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When someone begins a sentence with the conspicuously obvious phrase “I’m passionate about…” and then proceeds to talk about something generic like travel, football, or family, that’s a red flag that maybe his only true passion is for conspicuously throwing the word “passion” around a lot during interviews.
Passionate people don’t wear their passion on their sleeves; they have it in their hearts. They live it. Passion is more than résumé-deep, because its hallmarks—persistence, grit, seriousness, all-encompassing absorption—cannot be gauged from a checklist.
When people are talking about their professional experience, they know the right answers to these questions—most people don’t like a loner in the work environment. But when you get people talking about their passions, the guard usually comes down and you gain more insight into their personalities.
Hire learning animals
In our experience raw brainpower is the starting point for any exponential thinker. Intelligence is the best indicator of a person’s ability to handle change.
Henry Ford said that “anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.”
You must work with people you don’t like, because a workforce comprised of people who are all “best office buddies” can be homogeneous, and homogeneity in an organization breeds failure. A multiplicity of viewpoints—aka diversity—is your best defense against myopia.
Our former colleague Jared Smith notes that the best people are often the ones whose careers are climbing, because when you project their path forward there is potential for great growth and achievement.
But the job of finding people belongs to everyone, and this fact needs to be woven into the fabric of the company. Recruiters can manage the process, but everyone should be recruited into recruiting.
The best interviews feel like intellectual discussions between friends (“What books are you reading right now?”). Questions should be large and complex, with a range of answers (to draw out the person’s thought process) that the interviewer can push back on (to see how the candidate stakes out and defends a position). It’s a good idea to reuse questions across candidates, so you can calibrate responses.
Get her to show off her thinking, not just her résumé. “What surprised you about…?” is one good way to approach this,
“If I were to look at the web history section of your browser, what would I learn about you that isn’t on your résumé?”
If you have twelve coins, one of which is counterfeit and a different weight than the others, and a balance, how do you identify the counterfeit coin in just three weighings?110
Schedule interviews for thirty minutes
Have an opinion
At Google we grade interview candidates on a scale of 1 to 4.
(There’s a lot more to how Google hires people than we can get into here. If you want to learn more and get the science behind not just recruiting but all of our people practices, read our colleague Laszlo Bock’s upcoming book, Work Rules! Laszlo
Test yourself: If you could trade the bottom 10 percent of your team for new hires, would your organization improve? If so, then you need to look at the hiring process that yielded those low performers and see how you can improve it. Another test: Are there members of your team whom, if they told you they were leaving, you would not fight hard to keep? If there are employees you would let go, then perhaps you should.
Google’s Hiring Dos and Don’ts Hire people who are smarter and more knowledgeable than you are. Don’t hire people you can’t learn from or be challenged by. Hire people who will add value to the product and our culture. Don’t hire people who won’t contribute well to both. Hire people who will get things done. Don’t hire people who just think about problems. Hire people who are enthusiastic, self-motivated, and passionate. Don’t hire people who just want a job. Hire people who inspire and work well with others. Don’t hire people who prefer to work alone. Hire people who will grow with your team
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When people are right out of school, they tend to prioritize company first, then job, then industry. But at this point in their career that is exactly the wrong order. The right industry is paramount, because while you will likely switch companies several times in your career, it is much harder to switch industries. Think of the industry as the place you surf (in Northern California the most rad waves are at Mavericks, dude) and the company as the wave you catch. You always want to be in the place with the biggest and best waves.
Think about your ideal job, not today but five years from now. Where do you want to be? What do you want to do? How much do you want to make? Write down the job description: If you saw this job on a website, what would the posting look like? Now fast forward four or five years and assume you are in that job. What does your five-years-from-now résumé look like? What’s the path you took from now to then to get to your best place?
