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Case Study: Google’s Recruitment and Selection Process

Google Inc., the world’s largest and most popular search engine company, is also one of the most sought after companies in the world. Due to the popularity of the company caused by its highly attractive compensation and benefits packages for its employees, millions of job applications are constantly received by Google on an annual basis. While other companies envy Google for attracting and acquiring such highly-talented and highly-skilled individuals from all over the world, the company finds it as a serious cause of dilemma.

When Google Inc. topped the ranks for the most popular companies in the world , it could no longer contain the number of applications it receives from thousands of job hunters from all over the globe. And since the company aims to hire only the best employees that fit the organizational culture and standards of Google , the company started thinking of ways to better improve its recruitment and selection process for its would-be employees.

In an article released in New York Times in 2007, Google Inc shared its non-traditional, highly creative and unconventional approach of selecting and hiring employees. Initially, the Google management sought the aid of its highly-competent and well-skilled technical staff in order to find ways to quickly go through and review the millions of applications it stored in its recruitment database.

The Google Inc management also decided to focus on the distinct behavioral characteristics and personality that separates Google employees from any other employees in other known companies. It shifted its focus from academic qualifications and technical experiences to the applicant’s personality , creativity , leadership capacities , innovative and non-conventional ways of thinking and the applicant’s overall exposure to the world. The academic qualifications and the intensive job experience just came in as second priorities of the company in choosing the best candidates for any open positions.

Since then, the Google Inc company not only became known for its outstanding and “luxurious” job compensation and benefits packages it offers its employees, but also in making use of some of the most powerful recruitment assessment tools capable of picking the best employees in the world that fit the standards set by Google.

The Google Recruitment Process

One of the most notable statements of Eric Schmidt , the CEO of Google Inc. is that “Google invests in people.” The main reason why people from different cultures, have been dreaming of being recruited and hired by Google is that the company offers possibly the most outstanding job compensation packages any normal employee could ever enjoy.

In order to attract the best employees, Google draws them by the promise of wealth and luxury, providing their employees with almost everything an employee could possibly need, from absurdly high compensations to extravagant and luxurious benefits like gourmet food, carwash, gym, snacks, exercise classes, dry cleaning services, car services, haircuts, oil changes, massages, checkups and many more, all for free.

Nevertheless, the recruitment process was also far beyond ordinary. Several people who have had experience in the Google recruitment process narrates that the experience was totally nerve-wracking. One applicant who underwent interviews for Google has had five to seven interviews in one day for two to three straight days. That applicant claims that the interviews were really tough with some of the brightest people in the world, conducting the interviews filled with brain teasers, algorithmic problems, and IQ tests.

Another applicant who also have had experiences in the recruitment process of Google claims that his Google experience was one of the most nerve-wracking adventures of his life. The interviewers were looking for extremely bright individuals and so the recruitment method was filled with IQ tests, brain teasers, algorithms, data structures, and a lot of mathematics involved in it.

The Google Selection Process

Google is no doubt the world’s best recruitment leader. Google is known for various unique approaches that it has utilized in order to attract the cream of the crop or the best of the bests. One way is through employment branding. Google has so successfully utilized their brand in order to attract the most talented and highly-competent individuals in the world. Because of their claim of providing the best employee-employer experience supported by the many perks, benefits and high salaries that Google employees get to enjoy, Google became the most desired companies for men and women in the world.

While the work and job responsibilities in Google are not that easy, the stock options benefit is one of the key drivers of retention and continuous acquisition of the best employees for this company. In 2007, employee turn-over at Google was reportedly less than 5% which was simply phenomenal. People didn’t want to leave the company because the amazing provisions and benefits that the company offers its employees. Moreover, the creative approaches of Google when it comes to hiring and retaining employees were simply exceptional. Employees claim that money was never an issue for Google in terms of utilizing it to take care of its employees.

One notable recruitment technique that Google utilized in 2006 was the targeted and unobtrusive approach to sending recruitment messages. Google crafted a simple technique to recruit the best students in certain schools and universities to work for them. They allowed people from these schools to access the search portal of Google wherein the students’ IP address would be identified to see from what organization the person belongs into. The technique was successfully executed using a minimalist and unobtrusive style of recruitment wherein below the search box, the Google system would know whether the targeted student is graduating or not and whether or not they intend to work for Google after graduation. The approach was definitely a successful micro-targeted approach. It was also in the same year when Google opened up to the idea of an Employee Referral Program. In putting up this program, Google made sure that it would deliver them a world-class employee whose personality, qualifications and work ethics reflect the Google standards.

