Talent. Search.

Companies spend their entire existence searching for the talent that can drive them forward. Ironically at Google – the world’s leading searchers – the top talent comes to them, a phenomenon with its own set of challenges and opportunities, as Ian Clover discovered.

“The fundamental building block of Google's culture is that we hire like-minded people.”
-Liane Hornsey

A lot can happen in five months. Winter can turn to summer, your weight can bounce around like a pinball, sports and film stars can go from hero to zero and relationships can blossom, bloom and die. Your job application to Google might also reach some semblance of conclusion during this period, too. For a company that prides itself on being 'bureaucracy free', such a lengthy application process appears not only unnecessarily slow and plodding, but at odds with Google's reputation for being visionary, fleet of thought and fast-paced.

"We are very proud of the culture we have here at Google and we want to protect it; we want to make sure that we don't dilute it," says Liane Hornsey, Google's Global VP of People Operations. "We put a good deal of effort into making sure that everybody we hire will be accretive to the culture of Google." Such efforts have resulted in legendary tales of multiple interviews, stretched across many months and locations, in order for an applicant to get their foot in the door at arguably the world's most exciting company.

"When I was hired some five years ago, I had 14 interviews across two continents, and it really was a gruelling process that took several months. Since then, we have attempted to limit our number of interviews to between four and six, possibly eight as a maximum. But the reason we have so many interviews is that we believe very strongly that we should hire through consensus."

As an example, Hornsey explains how even she, as the HR head, would be unable to make a hiring decision on her own; the process would still entail meetings with staff members from relevant departments, potential middle managers and even those who would be working directly underneath an applicant. If the stories are to be believed, then even Larry Page himself (Google co-founder) ensures he signs off every resume before an applicant goes from aspirant dreamer to fully-fledged Googler.

Top talent

Google's Mountain View headquarters at the southern tip of San Francisco Bay represent something of the promised land for the world's top tech heads, internet aficionados and innovative thinkers. Its campus-like atmosphere is an exclusive hub of creativity, and it is little wonder that Google receives more than 1000 job applications a day. Hence, sifting through these mass of people to identify the talent that is going to be key in driving the company forward is an immensely time-consuming and difficult process. It is also highly important.

"We only hire people who we consider to be incredible talent, and part of that talent revolves around being an innovative thinker," says Hornsey. "But we don't only hire people who are innovative thinkers, although many of the company's best ideas have come out of left field when people have taken time out to think about different things.

"For example, our engineers have something that we call 20 percent time. For four days a week or however they want, 80 percent of their time they work on a key product. For the other 20 percent of their time, they are free to work on something related to that product, or something a bit different - G-Mail and Orkut both came out of that time we allow for innovation."

For Google, staying still is not an option, so to be able to remain at the forefront of civilization - and let there be no doubt about Google's role in furthering humanity throughout the globe - the organization is acutely aware of its responsibility to deliver innovative products and services that continue to push the boundaries. Taken in such a context, it is understandable that Google places so much time and effort in recruiting the very best talent. And once on board, retaining that talent becomes even more important.

"I think Google is, in my mind, closer to a university campus that it is to an organization," reveals Hornsey. "We try very hard to not be hierarchical, to be reasonably democratic in our decision making, to be very informal, but formal when it comes to how we do things in terms of our decisions. So we never make decisions on the fly. We always use data, we're always very rigorous in our thoughts, but we are less rigorous and less formal in the way we dress, the way we eat and the way we act at work. If you walked around campus, for instance, you will see lots of bright colours, lots of soft areas, foosball tables, snooker tables, even climbing walls."

Such accoutrements certainly add aesthetic value to Google's HQ, but do these fluffy additions serve a purpose any longer, or are they merely a remnant of a bygone era, an age when Google was still a playful startup? "This is how the company began. The guys who found Google were students at the time, so they hadn't got the experience of the trappings of working for a bank for example."

Hornsey reveals that Google conducts an attitude survey each year, and is happy to report that the feedback is overwhelmingly positive, with most employees stating that they have a very close affinity with the culture of the company - an affinity that Hornsey works hard to protect and nurture.

