Corporate Culture and the Recruitment Processes in Google - Case Study Example

Introduction Companies in the current global business arena are experiencing difficulties in achieving success. Although success is quite a relativeword in the business front it means profitability and the level of satisfaction that all stakeholders to a company derive from the goods or services it engages in. stakeholders in this respect are the employees, shareholders, creditors, customers and consumers among others. Due to the rising competitive arena companies have engaged in practices that aim at capturing the best image in their respective industry through better human relations, accountability and good management and innovation states Roger et al. (2006). Human relations and good management in this respect entail internal human resources policies as well as customer relations as well as how the company deals with other categories of stakeholders. In case of innovation, companies have been trying to come up with new ways of doing things, better products and services that meet the test of time. In order to elaborate this further this paper shall look into the success of Google.com as well as the organisations culture in Google’s workplace. The other issue that will also be discussed is Google’s recruitment and selection policies. Google’s success Google.com has been the number one search engine for quite a long time now and this success has not been without endless effort from the team behind its emergence and sustenance. Having a leading brand more so in the IT sector is quite a daunting task for both the management and the support staff i.e. all the other employees (Tony D et al. 2007). Google.com became successful the minute the management developed the idea of auctioning ads. This has been the centre of the company’s success. The method of auctioning was not believed to be as viable but it later proved sceptics wrong and Google is the evidence of the time. There are therefore a number of factors that have facilitated this over the years which are to be categorised into four. User experience User experience seems to have taken the lead as compared to revenue generation. The company has ensured that the search engine has with time kept on optimising on the user experience. This as has been attributed to the realisation by the management that the when the user is satisfied then revenue will follow. There is therefore the belief that the company needs to have a site that is the offering the best user experience as at that particular time and this is the other reason that has made it possible for the company to become more innovative so as to adjust to the current trends in technology and user needs (Coy 2006). Technology Google has appreciated the fact that technology is not static but changes with time. This has enabled the company to ensure that it is a step further than its competitors like YAHOO.com in regards to offering the best and most direct and quick searches to users (Shebley 2007). The other issue relates to the company also being involved in distribution of computer systems and it also ranks as the largest in this category. Google has been making its own hardware i.e. purpose built hardware which has enabled it to build its servers from scratch making it have the best that serve its purpose. In this regard offering the best for the users is made easier. Business model innovation Google’s perfection of targeted ads and their nature has enabled Google.com to attract many users whereby they are provided with a better experience. Google has made sure that the targeted ads in Google.com are most useful and relevant to the users more so in relation to the search options and outcomes. Through this Google has been receiving huge revenues thereby ensuring the site’s continuity into the future. Brand Google as a brand name is an IT household name that every internet user is familiar with. Popularity in the online business is what counts for revenue generation and in ensuring sustainability. Google.com in the process has gained many users most of whom are not interested in knowing what the competitors are offering. Coy (2006) says that many competitors have come to the market and keep innovating their sites and productions to woo users but despite all these, Google.com as a search engine remains at the top. Image to a company is everything and this is what Google has been working so hard to maintain since failure to that, competitors are many and waiting for the opportune moment. The above combination of factors has made Google as a company a world leader in the technology sector. The formula has really worked wonders and the art of keeping everyone happy has clearly been mastered by Google. This model is quite simple where the technology is customer-focused while indirectly looking at the revenue generation avenues. Google organisational culture An organisational culture in a huge way determines its success or failure or how long it takes to achieve success (Hierling et al. 2008). Within a specific industry and for the sake of this paper, the IT industry there is a pool of eligible employees but of varying degrees of competence in relation to what a company wants. It is the wish of every company’s management to attract the best qualified staff but the hindrance to this can be the culture within the organisation. This part of the paper will discuss the Google organisational culture and how it has affected the workplace and the general working environment and more so the performance of employees. Google as a company has had a phenomenon growth since 1998 (Google 2010). To many this growth has been taken to have a rather funny twist as some take it to be attributed to the adorable organisational culture while others attribute the culture to the growth. Either way the company has both a tremendous growth record in the technological industry as well as a culture that is emulated by many. In Silicon Valley for example the company has become an icon or a symbol where culture blends superbly with technology. Many in the industry were sceptical at first complaining that the informal culture was to erode the very fabric of understanding among employees and this was to extend to the customers. The lack of explicit hierarchical approach to leadership in the company and the adoption of a more consultative approach have ensured that the company’s top officials interact freely with the junior staff. The office layouts in the many offices around the world are of the open plan and few offices are singly occupied. This