A year passed by and Google’s attempts for recruitment innovations continued to improve. In 2007, Google developed a simple and effective assessment tool to screen its millions of applicants all over the world via an algorithm assessment tool. The algorithm technique effectively separated the top and the best performers from thousands of candidates vying for a position. Moreover, the assessment tool was made sure to successfully predict the best possible candidates from the least and the average and has managed to resolve the issue on the usual assessment tools being used by most companies, relying mainly on the academic qualifications and intensive industry and job experience.

Truly, what separates the Google recruitment process from the typical and the usual recruitment methodologies that other companies employ is its ability to accurately identify the best candidates for the position using a more data-based and scientific approach to the recruitment process. Also, it has significantly reduced the reliability of interviews, which for most companies, serves as the final indicator of how well an employee will perform at work. Furthermore, the algorithm approach which is a common business model that the company employs was effectively used to assess whether potential candidates can indeed perform given the high performance standards of Google.

The secret to be selected as a Google employee is that one has to think a lot like an “engineer”. Apparently, Google expects their employees to be highly quantitative and highly analytical as well as highly capable of dealing with too many data all at the same time. During the interviews, an applicant must also be able to demonstrate his skill or capacity by writing codes, intelligently analyzing case studies and brain teasers and solving algorithmic problems on the spot. Also, Google is searching for applicants who are highly practical and are capable of making something out of nothing that people can make use of.

The Google Interview Process

Since Google is known to be the ultimate recruitment and selection machine, its interview processes are also the most grueling experiences an applicant could ever have. Usually, the interviews begin using the telephone. Once the phone interviews conducted have been successful, the applicant would be scheduled by the recruitment officer and be invited for a series of five to ten interviews in one day with ten different people. For some people who have successfully undergone this process, they described it as the most excruciating employment experience of their lives as a lot of mental gymnastics were necessary to prove your skills.

There were many instances when the applicants were asked to write codes, brain storm, role play or solve mathematical equations on the spot just to prove that they are highly-skilled and competent. In other instances, the applicants are even tested of their marketing skills even though the position an applicant is applying for is highly technical. The interviewers seem to have control and power over the applicants letting them do everything just to prove that they are worthy for the position. Common questions involved computer network problems, Java programming and algorithms by which Google is known for.

Moreover, other applicants can rate and share comments on another applicant which Google can track and use as another basis for hiring or not hiring an applicant. Overall, the process was a lengthy, tedious and nerve-wracking experience which can possibly traumatize anyone whose dream is to work for one of the most prestigious companies in the world. Nevertheless, the perks and benefits are limitless and are more than enough to compensate for such a tough employment experience.

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How Google Sold Its Engineers on Management

by David A. Garvin

Summary .   

Since the early days of Google, people throughout the company have questioned the value of managers. That skepticism stems from a highly technocratic culture. As one software engineer, Eric Flatt, puts it, “We are a company built by engineers for engineers.” And most engineers, not just those at Google, want to spend their time designing and debugging, not communicating with bosses or supervising other workers’ progress. In their hearts they’ve long believed that management is more destructive than beneficial, a distraction from “real work” and tangible, goal-directed tasks.

A few years into the company’s life, founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin actually wondered whether Google needed any managers at all. In 2002 they experimented with a completely flat organization, eliminating engineering managers in an effort to break down barriers to rapid idea development and to replicate the collegial environment they’d enjoyed in graduate school. That experiment lasted only a few months: They relented when too many people went directly to Page with questions about expense reports, interpersonal conflicts, and other nitty-gritty issues. And as the company grew, the founders soon realized that managers contributed in many other, important ways—for instance, by communicating strategy, helping employees prioritize projects, facilitating collaboration, supporting career development, and ensuring that processes and systems aligned with company goals.

Google now has some layers but not as many as you might expect in an organization with more than 37,000 employees: just 5,000 managers, 1,000 directors, and 100 vice presidents. It’s not uncommon to find engineering managers with 30 direct reports. Flatt says that’s by design, to prevent micromanaging. “There is only so much you can meddle when you have 30 people on your team, so you have to focus on creating the best environment for engineers to make things happen,” he notes. Google gives its rank and file room to make decisions and innovate. Along with that freedom comes a greater respect for technical expertise, skillful problem solving, and good ideas than for titles and formal authority. Given the overall indifference to pecking order, anyone making a case for change at the company needs to provide compelling logic and rich supporting data. Seldom do employees accept top-down directives without question.

