Google in hiring frenzy
Published November 26th, 2005
In the 15 months since Google went public, the Mountain View, Calif., company has galvanized the technology world with its innovative Internet search technology, its rapidly broadening business plan and its soaring stock price. In the office parks of Silicon Valley, Google also has helped fuel something else - a hiring frenzy reminiscent of the dot-com boom.
To accomplish its current pace of hiring about 10 new employees a day, Google has assembled a formidable hiring machine. Its recruitment department includes as many as 300 freelance recruiters who are helping it to identify who’s who in software engineering, according to three people involved in the effort.
To locate new talent, Google has held software-code-writing contests. It has plastered billboards with math problems, such as one on U.S. 101 in Silicon Valley that asked drivers to identify “the first 10-digit prime found in consecutive digits of e.” It has paid to insert an “aptitude test” into tech magazines, encouraging engineers to submit their answers to 21 questions, along with their resumes. And it has upped the stakes in competing with other companies to draw attention from engineering students, handing out free pizza and raffling off gadgets to boost university recruitment.
One top-notch engineer is worth “300 times or more than the average,” explains Alan Eustace, a Google vice president of engineering. He says he would rather lose an entire incoming class of engineering graduates than one exceptional technologist. Many Google services, such as Gmail and Google News, were started by a single person, he says.
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