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we receive more than two million applications every year,
a manager focuses not on punishments or rewards but on clearing roadblocks and inspiring her team.
Performance improved only when companies implemented programs to empower employees (for example, by taking decision-making authority away from managers and giving it to individuals or teams), provided learning opportunities that were outside what people needed to do their jobs,
only when companies took steps to give their people more freedom did performance improve.
Larry and Sergey always insisted that hiring decisions be made by groups rather than a single manager.
Larry and Sergey deliberately left space for others to act as founders. People with vision were given the opportunity to create their own Google.
“culture eats strategy for breakfast.”
Lifeguards who read stories about saving drowning swimmers were 21 percent more active in watching over their swimmers.
Having workers meet the people they are helping is the greatest motivator, even if they only meet for a few minutes.
I remember the first time I complained about somebody in an email and my manager promptly copied that person, which forced us to quickly resolve the issue. It was a stark lesson in the importance of having a direct conversation with my colleagues!
if you’re an organization that says “Our people are our greatest asset” (as most do), and you mean it, you must default to open. Otherwise, you’re lying to your people and to yourself. You’re saying people matter but treating them like they don’t.
It’s almost impossibly difficult to take an average performer and through training turn them into a superstar.
Companies continue to invest substantially more in training than in hiring,
The first change is to hire more slowly. Only 10 percent of your applicants (at best!) will be top performers, so you go through far more applicants and interviews. I say at best, because in fact the top performers in most industries aren’t actually looking for work, precisely because they are top performers who are enjoying their success right where they are. So your odds of hiring a great person based on inbound applications are low. But it’s worth the wait
“A top-notch engineer is worth three hundred times or more than an average engineer.…
“Only hire people who are better than you.”
The pedigree of your college education matters far less than what you have accomplished.
focused on avoiding false positives—the people who looked good in the interview process but actually would not perform well—because
A small company can’t afford to hire someone who turns out to be awful. Bad performers and political people have a toxic effect on an entire team and require substantial management time to coach or exit.
In the early days and for many years, our best source of candidates was referrals from existing employees. At one point, more than half of all our hires were referrals from other employees.
The first step to building a recruiting machine is to turn every employee into a recruiter by soliciting referrals.
most interviews are a waste of time because 99.4 percent of the time is spent trying to confirm whatever impression the interviewer formed in the first ten seconds.
The best predictor of how someone will perform in a job is a work sample test (29 percent). This entails giving candidates a sample piece of work, similar to that which they would do in the job, and assessing their performance at it.
The second-best predictors of performance are tests of general cognitive ability (26 percent). In contrast to case interviews and brainteasers, these are actual tests with defined right and wrong answers, similar to what you might find on an IQ test.
Tied with tests of general cognitive ability are structured interviews (26 percent), where candidates are asked a consistent set of questions with clear criteria to assess the quality of responses.
There are two kinds of structured interviews: behavioral and situational. Behavioral interviews ask candidates to describe prior achievements and match those to what is required in the current job (i.e., “Tell me about a time…?”). Situational interviews present a job-related hypothetical situation (i.e., “What would you do if…?”).
Examples of interview questions include:
www.va.gov/pbi/questions.asp.
Using Hangouts also minimizes costs, as a remote interview is far less expensive than an in-person one, and is more respectful of Googlers’ and candidates’ time.
Set a high bar for quality.
A good rule of thumb is to hire only people who are better than you. Do not compromise. Ever.
Give candidates a reason to join.
we want people to feel, think, and act like owners rather than employees.
we take as much power away from managers as we can.
a manager cannot unilaterally hire someone,
don’t allow managers to make pay and promotion decisions without input from others.
help them learn the art of leading without the titled authority.
‘But how can I get them to do what I want them to do if I don’t have the title?’ He lasted less than six months.”
Make decisions based on data, not based on managers’ opinions
The truth is that people usually live up to your expectations, whether those expectations are high or low.
I brought a draft report to him and instead of editing it, he asked, “Do I need to review this?”
If you expect little, that’s what you’ll get.
Pick an area where your people are frustrated, and let them fix it.
“If you set a crazy, ambitious goal and miss it, you’ll still achieve something remarkable.”
We’re not looking to fire people: We’re finding the people who need help.
“You are in the bottom 5 percent of performers across all of Google. I know that doesn’t feel good. The reason I’m telling you this is that I want to help you grow and get better.”
Poor performance is rarely because the person is incompetent or a bad person. It’s typically a result of a gap in skill (which is either fixable or not) or will (where the person is not motivated to do the work).
People either improve dramatically or they leave and succeed elsewhere.
identifying the bottom 5 percent
manager quality was the single best predictor of whether employees would stay or leave, supporting the adage that people don’t quit companies, they quit bad managers.