Google downplays hierarchy and emphasizes the power of the individual in its recruitment efforts, as well, to achieve the right cultural fit. Using a rigorous, data-driven hiring process, the company goes to great lengths to attract young, ambitious self-starters and original thinkers. It screens candidates’ résumés for markers that indicate potential to excel there—especially general cognitive ability. People who make that first cut are then carefully assessed for initiative, flexibility, collaborative spirit, evidence of being well-rounded, and other factors that make a candidate “Googley.”

So here’s the challenge Google faced: If your highly skilled, handpicked hires don’t value management, how can you run the place effectively? How do you turn doubters into believers, persuading them to spend time managing others? As it turns out, by applying the same analytical rigor and tools that you used to hire them in the first place—and that they set such store by in their own work. You use data to test your assumptions about management’s merits and then make your case.

Analyzing the Soft Stuff

To understand how Google set out to prove managers’ worth, let’s go back to 2006, when Page and Brin brought in Laszlo Bock to head up the human resources function—appropriately called people operations, or people ops. From the start, people ops managed performance reviews, which included annual 360-degree assessments. It also helped conduct and interpret the Googlegeist employee survey on career development goals, perks, benefits, and company culture. A year later, with that foundation in place, Bock hired Prasad Setty from Capital One to lead a people analytics group. He challenged Setty to approach HR with the same empirical discipline Google applied to its business operations.

Setty took him at his word, recruiting several PhDs with serious research chops. This new team was committed to leading organizational change. “I didn’t want our group to be simply a reporting house,” Setty recalls. “Organizations can get bogged down in all that data. Instead, I wanted us to be hypothesis-driven and help solve company problems and questions with data.”

People analytics then pulled together a small team to tackle issues relating to employee well-being and productivity. In early 2009 it presented its initial set of research questions to Setty. One question stood out, because it had come up again and again since the company’s founding: Do managers matter?

To find the answer, Google launched Project Oxygen, a multiyear research initiative. It has since grown into a comprehensive program that measures key management behaviors and cultivates them through communication and training. By November 2012, employees had widely adopted the program—and the company had shown statistically significant improvements in multiple areas of managerial effectiveness and performance.

Google is one of several companies that are applying analytics in new ways. Until recently, organizations used data-driven decision making mainly in product development, marketing, and pricing. But these days, Google, Procter & Gamble, Harrah’s, and others take that same approach in addressing human resources needs. (See “Competing on Talent Analytics,” by Thomas H. Davenport, Jeanne Harris, and Jeremy Shapiro, HBR October 2010.)

Unfortunately, scholars haven’t done enough to help these organizations understand and improve day-to-day management practice. Compared with leadership, managing remains understudied and undertaught—largely because it’s so difficult to describe, precisely and concretely, what managers actually do. We often say that they get things done through other people, yet we don’t usually spell out how in any detail. Project Oxygen, in contrast, was designed to offer granular, hands-on guidance. It didn’t just identify desirable management traits in the abstract; it pinpointed specific, measurable behaviors that brought those traits to life.

“Engineers hate being micromanaged on the technical side but love being closely managed on the career side.”

That’s why Google employees let go of their skepticism and got with the program. Project Oxygen mirrored their decision-making criteria, respected their need for rigorous analysis, and made it a priority to measure impact. Data-driven cultures, Google discovered, respond well to data-driven change.

Making the Case

Project Oxygen colead Neal Patel recalls, “We knew the team had to be careful. Google has high standards of proof, even for what, at other places, might be considered obvious truths. Simple correlations weren’t going to be enough. So we actually ended up trying to prove the opposite case—that managers don’t matter. Luckily, we failed.”

To begin, Patel and his team reviewed exit-interview data to see if employees cited management issues as a reason for leaving Google. Though they found some connections between turnover rates and low satisfaction with managers, those didn’t apply to the company more broadly, given the low turnover rates overall. Nor did the findings prove that managers caused attrition.

As a next step, Patel examined Googlegeist ratings and semiannual reviews, comparing managers on both satisfaction and performance. For both dimensions, he looked at the highest and lowest scorers (the top and bottom quartiles).

