Think your company is generous with its free gym membership? Think again. If you fancy working at one of the coolest companies in the world that offers its employees free haircuts, food, bikes and cars to name but a few, check out these tips from senior vice president of people operations for Google, Laszlo Bock.
Think your company is generous with its free gym membership? Think again. If you fancy working at one of the coolest companies in the world that offers its employees free haircuts, food, bikes and cars to name but a few, check out these tips from senior vice president of people operations for Google, Laszlo Bock.
In a recent interview with The New York Times, Laszlo Bock, the senior vice president of people operations for Google, revealed the essential qualities key to getting hired at the tech giant. So if you’re looking for a new role, answer these five questions:
1) Do you like to learn?
Didn’t you hear? Boasting about your high IQ is so 1998. Bock argues that learning ability and being able to “process on the fly” is an essential quality of an employee at the top US employer rather than being some kind of Albert Einstein type
“It’s the ability to pull together disparate bits of information“, Bock explains, “We assess that using structured behavioral interviews that we validate to make sure they’re predictive.”
2) Are you good in a crisis?
Rather than harping on about being president of your uni’s 5 person debate team, Google wants to know that you understand team work, and react well when leadership is required.
“What we care about is, when faced with a problem and you’re a member of a team, do you, at the appropriate time, step in and lead. And just as 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 you have to be willing to relinquish power.”
3) Do you care enough?
Bock argues that ownership and humility, intellectual or otherwise, are key to being a top employee.
“It’s feeling the sense of responsibility, the sense of ownership, to step in,” he said, as well as the humility to step back when others add their ideas to the mix.
“Your end goal,” explained Bock, “is what can we do together to problem-solve. I’ve contributed my piece, and then I step back.”
4) Do you think you’re a God and/or a living legend?
Google doesn’t like show-offs and people who haven’t experienced failure. Mistakes help you learn, and those of you who haven’t even made a mistake or experienced some kind of professional failure won’t know how to roll with the punches and learn as a result.
“Successful bright people rarely experience failure, and so they don’t learn how to learn from that failure,” said Bock.
5) Do you strive to keep an open mind?
Even if you’re an expert in your field, it’s incredibly important to stay open minded in your approach to everything.
Bock explains: “What we’ve seen is that the people who are the most successful here, who we want to hire, will have a fierce position. They’ll argue like hell. They’ll be zealots about their point of view. But then you say, ‘here’s a new fact,’ and they’ll go, ‘Oh, well, that changes things; you’re right.’”