"The fundamental building block of Google's culture is that we hire like-minded people," says Hornsey. "Everybody here wants the same thing and wants to move towards the same thing, and the fact that we are not hierarchical helps to enable this. So if you have a great idea here and you're sitting in engineering, it's not unusual to be able to knock on Larry's door and say 'I've got a great idea, what do you think?'"

Fostering an atmosphere where every staff member knows that their ideas will be heard is a continuous challenge for Hornsey and her 'people operations' team. In a company the size of Google, a defined structure is extremely important, but the organization's success has been based on its ability to elicit innovation and inspiration from the almost every pore of its being.

"We aim to be non-bureaucratic, so we don't have a very heavy layered organization. So if people are thinking innovative things, they can act on them at speed." Keeping teams in small groups helps too, says Hornsey. "If you walked around engineering, for example, you would see lots of little teams working on shared projects. We don't have row after row of people, or lots of separate offices; we tend to work in clusters of eight or 12 around a big table so that ideas can be brainstormed more easily. It is the facility itself that lends itself to real innovative and creative thinking."

Growth and innovation

Aligning Google's emphatic growth and expansion with its inherent creativity has been a challenging process. As any organization outgrows its original roots, it is inevitable that something is lost in the process. Hornsey is keenly aware of the potential difficulties Google face as it continues its evolution from college startup to global behemoth. These days, a no-holds-barred discussion over a beer or two is no longer the appropriate forum for important business decisions. But neither, believes Hornsey, is a stuffy boardroom.

"We can scale to 50,000 people and still be innovative, but I'd be lying if I said this was easy to do," she says. "You have to work at it. You have to make sure that you do not become bureaucratic by default. One of the things we look carefully at is the number levels we have in the organization. We try to keep that tight and light, and every quarter we have what we call 'bureaucracy buster', which is where anybody can write to our senior guys and say 'look, this thing or that thing is driving me mad. It's slowing things down. I can sense bureaucracy. I can sense lots of form filling.'"

The decision-making process, while not done entirely on consensus, is something more akin to a democracy, with top-down thinking meeting bottom-up ideas somewhere in the middle, says Hornsey. At Mountain View, this procedure has been carefully - and at times organically - cultivated since Google's birth. How, then, does Hornsey ensure that other creative hubs in the Google world mirror this atmosphere of engagement, positivity and creativity?

"We don't try to create an identikit Google office everywhere in the world," says Hornsey. "We are much more cognizant of local needs. Each of the 20-25 offices I have visited all feel slightly different. Even if you're sitting here in Mountain View and you go up to San Francisco they feel different, and that's because the people create the offices and the people create the culture."

While there are no strict Google guidelines on how to act, the organization does follow a loose set of guiding principles to ensure a collective atmosphere is fostered throughout the world. "I'm not a believer in having values that you stick on a wall and everybody has to share corporate values. I think I instinctively know what those values are, and as a company we know what's important, so we tend to be guided by those bigger, over-arching values, even though we allow an awful lot of local flexibility."

One thing that is rigidly adhered to is Google's TGIF. At 4.30pm each and every Friday around the world, all Google offices down tools for a spot of socializing. Nothing too revolutionary, admittedly, but the fact that this is a universal directive means a lot to the average employee, believes Hornsey. "We do lots of things to bring people's lives into Google and Google into people's lives, aiming to achieve a mixture between work life and social life. It is this environment that helps retain our special talent."

Talent management

Identifying Google-caliber workers and then making them happy and productive at work is only half the battle for Hornsey. Career progression for most individuals at Google is paramount, and it is a delicate area of the business that Hornsey is at great pains to get right, 100 percent of the time.

"My biggest worry at Google is managing talent," she reveals. "Normal HR directors tend to work on the premise that approximately 10 to 15 percent of their staff are real high potential, and so they need to work with that 10 to 15 percent to really nurture them to senior executive positions.

"I have a very different problem. My problem is I hire brilliant people. SO 95 to 99 percent of my people are high talent, so we are unable to use traditional methods for promotion. It would be wholly inappropriate when you have the talent pool that Google has to have high potential programs, for example. Instead, we encourage a great deal of rotation and mobility. For example, in the sales organization we have had roughly 1000 people move jobs over the last three quarters. They either move jobs permanently or they move jobs to assess whether, for a period of time, they would like to work in area X, Y or Z."