Essential Background

Evidence-based management.

• Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton

“At first,” he says, “the numbers were not encouraging. Even the low-scoring managers were doing pretty well. How could we find evidence that better management mattered when all managers seemed so similar?” The solution came from applying sophisticated multivariate statistical techniques, which showed that even “the smallest incremental increases in manager quality were quite powerful.”

For example, in 2008, the high-scoring managers saw less turnover on their teams than the others did—and retention was related more strongly to manager quality than to seniority, performance, tenure, or promotions. The data also showed a tight connection between managers’ quality and workers’ happiness: Employees with high-scoring bosses consistently reported greater satisfaction in multiple areas, including innovation, work-life balance, and career development.

In light of this research, the Project Oxygen team concluded that managers indeed mattered. But to act on that finding, Google first had to figure out what its best managers did. So the researchers followed up with double-blind qualitative interviews, asking the high- and low-scoring managers questions such as “How often do you have career development discussions with your direct reports?” and “What do you do to develop a vision for your team?” Managers from Google’s three major functions (engineering, global business, and general and administrative) participated; they came from all levels and geographies. The team also studied thousands of qualitative comments from Googlegeist surveys, performance reviews, and submissions for the company’s Great Manager Award. (Each year, Google selects about 20 managers for this distinction, on the basis of employees’ nominations.) It took several months to code and process all this information.

After much review, Oxygen identified eight behaviors shared by high-scoring managers. (See the sidebar “What Google’s Best Managers Do” for the complete list.) Even though the behaviors weren’t terribly surprising, Patel’s colead, Michelle Donovan, says, “we hoped that the list would resonate because it was based on Google data. The attributes were about us, by us, and for us.”

What Google’s Best Managers Do

By examining data from employee surveys and performance reviews, Google’s people analytics team identified eight key behaviors demonstrated by the company’s most effective managers.

A good manager:

1. Is a good coach 2. Empowers the team and does not micromanage (See the sidebar “How Google Defines One Key Behavior”) 3. Expresses interest in and concern for team members’ success and personal well-being 4. Is productive and results-oriented 5. Is a good communicator—listens and shares information 6. Helps with career development 7. Has a clear vision and strategy for the team 8. Has key technical skills that help him or her advise the team

The key behaviors primarily describe leaders of small and medium-sized groups and teams and are especially relevant to first- and second-level managers. They involve developing and motivating direct reports, as well as communicating strategy and eliminating roadblocks—all vital activities that people tend to overlook in the press of their day-to-day responsibilities.

Putting the Findings into Practice

The list of behaviors has served three important functions at Google: giving employees a shared vocabulary for discussing management, offering them straightforward guidelines for improving it, and encapsulating the full range of management responsibilities. Though the list is simple and straightforward, it’s enriched by examples and descriptions of best practices—in survey participants’ own words. These details make the overarching principles, such as “empowers the team and does not micromanage,” more concrete and show managers different ways of enacting them. (See the exhibit “How Google Defines One Key Behavior.”)

How Google Defines One Key Behavior

Drawing on companywide survey responses, Google breaks down each essential management behavior into specific activities and best practices.

Best practice: Assign stretch assignments to empower the team to tackle big problems

“My manager was able to see my potential and gave me opportunities that allowed me to shine and grow. For example, early on in my role, she asked me to pull together a cross-functional team to develop a goal-setting process. I was new to the role, so she figured it would be a great way for me to get to know the team and also to create accountability and transparency. Once it was developed, she sent me to one of our Europe offices—on my own!—to deliver the training to people managers there.”

The descriptions of the eight behaviors also allow considerable tailoring. They’re inclusive guidelines, not rigid formulas. That said, it was clear early on that managers would need help adopting the new standards, so people ops built assessments and a training program around the Oxygen findings.

To improve the odds of acceptance, the group customized the survey instrument, creating an upward feedback survey (UFS) for employees in administrative and global business functions and a tech managers survey (TMS) for the engineers. Both assessments asked employees to evaluate their managers (using a five-point scale) on a core set of activities—such as giving actionable feedback regularly and communicating team goals clearly—all of which related directly to the key management behaviors.