openness and interactive approach to dealing with issues in Google emanated from the founders themselves: Sergey Brin and Larry Page states Weber (2008). They wanted to provide the best environment for employees to operate in and they came up with the informal look of the employees and their interaction with the senior staff. This culture was first introduced in the Googleplex which is the corporate headquarters in California. Some of the most unique features present in Google organisational culture are: Each office in a foreign country has its architecture suit that country’s heritage for example in Zurich the building expresses the ski gondolas and in Buenos Aires theirs expresses a mural among others. The dressing code is unofficial where suits and other office ware are not a requirement. The offices are quite expansive and are of the open plan whereby all employees are seeing one another and only few individual offices actually exist. Use of laptops has been given more emphasis for conducting almost all IT related and unrelated tasks e.g. emailing, coding etc. The amenities available are abundant and they come in a huge variety. There are pool tables available at the workplace, pianos, video games that are assorted, dance and yoga classes in the gyms among others. More efficient means of travel between meetings like use of bicycles is highly encouraged to reduce waste of time. There are many establishments aiming at catering for various interests both common and uncommon e.g. salsa dancing and wine tasting among others. The company offers a full day’s meal to all employees from breakfast to dinner in the various cafes open within the Google premises all across the globe. There are ample rooms set aside for breaks where drinks and snacks are available. Pets are also allowed at the workplace and the company takes the initiative to offer snacks and full meals to them. There are elder care and day-care centres for children near the Google offices to cater for those with young children and have these children closer to them while they work. The parking space is quite expansive in all Google offices and cars are washed free of charge at the parking lot. These and more are some of the most unique features a company of Google’s statue has allowed within its premises. This freeness and openness has resulted in Google witnessing little turnover of employees if any. This indicates that the level of satisfaction for the employees is high with the culture of the day. It is therefore the onus of the top management to ensure this trend holds so as to be guaranteed of more innovation from increased output. Google’s recruitment and selection practices Google is in record as to receive more than 1300 resumes daily from highly qualified people from all over the world. Google on the other hand is considered to have one of the most rigorous and expensive recruitment processes in the industry. The other issue is that Google is also surprisingly one of the poorly paying in the same industry. However, in this latter scenario, the employees’ lack of better pay is compensated by share schemes where employees own shares of the company which is more of a beneficial long term goals. According to John (2001) after going public more than a thousand Google employees became millionaires out of the shares they held. The company has been trying to fill various posts especially in operations, sales and engineering. Google in the selection process makes sure that an eligible candidate needs to have excellent academic background, intelligent and experience. Of the three experience is not as valued but this combination makes it hard for majority of the applicants to qualify. Lars Rasmussen, the Australia head engineer explained that in the selection and recruitment processes the company does not aim at looking for persons with any specific skills but people who have a track record of excellence. Sullivan (2005) says that the recruitment process is one that is full of numerous interview sessions where one proceeds as they continue to be promising to the company. Rasmussen admitted that in the interviews what is basically asked is that which is less obvious or rather the norm. They ask unusual questions that aim at uncovering how an individual may cope with a situation they have never faced before especially relevant to their work. Google’s workforce is one of the youngest in the industry with 27 years being the mean age. Google has also been regarded to have a recruitment culture that is unmatched where the recruitment process involves almost everyone in the company and huge amounts of resources are diverted to it, says Elearn (2009). Due to the company’s insistence to employ the most academically excelled and intelligent as well as persons of general high ability, it has found itself boasting of quite an intelligent workforce. This workforce has been able to retain arguably because of the favourable working environment and Google’s corporate culture. Corporate culture and the recruitment processes in Google have clearly been illustrated to be unique in many ways. Google has achieved huge success as a result of the informal culture in the workplace where also managerial hierarchies are not emphasised. These and more attributes have enabled the workplace environment at Google’s offices to be fun. The recruitment process has ensured that the company gets the best personnel who have diverse qualities and skills and high academic achievements. This has in turn led to high innovation and creativity resulting to higher growth in revenue. References Coy, Peter, The secret to Googles success: Its innovative auction system has ad revenues soaring, Mar 6, 2006, viewed 7 Aug, 2010, . Elearn, 2009, Recruitment and selection, Elsevier. Google, The Google culture, viewed 7 Aug, 2010, . Hierling, M et al. 2008, Organizational culture and the case of Google: What is organizational culture and how it can influence the performance of a company, GRIN Verlag. John, S 2001, Google IPO achieved its major goal; It’s all about raising cash for the company and rewarding employees early, San Francisco Chronicles, 22. Roger, B et al. 2006, Corporate and employment perspectives in a global business environment, Kluwer Law International. Shebley, CL 2007, 5 Steps to success, Lulu.com. Sullivan, J 2005, A case study of Google recruitment, viewed 7 Sept, 2010, . Tony D et al. 2007, The creative enterprise: Strategy, Greenwood Publishing Group. Weber, S 2008, Organizational behaviour: Google corporate culture in perspective, GRIN Verlag. Read More