人的贡献创造空间的简单谦让，这是“知性的谦虚。不谦虚就不能学习。”研究显示，这就是为什么，很多大牌商学院的毕业生停滞不前的原因。“成功的聪明人很少经历失败，所以他们没有学会从失败中学到东西，”博克说。

7 “他们倒是犯了一个基本的错误，那就是找错了原因，也就是说，遇上好事，那是因为我是天才。遇上坏事，那是因为某人是傻瓜，或者是我手里没有资源，或者是市场变了。……我们看到的是，在我们这里最成功的那些人，那些我们想招的人，都有一种坚定的立场。他们会玩命争辩。他们对自己的看法持有一种狂热的态度。可是一旦你说，‘现在有一个新的事实，’他们就会说，‘哦，好，这改变了一切；你是对的。’”你需要在一个人身上看到一个狂妄的自我的同时看到一个谦恭的自我。

8 在他们眼里，最不重要的特质是“专业知识”。博克说：“如果你找到有很高认知能力的、天生富有好奇心的、愿意学习的、拥有自然领导力的人，聘他们做人力资源或财务工作，而他们不具备学科知识，然后你把他们和那些只做一件事情、成为这件事情的世界级专家的人相比较，专家会说：‘这个我经历过一百次了；你该这么做。’”多数时候，非专家会得出同样的回答，博克说，“因为多数时候事情并没有那么难。”当然，他们偶尔会搞砸，但偶尔却能得出一个全新的主意。而那将是极具价值的。

9 总结博克的招聘方法：在今天，才能可能表现为各种各样的形式，可以用各种各样非传统的方式去培养，招聘人员一定要关注每一种方式——不能只看应聘者是否毕业于名牌大学。因为“你看到一些没上过学的人，在这个世界上走出自己的路来，那些都是了不起的人。我们应该尽我们所能去找到那些人。”他还说，太多的大学“没有兑现它们的承诺。你背上了一大笔债务，却学不到对你一生最有意义的东西。这（不过）是一段延长了的青春期。”

10 因为谷歌吸引着众多人才，所以它有抛弃平均成绩绩点之类传统衡量标准的资本。不过对大多数年轻人来说，上大学，学出好成绩，依然是掌握许多职场所需技能的最佳方式。但是博克说了一个对他们很重要的东西：小心，你的学位并不代表你有能力做任何的工作。这个世界唯一关心的——也是会为此付钱给你的——是你用自己的知识能做些什么（这个世界也不关心你是怎么学会的）。在这个时代，创新越来越成为一种群体事业，世界也在意一些软技能——领导力、谦虚、协作能力、适应力和学而不倦的精神。无论你在哪里工作，这些都适用。