The first surveys went out in June 2010—deliberately out of sync with performance reviews, which took place in April and September. (Google had initially considered linking the scores with performance reviews but decided that would increase resistance to the Oxygen program because employees would view it as a top-down imposition of standards.) People ops emphasized confidentiality and issued frequent reminders that the surveys were strictly for self-improvement. “Project Oxygen was always meant to be a developmental tool, not a performance metric,” says Mary Kate Stimmler, an analyst in the department. “We realized that anonymous surveys are not always fair, and there is often a context behind low scores.”

Though the surveys weren’t mandatory, the vast majority of employees completed them. Soon afterward, managers received reports with numerical scores and individual comments—feedback they were urged to share with their teams. (See the exhibit “One Manager’s Feedback” for a representative sample.) The reports explicitly tied individuals’ scores to the eight behaviors, included links to more information about best practices, and suggested actions each manager could take to improve. Someone with, say, unfavorable scores in coaching might get a recommendation to take a class on how to deliver personalized, balanced feedback.

People ops designed the training to be hands-on and immediately useful. In “vision” classes, for example, participants practiced writing vision statements for their departments or teams and bringing the ideas to life with compelling stories. In 2011, Google added Start Right, a two-hour workshop for new managers, and Manager Flagship courses on popular topics such as managing change, which were offered in three two-day modules over six months. “We have a team of instructors,” says people-development manager Kathrin O’Sullivan, “and we are piloting online Google Hangout classes so managers from around the world can participate.”

Managers have expressed few concerns about signing up for the courses and going public with the changes they need to make. Eric Clayberg, for one, has found his training invaluable. A seasoned software-engineering manager and serial entrepreneur, Clayberg had led teams for 18 years before Google bought his latest start-up. But he feels he learned more about management in six months of Oxygen surveys and people ops courses than in the previous two decades. “For instance,” he says, “I was worried about the flat organizational structure at Google; I knew it would be hard to help people on my team get promoted. I learned in the classes about how to provide career development beyond promotions. I now spend a third to half my time looking for ways to help my team members grow.” And to his surprise, his reports have welcomed his advice. “Engineers hate being micromanaged on the technical side,” he observes, “but they love being closely managed on the career side.”

Improving Management at Google: An Audio Interview

Harvard Business School professor David Garvin interviews Google software-engineering manager Eric Clayberg, a winner of the company’s Great Manager Award. They discuss how Clayberg and others at Google have benefitted from Project Oxygen, an internal research initiative that has evolved into a comprehensive management-feedback and -training program.

Download this podcast

To complement the training, the development team sets up panel discussions featuring high-scoring managers from each function. That way, employees get advice from colleagues they respect, not just from HR. People ops also sends new managers automated e-mail reminders with tips on how to succeed at Google, links to relevant Oxygen findings, and information about courses they haven’t taken.

And Google rewards the behaviors it’s working so hard to promote. The company has revamped its selection criteria for the Great Manager Award to reflect the eight Oxygen behaviors. Employees refer to the behaviors and cite specific examples when submitting nominations. Clayberg has received the award, and he believes it was largely because of the skills he acquired through his Oxygen training. The prize includes a weeklong trip to a destination such as Hawaii, where winners get to spend time with senior executives. Recipients go places in the company, too. “In the last round of promotions to vice president,” Laszlo Bock says, “10% of the directors promoted were winners of the Great Manager Award.”

Measuring Results

The people ops team has analyzed Oxygen’s impact by examining aggregate survey data and qualitative input from individuals. From 2010 through 2012, UFS and TMS median favorability scores rose from 83% to 88%. The lowest-scoring managers improved the most, particularly in the areas of coaching and career development. The improvements were consistent across functions, survey categories, management levels, spans of control, and geographic regions.

In an environment of top achievers, people take low scores seriously. Consider vice president Sebastien Marotte, who came to Google in 2011 from a senior sales role at Oracle. During his first six months at Google, Marotte focused on meeting his sales numbers (and did so successfully) while managing a global team of 150 people. Then he received his first UFS scores, which came as a shock. “I asked myself, ‘Am I right for this company? Should I go back to Oracle?’ There seemed to be a disconnect,” he says, “because my manager had rated me favorably in my first performance review, yet my UFS scores were terrible.” Then, with help from a people ops colleague, Marotte took a step back and thought about what changes he could make. He recalls, “We went through all the comments and came up with a plan. I fixed how I communicated with my team and provided more visibility on our long-term strategy. Within two survey cycles, I raised my favorability ratings from 46% to 86%. It’s been tough but very rewarding. I came here as a senior sales guy, but now I feel like a general manager.”