Statistics is the new plastics
Stats are sexy. Deal with it. The sexiest jobs in the Internet Century will involve statistics, and not just in a parallel geeky fantasy world. Hal Varian notes that it is always a good idea for individuals to build expertise in areas that complement things that are getting cheap, and data, along with computing power to crunch it, is definitely getting cheap. We are in the era of big data, and big data needs statisticians to make sense of it. The democratization of data means that those who can analyze it well will win. Data is the sword of the twenty-first century, those who wield it well,
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Go abroad
Combine passion with contribution
Decide with data
“You’re both right”
There is a simple trick to getting this right. When ending a debate and making a decision that doesn’t have 100 percent support, remember these three words: “You’re both right.” To emotionally commit to a decision with which they don’t agree, people have to know that their opinion was not only heard, but valued. “You’re both right” accomplishes this.
Every meeting needs an owner
Spend 80 percent of your time on 80 percent of your revenue
The World’s Best Athletes Need Coaches, and You Don’t?
Communications—Be a Damn Good Router
When he runs into an exec he hasn’t seen in a while, the pleasantries don’t last long. After a cordial hello he’ll get to the point: “What’s going on in your job? What issues do you have? Tell me about that deliverable you owe me.” This has a couple of results: It helps Eric keep on top of the details of his business, and it helps him know which of his executives are on top of the details of their business.
Bill also suggests a nice format for 1:1s, which we have adopted with good results: 1. Performance on job requirements a. Could be sales figures b. Could be product delivery or product milestones c. Could be customer feedback or product quality d. Could be budget numbers 2. Relationship with peer groups (critical for company integration and cohesiveness) a. Product and Engineering b. Marketing and Product c. Sales and Engineering 3. Management/Leadership a. Are you guiding/coaching your people? b. Are you weeding out the bad ones? c. Are you working hard at hiring? d. Are you able to get your
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The goals of a board meeting are harmony, transparency, and advice.
Eric followed the highlights and lowlights with a detailed review of each of the company’s product and functional areas, with an emphasis on succinct, data-driven discussions.
Eric believes in the three-week rule: When you start a new position, for the first three weeks don’t do anything. Listen to people, understand their issues and priorities, get to know and care about them, and earn their trust. So in fact, you are doing something: You are establishing a healthy relationship.
And don’t forget to make people smile. Praise is underused and underappreciated as a management tool. When it is deserved, don’t hold back.
To us, innovation entails both the production and implementation of novel and useful ideas. Since “novel” is often just a fancy synonym for “new,” we should also clarify that for something to be innovative it needs to offer new functionality, but it also has to be surprising.
Voilà: For something to be innovative, it needs to be new, surprising, and radically useful.
Google[x] has a simple Venn diagram that it uses to determine if it will pursue an idea. First, the idea has to be something that addresses a big challenge or opportunity, something that affects hundreds of millions or billions of people. Second, they have to have an idea for a solution that is radically different from anything currently in the market. We aren’t trying to improve on an existing way of doing something, rather we want to start over. And third, the breakthrough technologies that could bring that radical solution to life have to be at least feasible, and achievable in the
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“Innovative people do not need to be told to do it, they need to be allowed to do it.”
“Optimism is an essential ingredient for innovation. How else can the individual welcome change over security, adventure over staying in a safe place?”
Focus on the user… and the money will follow.
Think big
“think 10X”—helps
Set (almost) unattainable goals
Conclusion—Imagine the Unimaginable
There is an alternative for incumbents, though: Develop a strategy that takes advantage of platforms to consistently deliver great products. Use that strategy as a foundation to attract a team of smart creatives, then create an environment where they can succeed at scale. Simple, right? Except that of course it isn’t; not even close. The very nature of mature companies is to be risk-averse and to attack big change like a body attacks an infection. We know, because we’ve been there. After all, you are reading a book by a couple of guys who were among the last Googlers to ditch their BlackBerrys
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So forgo conventional wisdom, crank up that imagination, and ask yourself what could happen in your industry in the next five years. What could change most quickly, and what will not change at all? Then once you have an idea of what the future could hold, here are some more hard questions to consider.