Google's culture of nurturing as well as attracting the top talent is one of the organization's sturdiest of foundations. Equipping whip smart, ambitious and ingenious individuals with the environment and encouragement they need in order to be most productive is a sure-fire route to success, but it's a route that requires plenty of maintenance along the way.

"We work awfully hard on giving very bright people additional skills, additional learning and additional knowledge," says Hornsey. "We also spend a lot of time preparing people for management. I've often said that I was a manager for about 15 years before I knew how to do it. It's often when you get very good individual contributors who are used to doing it themselves who are highly motivated, it becomes difficult for them to manage people because that is a very big transition to make."

As a coping method, Hornsey ensures there is a sturdy and approachable support network in place for all staff members - and it's pretty much most of them - keen on furthering their career. "We have mentoring and leadership programs. We run what we call career gurus where we give advice to would-be managers. We also have lower expectations of managers when they're first in the job. We don't suddenly drop them in and say 'right, we expect you to be able to do the same job as someone who has been managing for ten years.'"

For Hornsey herself, she admits to having a 'lightbulb' moment when she realized that her own success was intrinsically linked to the progress and success of others. "I had always been an individual contributor who succeeded," says Hornsey. "So my whole working life was geared towards what I did, but I had a lightbulb moment when I realized it wasn't about me anymore and that my success was absolutely linked to the success of my team. That realization changed the way I managed - it literally turned 180 degrees."

HR's value

When a company labels its entire HR department as 'people operations', one can assume that the organization sees its staff as something more than mere workers or drones. Google has, since its inception, placed enormous importance on the value its people bring; an attitude that makes Hornsey's job both easier and more varied.

"One of the reasons I so enjoy working at Google is the fact that you don't have to persuade bosses that people are important here," she says. "It's a very different psyche to what I have been used to. My main worry is being overworked because the whole people thing is just so very engrained in what we do, and the founders really believe in making sure that the people agenda is taken seriously. So we don't have to persuade, and that makes a big difference."

Having what Laszlo Bock (Google's VP People Operations) calls a workforce of 'scary smart' people makes Hornsey's role that much simpler. Managing the daily working lives of committed, ambitious and highly intelligent people is not without its challenges, but the typical HR issues faced by many of Hornsey's peers simply do not exist at Google.

"We treat our staff as grown-ups and believe that they will do the right thing at all times," says Hornsey. "Which is why we don't keep track of sick days, we don't monitor their every move. I never look at what time they come in or what time they leave. I do look at their output. That's what I'm interested in. How they get to that output."

However, in a company where the people seemingly manage themselves, does Hornsey ever feel she has to justify the importance of her role to her equals in other departments throughout Google? "In other organizations I've worked in I've almost apologized for being in HR," admits Hornsey. "But here, I don't. I think it's because there's not a decision taken at Google that doesn't have a people dimension.

"So it's natural here for people to turn to me or my equivalents to help with that decision. We don't have to ask for a seat at the table, which is quite extraordinary. It took me a little while to accept that I didn't have to apologize for my existence. In fact, it's so much so that people don't make decisions without coming to us, regardless of who they are in the company. It's just engrained in the culture, because I guess that's how the founders have always worked."

Such respect for people and their ability to perform professionally and independently is something that underpins Google's success, believes Hornsey. "I think Google is so successful because it hires such wonderful people. I genuinely believe that. Many other companies make it difficult for themselves by not really thinking about investing in that critical hiring moment. You have to have skilled people that are going to take your company to the next level; innovative people, creative people, people who feel supported. When you neglect to nurture this atmosphere you will have trouble retaining talent."

When is HR not HR?

The HR department at Google looks like a typical HR department, but its key difference - as outlined by Hornsey - is the greater emphasis people play in making the company great. There is a conscious, intentional effort by Google to attach a weightier importance to the value the staff bring to the company.