Overall, other managers took the feedback as constructively as Marotte did—and were especially grateful for its specificity. Here’s what Stephanie Davis, director of large-company sales and another winner of the Great Manager Award, says she learned from her first feedback report: “I was surprised that one person on my team didn’t think I had regularly scheduled one-on-one meetings. I saw this person every day, but the survey helped me realize that just seeing this person was different from having regularly scheduled individual meetings. My team also wanted me to spend more time sharing my vision. Personally, I have always been inspired by Eric [Schmidt], Larry, and Sergey; I thought my team was also getting a sense of the company’s vision from them. But this survey gave my team the opportunity to explain that they wanted me to interpret the higher-level vision for them. So I started listening to the company’s earnings call with a different ear. I didn’t just come back to my team with what was said; I also shared what it meant for them.”

Chris Loux, head of global enterprise renewals, remembers feeling frustrated with his low UFS scores. “I had received a performance review indicating that I was exceeding expectations,” he says, “yet one of my direct reports said on the UFS that he would not recommend me as a manager. That struck me, because people don’t quit companies—they quit managers.” At the same time, Loux struggled with the question of just how much to push the lower performers on his team. “It’s hard to give negative feedback to a type-A person who has never received bad feedback in his or her life,” he explains. “If someone gets 95% favorable on the UFS, I wonder if that manager is avoiding problems by not having tough conversations with reports on how they can get better.”

Loux isn’t the only Google executive to speculate about the connection between employees’ performance reviews and their managers’ feedback scores. That question came up multiple times during Oxygen’s rollout. To address it, the people analytics group fell back on a time-tested technique—going back to the data and conducting a formal analysis to determine whether a manager who gave someone a negative performance review would then receive a low feedback rating from that employee. After looking at two quarters’ worth of survey data from 2011, the group found that changes in employee performance ratings (both upward and downward) accounted for less than 1% of variability in corresponding manager ratings across all functions at Google.

“Managing to the test” doesn’t appear to be a big risk, either. Because the eight behaviors are rooted in action, it’s difficult for managers to fake them in pursuit of higher ratings. In the surveys, employees don’t assess their managers’ motivations, values, or beliefs; rather, they evaluate the extent to which their managers demonstrate each behavior. Either the manager has acted in the ways recommended—consistently and credibly—or she has not. There is very little room for grandstanding or dissembling.

This article also appears in:

HBR’s 10 Must Reads 2015

“We are not trying to change the nature of people who work at Google,” says Bock. “That would be presumptuous and dangerous. Instead, we are saying, ‘Here are a few things that will lead you to be perceived as a better manager.’ Our managers may not completely believe in the suggestions, but after they act on them and get better UFS and TMS scores, they may eventually internalize the behavior.”

Project Oxygen does have its limits. A commitment to managerial excellence can be hard to maintain over the long haul. One threat to sustainability is “evaluation overload.” The UFS and the TMS depend on employees’ goodwill. Googlers voluntarily respond on a semiannual basis, but they’re asked to complete many other surveys as well. What if they decide that they’re tired of filling out surveys? Will response rates bottom out? Sustainability also depends on the continued effectiveness of managers who excel at the eight behaviors, as well as those behaviors’ relevance to senior executive positions. A disproportionate number of recently promoted vice presidents had won the Great Manager Award, a reflection of how well they’d followed Oxygen’s guidelines. But what if other behaviors—those associated with leadership skills—matter more in senior positions?

Further, while survey scores gauge employees’ satisfaction and perceptions of the work environment, it’s unclear exactly what impact those intangibles have on such bottom-line measures as sales, productivity, and profitability. (Even for Google’s high-powered statisticians, those causal relationships are difficult to establish.) And if the eight behaviors do actually benefit organizational performance, they still might not give Google a lasting edge. Companies with similar competitive profiles—high-tech firms, for example, that are equally data-driven—can mimic Google’s approach, since the eight behaviors aren’t proprietary.

Because the eight behaviors are rooted in action, it’s difficult for managers to fake them.

