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Interesting Interview on Hiring in Google
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Just read an interesting interview of Laszlo Bock, senior vice president of people operations at Google.
Excepts:
Years ago, we did a study to determine whether anyone at Google is particularly good at hiring. We looked at tens of thousands of interviews, and everyone who had done the interviews and what they scored the candidate, and how that person ultimately performed in their job. We found zero relationship. It’s a complete random mess, except for one guy who was highly predictive because he only interviewed people for a very specialized area, where he happened to be the world’s leading expert.
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On the hiring side, we found that brainteasers are a complete waste of time. How many golf balls can you fit into an airplane? How many gas stations in Manhattan? A complete waste of time. They don’t predict anything. They serve primarily to make the interviewer feel smart.
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Q. Other insights from the data you’ve gathered about Google employees?
A. One of the things we’ve seen from all our data crunching is that G.P.A.’s are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless — no correlation at all except for brand-new college grads, where there’s a slight correlation. Google famously used to ask everyone for a transcript and G.P.A.’s and test scores, but we don’t anymore, unless you’re just a few years out of school. We found that they don’t predict anything.
What’s interesting is the proportion of people without any college education at Google has increased over time as well. So we have teams where you have 14 percent of the team made up of people who’ve never gone to college.
Q. Can you elaborate a bit more on the lack of correlation?
A. After two or three years, your ability to perform at Google is completely unrelated to how you performed when you were in school, because the skills you required in college are very different. You’re also fundamentally a different person. You learn and grow, you think about things differently.
Another reason is that I think academic environments are artificial environments. People who succeed there are sort of finely trained, they’re conditioned to succeed in that environment. One of my own frustrations when I was in college and grad school is that you knew the professor was looking for a specific answer. You could figure that out, but it’s much more interesting to solve problems where there isn’t an obvious answer. You want people who like figuring out stuff where there is no obvious answer.
发表评论 评论 (11 个评论)
- 回复 MacArthur
- That's what I thought...
we found that brainteasers are a complete waste of time...They serve primarily to make the interviewer feel smart.
- 回复 雪山下
- 完全同意。这种问题纯粹是让interviewer和interviewee感觉良好，对所雇佣的工作一点用处都没有。很多是随机现象。social network的背景调查和直觉我觉得是最好的滤波器。
- 回复 Dracula
- 你说的对。不过即时Google雇用所有申请的人，sample selection bias也还是存在的，因为申请Google的人不是一个完全随机的样本。
老马丁: 很严重的selection bias. 除非Google雇用所有申请的人，"useless"这词才用得严禁。
我不知道他们的数据分析考没考虑到这个问题，作没作Heckman correction。不过，Hal Varian在Google，他们应该也雇了一些对统计学很精通的经济学家，说不定这些分析也作过，说不定还作过些random experiment，因此这个问题可能不是很严重。他们的结论我觉得还是有启发性的。
另外的sample selection的另一个问题在于Google雇佣的主要是高级人才，他们的经验是否适用于普通的公司不是很清楚，不过看来大家对brainteaser都没有好感。
- 回复 holycow
- 对于Google关心和想要弄清楚的事，这不是一个大问题。人家关心的本来就不是random sample。
老马丁: 很严重的selection bias. 除非Google雇用所有申请的人，"useless"这词才用得严禁。
- 回复 九九
- “ One of my own frustrations when I was in college and grad school is that you knew the professor was looking for a specific answer. ” —— It's true for exams, but untrue for most graduate-level research.
- 回复 烟波钓徒
- 有点怀疑这个是否有夸大的成分。而且google的这么多的职位，他们是如何衡量进公司之后的performance？不同职位需要的雇员的技能显然不一样。如果他们只用一个统一的标准来作为分析目标，显然损失了很多有用的信息和gpa可能的解释能力。
- 回复 烟波钓徒
- 这里也有一个很有意思的问题。
holycow: 对于Google关心和想要弄清楚的事，这不是一个大问题。人家关心的本来就不是random sample。
但是如果原来是有gpa标注的，现在废除了，现在的sample和原来的也不一样了。原来的标准可能有一个threshold 效应。
- 回复 holycow
- I think it is not so much about controlled environment vs. real one; it is about the effectiveness of the academic record as an indicator of future achievement, and that effectiveness will be diluted over time.
九九: “ One of my own frustrations when I was in college and grad school is that you knew the professor was looking for a specific answer. ” —— It's tru ...
Same when past job performance is concerned, the most recent one is always the most relevant; the further away in time, the more diluted it becomes.
- 回复 九九
- Actually I totally agree with the first half of his answer: "You’re also fundamentally a different person. You learn and grow, you think about things differently.", but then he brought up this point as "another reason". Thus I don't think he is still talking about the effectiveness of academic records.
holycow: I think it is not so much about controlled environment vs. real one; it is about the effectiveness of the academic record as an indicator of future ac ...