DEPARTMENT OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES

RECRUITMENT & SELECTION

Assignment – 1
Staffing Models and strategy: A case of GOOGLE
By Taniya Kaur [ MBA 2019-2021- 39]

In today’s digitally accelerated world, a life without the endless possibilities, that a search
engine will let us explore, is unimaginable. The relevancy, reliability, and accessibility of
information have been transformed by Google, a company that dominates the global search
engine market with over 90 percent share handling all search queries worldwide. While the
future seems grim to the Indian economy, Google comes to the rescue by announcing a
$10Billion digitization fund to help accelerate India’s digital economy. This will not only
benefit in leveraging technology for digital literacy but also will deliver employment
opportunities to many. Hence, a study on Google’s staffing models will support in
strategizing and being market-ready with the right information and KSA’s required for this
internet giant.

About the company:

To know about this Trillion-dollar company I had to “Google” about Google to know about
Google on Google. The infographic below highlights about the company. Google apart from
playing major roles in our academic as well as non-academic life, has been under
controversies revolving around privacy issues and censoring of information in certain parts of
the world. Recently, Google has been in the news for their strategic investment in Jio as part
of the digitisation fund for India.
Google’s Organizational Culture:

Google has established itself as a high-vigour, and fast-paced work environment. Unlike, the
vertical approach to management, the company follows a cross-functional and team-based
organizational structure. There is decentralization to per rather than centralization of power
while making decisions. The three characteristics of Google’s organizational structure
include:
• Innovation: It believes in intelligence and ideas rather than focusing on the titles
• Small-family rapport: It treats its employees with a small company like atmosphere
where each employee is given importance while making decisions.
• Openness: Not only do employees have flexibility in their work but also have a
“Work Hard, Play Hard” policy. This attracts the most tech savvy person towards the
company while ensuring a campus-like environment.

Google’s Mission and vision statement:

The best way to understand a company’s strategy to survive in this dynamic competitive
market is to look at its mission and vision statement. Google’s mission statement and
corporate culture of the company reflects an ideology that the company can “make money
without doing evil”. Also, a stress-free environment is emphasized upon by following “work
at google should be challenging and the challenge ought to be fun.” These beliefs govern the
lifestyle at Google. The official mission statement of Google: “organize the world’s
information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Its vision statement is to “provide
an important service to the world-instantly delivering relevant information on virtually any
topic.” This creates a system of a robust environment among stakeholders. Sundar Pichai also
renewed Google’s mission towards allowing people “to get things done!” in 2019.

Google’s Business Strategy:

Google’s key focus is on innovation and creativity. The four components with which the
company can create a competitive edge include comprehensiveness, relevance, speed, and
user experience. The company can monitor itself with short-term as well as long-term
agendas creating its versions of strategic priorities. Even with global teams, the company can
tackle operational challenges with innovative initiatives. The company is able to achieve
financial viability and maintain its leadership position by following intensive growth
strategies. These strategies include market penetration and development and well as product
development. The only time Google failed in terms of its business strategy is when it was not
able to capture the social media segment. YouTube is the only company under Google which
was able to withstand global competition in this segment and has been irreplaceable ever
since. The company has been trying its best to give competition to its competitors with its
strategic planning.

Google’s Human Resource strategy:

Google is one of the largest and the most popular search engine company that offers highly
attractive compensation to its employee. HR Department at Google is known as ‘Peoples
Operations’ effectively manages to maintain the life cycle of an employee with the firm right
from hiring to leaving. More focus is given to retention programs. To balance the demand
and supply trade-off in the department, Google uses HR technology and forecasting
techniques like scenario and trend analysis. The positive perception of employee lifestyle has
made it one among the most popular to work with. Its success it mainly due its blue-ribbon
employees. With their mentorship programs and review criteria, the company has created an
example for an excellent HR department around the global market.

Google’s Staffing Strategy:

Ever since the company topped its charts of being one of the most successful companies, the
hiring process has been revised. Google now aims at hiring candidates that align with the
organization’s culture and standards. Google has very complex job requirements and
expectations due to its broad organization size. In general, after careful analysis, the staffing
strategies include:

• Google invests in People:

Even with its lengthy interview process which can be a nerve-wrecking experience to
many, the company is able to attract the most talented minds. This is only possible
because the company knows for the fact if they invest in the well-being of the
employees, the more they are willing to perform well. If an organization is treated as a
recipe, then the customers get attracted to its taste and presentation. This recipe is
only perfect with the right ingredients used. These ingredients are nothing but the
employees of the company. Hence, one of the key assets of top companies that
enables them to survive in this customer-centric market is the employees inside them.
Who they hire and how they hire are the determining factors for employee satisfaction
and employee turn-over. Like they say, your customers are only satisfied when your
employees are attainable and accountable. The perks they provide with their lavish
offices and services to reduce any kind of stress for the employee has always made
their company more employee-oriented. A happy employee makes the customers the
happiest.

• Googlyness:

One of the interesting findings of the review criteria involves a factor very unique to
Google. Googlyness is the measure of a candidate’s capability to adjust in the
organization’s culture. While other companies like to focus on problem-solving and
logical reasoning, Google gives extra points for being innovative and creative. A
candidate’s academic qualifications are second priority for Google while staffing. It
focuses mainly on leadership capabilities and personality. A culture fit is given the
highest priority.

• Staffing Quality:
One can say that Google’s staffing quality align to that of person/organization match.
The person not only has flexibility, but also is able to access the norms of the
organization by matching the desirable attitudes and behaviors to the values of the
company.
• Strategic staffing decisions:
The company believes in acquiring talent first rather than developing talent. But it also
has various programs for developing talent as it believes in innovation and creativity.
Google uses both internal and external methods of recruitment. ‘Google careers’ lets
people seeking jobs to know the positions open in the company. The candidate can
themselves search for the interested job and apply directly to Google. It also conducts
recruitment drives in colleges and universities. In very rare cases, the staffing is
 outsourced. The company only uses external hiring for recruitment of new teams. But
since the project flow for the company is huge, the external hiring is done on a large
scale. It attracts global candidates and believes in retaining employees by having a core
workforce strategy. The understaffing and overstaffing depend on the short-term focus
of the company with specific KSAOs with active workforce diversity. The employees
at Google have exception workforce quality with guideline for proper staffing ethics.
Observations and Suggestions:
The problem faced by Google staffing model is not concerned with the quantity of the
candidates but the quality. Google has a unique way of selection, and not everyone can be
hired or retained. You definitely need to be exceptional. A non-creative person can never be
part of this company. Over the years, we have also seen how Google has focused more and
more on retention program than hiring activities. There have also been reports on how
temporary hires are treated differently. A transformational characteristic one should take-
away from Google is their constant focus on innovation. Ideation requires inspiration but
creation requires innovation.
The interview process at Google, alike every MNC is too long. Candidates have to wait for 3-
4 hours for their turn and most of the times its because the HR managers start the process
late. The best way to resolve such a problem is with a reservation system. A time should be
fixed and informed to the candidate prior, like a doctor’s appointment. If we have a
reservation system for booking the walk-ins in Time-slots, we can be pretty sure on how
much will be the arrival rate and we can plan the schedules accordingly. It makes easier for
the HR’s to conduct interviews. It also saves time from both the ends. Rush of walk-ins
would be controlled as candidates arrive in their specific time slots.
References:

https://about.google/

http://panmore.com/google-generic-strategy-intensive-growth-strategies

https://www.google.com/intl/br/about/careers/teams/business-strategy/