"We call ourselves 'people operations' because we are not just about HR, and it's partly because of Lazslo's vision. He has a vision for us to be just as analytical and data-driven as every other function within Google. So if you take the people operations function here, we really have a third of our people who are deep, Ph.D. research-type people who are fantastically analytical. Then we have about a third of people who are ex-consultants and a third who are traditional HR people.

"So the people operations title is really about signally that it isn't just that one-third; it's those three thirds, and that those three thirds together mean that we can be much more capable when we're looking at the people agenda."

Busting misconceptions is another by-product of working for Google's people operations. A traditionally staid view of HR practices is of organizing benefits, collating sick days and keeping an eye on staff holiday entitlement. None of this, says Hornsey, falls under her remit. "I've been in HR for 15 years and have never seen an organization where HR has managed benefits and admin. HR can't do that. It has to be a consultant to the business to be even vaguely successful."

One example of the effectiveness of Google's people operations is its key work in building functional small teams that create an atmosphere of success and innovation. "Building a team at work is no different to building a team of friends," says Hornsey. "People gravitate towards people like them, and if you hire people that you think are similar in purpose, similar in values and similar in intent, they will team well because they have the same interests and aspirations.

"So good people management is about allowing people to gravitate to where they want to gravitate to, and to put that into business terms. For example, we really encourage our engineers to work on the products and projects that they want to work on. We encourage them to gravitate into a team. Maybe they will work on search for a while and then just gravitate out of the team and maybe work on display or mobile or maps.

"We encourage them to self-form again around their own ideas that come up in 20 percent projects. So I think it's allowing the people the freedom of movement to gravitate where they want to go."

Such a fluid job description is perhaps unique to Google; it's certainly unique to an organization of Google's size and scope, particularly its product and engineering departments. To be afforded such responsibility at work has reaped enormous benefits for both the company and its staff, based upon the initial notion that if you hire great people, not only will they be self-motivated and driven to succeed, but they will actively flourish in an environment that affords them this freedom.

"Conflicts do arise, as they always will when you have groups of people working together," admits Hornsey. "But conflict at Google is brought out into the open in a very positive way. We are lucky because we don't have a great deal of fear here. We haven't suffered from lots of reductions in force; we've been excruciatingly lucky in terms of not having to deal with the economy in the same way that some companies have.

"So our employees do feel a degree of comfort, and conflict tends to happen when there's fear and concern, and there's less of that here at Google. But if conflict happens, it is important to bring it out into the open but not interfere. We never manage conflict top-down."

Helping Google grow

With the right staff on board, minimal conflicts, a harmonious working environment and low turnover rates, how much more can Google's people operations add to the company's continued success? Where else can the HR sector drive the organization in the future?

"We have a number of people in recruiting who actively look to find the right people," says Hornsey. "It's my hardest challenge to find enough of the right people for Google year on year, month on month, but we continue to do it because a lot of people want to work here."

One of the attractions that Google tempts potential applicants with is the promise of working in a variety of exotic and interesting locations. Staff are encouraged to work for a month or two in offices away from home, in New York, or Mexico, or Europe.

"We allow for that movement," says Hornsey. "Whilst it could be detrimental to the business because you have people moving around all the time, we allow for that and we manage it. We tend to believe that actually if we let you do that you will be more productive, and the feedback we get around people's learning and the fact that they value and are grateful for the experience means an awful lot."

With Google a paragon of all that is wonderful about the world of work, could it be that the company's beautiful offices, laid back atmosphere and culture of individuality are merely a (admittedly alluring) mask to hide a fierce work ethic, where employees - once on board - are worked voraciously to the bone? No, insists Hornsey.

"I believe in a work/life balance, I really do, but I believe it is different for every individual. I actually think it would be parternalistic and wrong to tell people that they have to leave the office at 3pm, 4pm, 5pm or whatever. People are grown-ups and they have to make decisions for themselves around how they work and when they work. We concentrate on output, not on how many hours someone is at work."

But in conclusion, Hornsey is adamant that the right people will know, instantly, that Google is the place for them, for the long term. "If you hire people who really want to work on shared goals and shared products, who you feel will be accretive to the culture of Google, it really impacts positively on how people feel about the organization."

Liane Hornsey was speaking with meettheboss.tv