1 Google does hire many Contract workers - For example 300 of the ‘recruiters’ are actually temp/contract. There is no wonder that they are making profit. No health, vacation, sick day worries..

2 To get the real truth of Google and it’s environment check out the Blog of the former employees, very insightful http://xooglers.blogspot.com/ The Blog calls Google intranet Moma, ex googlers know what it means

3 To accomplish its current pace of hiring about 10 new employees a day Google offers extremely
inflated compensation packages, ‘irrational’ offers are bad for the tech industry because they distort compensation expectations and sow resentment among lower-paid employees. This was quoted

When I see that Google has such a high ratio I wonder, who is babysitting whom.. Actually, I wonder what are they up to.. They are hiring that many people for what reason? 10 People a day.. Are they trying to make losses financially, as they are an all profit company? It is a concern, because sometimes companies Can grow too big too fast (Crispy Cream for eg)

I also think of Yahoo how great and huge Yahoo was back in 2000 before the stock market crash. Anyways read the blog, there is interesting stuff there.

On the positive side, most of the people I worked with at Google were deeply passionate about staffing and about maintaining hiring standards within their respective groups. However, you can’t continue to throw money/warm bodies at a problem like volume recruiting without eventually collapsing under your own weight. Unless they figure out a better, more efficient way of doing business, I’m afraid that is what will happen to their staffing function.

Q: What do you get when you put 2000 PhD’s in a room together?

A: Nothing!!

At Google, there is the haves (stock option millionaires) and the have nots (newbies), cliques, and I can guarantee rivalry.

Another one:

Q: What do you get when you have a lot of disenchanted, very wealthy, smart employees?

A: Entrepreneurs who when they are sick of it all, decide to break out on their own and come up with the Google Killer.

I must agree with Eamonn, how long will Google be on top? 2 years? 5 years?

Their search results are suffering which is the basis for their business and it will remain to be seen how they can integrate all of their new features. My bet is that the first two years they will just try on their own with a few small acquisitions (may be wrong if they make a big splash with AOL but doesn’t seem likely). Within 3 years, they will make a big splash with some sort of acquisition to try to maintain their growth. That is when the real culture clashes will begin.

The stock is good now, it may even go up some more, but I think that many of you recruiters will be able to recruit away some top flight talent with Google on their resume in the next few years for your clients. Next you will just have to work around programmers egos, which we all know about.

Hope all is well

Mark
HireVue

Of course, as a business they have proven themselves much stronger than Netscape as they have made themselves very difficult for Microsoft to crush.

The other question is.. is google a fad? What happens to google when the next ‘google’ comes along. Remember just a few years ago that we were raving about Northern lights and Lycos were the big names on the block when doing xrays, flips, searches etc. I understand that theres a difference in the tech and that google have marketed themselves up the wazoo….

comments?

For instance, according to Y! finance, GOOG has in the past year generated something like $575,000 in gross profit per employee, not to mention 95% revenue growth. GE produced ~$300k in profit per employee, with growth in the >10% range. Did I mention Google has 3,000 employees, and GE 300,000?

If we look at market cap the picture is even starker. GE is around $380 billion, while Google is valued at $112bn. In one sense, one person in Google is worth as much as 300 people at GE. Sure, GE has a lot of factory workers, truck drivers, etc., but they also recruit the cream of every year’s crop of science PhD’s and whatnot. But in the end the Google business model simply looks like it can make far more money with far fewer people.

In recruiting terms today Google is kind of like the Apollo program once was in its own way: the center of the world. Even today, NASA could call any pilot in the world and say, ‘Wanna be an astronaut?’ and he or she would be on the next plane to Cape Canaveral. Most companies will not create this kind of environment because it’s too risky. Heck, these days even NASA isn’t willing to take chances the way they did in the ’60s.

14:1 ratio … Am I the only one that thinks this is a bit crazy?? (I about choked when I heard Dr. John give this # out in Boston a few months ago) The only reason you’d have ~350 ‘recruiters’ for an employee base of ~5,000 employees is because about ~250 of those ‘recruiters’ must not be effective. Waste of $$$?? Probably /shrug Staffing up the recruiting dept to eventually staff up the company /shrug …could be. I think it’s just over inflated (like their stock, their hype, etc). this is a user/supporter view from the people I know at Google, have been at Google, and the few times they made me offers (which I declined) … I?m sorry to be the devils advocate here; but with that much recruiting manpower you’d think they’d be growing a bit faster then they are. Or is the goal of the recruiters not linked to them growing.

I?m confused!!
Am I the only one that feels this way??

I also had the opportunity recently to visit the Google campus for a lunch meeting with a visiting member of their recruiting team who works on contract from another state. He and I along with another member of the Google recruiting team enjoyed a nice lunch outside under the large market umbrellas. The atmosphere there was electric, the people were all very happy, smiling and laughing together. The food service was outstanding with a large selection and provided entirely by the company.

Google by all possible views looks to be doing extremely well in many different areas. Their ability to continue to grow and stay successful will be based on the people they recruit and retain. It looks like they are making a serious investment in recruiting top talent. I like their style and the direction they are headed as a company. Sure there will have some managers that are better than others, people that interview well and make it in only to find out later that they don’t like it there or don’t fit with the culture, that happens everywhere.

I welcome Google to the Silicon Valley recruiting scene and look forward to watching them be creative, adapt, and develop as we have with firms such as Ebay, Netscape, Yahoo, etc…

Craig Silverman
http://www.hireability.com - The Recruiting Network