Still, Project Oxygen has accomplished what it set out to do: It not only convinced its skeptical audience of Googlers that managers mattered but also identified, described, and institutionalized their most essential behaviors. Oxygen applied the concept of data-driven continuous improvement directly—and successfully—to the soft skills of management. Widespread adoption has had a significant impact on how employees perceive life at Google—particularly on how they rate the degree of collaboration, the transparency of performance evaluations, and their groups’ commitment to innovation and risk taking. At a company like Google, where the staff consists almost entirely of “A” players, managers have a complex, demanding role to play. They must go beyond overseeing the day-to-day work and support their employees’ personal needs, development, and career planning. That means providing smart, steady feedback to guide people to greater levels of achievement—but intervening judiciously and with a light touch, since high-performing knowledge workers place a premium on autonomy. It’s a delicate balancing act to keep employees happy and motivated through enthusiastic cheerleading while helping them grow through stretch assignments and carefully modulated feedback. When the process works well, it can yield extraordinary results.

That’s why Prasad Setty wants to keep building on Oxygen’s findings about effective management practice. “We will have to start thinking about what else drives people to go from good to great,” he says. His team has begun analyzing managers’ assessment scores by personality type, looking for patterns. “With Project Oxygen, we didn’t have these endogenous variables available to us,” he adds. “Now we can start to tease them out, using more of an ethnographic approach. It’s really about observations—staying with people and studying their interactions. We’re not going to have the capacity to follow tons of people, but what we’ll lose in terms of numbers, we’ll gain in a deeper understanding of what managers and their teams experience.”

That, in a nutshell, is the principle at the heart of Google’s approach: deploying disciplined data collection and rigorous analysis—the tools of science—to uncover deeper insights into the art and craft of management.

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Google Case Study: SWOT Analysis

Looking for a case study on Google? The essay below focuses on SWOT analysis of Google’s strategic management. Get inspired to make your own case study of Google company with us!

Google Case Study: Defining the Issue

Google business strategy analysis, swot analysis of google company, google case study: solution & recommendations.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin created Google in 1998 during their college days at Stanford University. Over the last one decade, Google has grown into a globally acknowledged market force for its service provision, business model, efforts in development of technology, and human life influence.

Since inception of internet and development of information technology, Google’s record is impressive in the way it has charmed people regardless of their ethnic, religious, and political affiliations.

The company has also reached out to different social and economic classes across the world through its numerous products.

Google identifies among the leading search engines available in the world market. Its reliability in terms of matching results and simple design of their website has attracted a respectable fraction of global population, which is increasingly warming up to the contemporary world of internet.

Some of the main competitors of Google are Yahoo, Amazon, MSN and Bing. Google has managed to fight off competition from these companies to command close to 85% of internet searches.

In 2005, Google’s search engine was the best performing product from the company ahead of email services. Other products by Google include Google profiles, Google maps, Google talk, Google gadgets and Google trends.

This essay will analyze Google’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. It will also identify and discuss Google’s business strategy and organizational culture.

Google has demonstrated how fast a business can grow if it develops an effective operational strategy, and an inclusive corporate culture. In 2000, a company that started with two individuals grew fast to include a workforce of 60 workers.

Google has a business strategy that aims to help penetrate major global economies by providing products and services that meet primary needs of their customers. Google provides its services in America, Europe, Asia, and other parts of the world through ten other languages apart from English.

Google’s corporate values and business strategy help to promote innovation within its workforce, thus the company’s rapid growth.

Through innovations such as Google toolbar browser, keyword-targeted advertising, and expansion of search capabilities to include 28 languages, the company earned a annual revenue of $86 million for the 2001 fiscal year.

This figure was very high compared to their annual revenue of $220,000 two years earlier.

The company’s Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer, Eric Schmidt was definitely doing his job effectively. He managed to build a corporate culture for Google, which has made it a striking, favorable, fitting, and exquisite place to work.

It promotes cultural and talent diversity in its workforce. It also nurtures a spirit of togetherness among workers.

The inclusive nature of the work environment at Google motivates employees towards achieving organizational goals, as they develop a certain level of attachment to activities and processes within the company.

Google has developed its business model along this culture, thus the reason it stands out from its competitors. The focus of their business model is to improve access to information by providing quality, reliable and effective means of doing so.

This is a management tool used by organizations to make decisions through assessment of organizational structure and corporate culture. It entails identifying internal strengths and weaknesses of an organization, as well as external opportunities and threats.

The cardinal focus of applying SWOT analysis in an organization is to build on strengths, do away with weaknesses, take hold of available opportunities, and respond to possible threats.

Google has several internal strengths and weaknesses, as well as opportunities and threats from the external environment.

A strength that has enhanced Google’s fast growth is an effective market strategy. The market strategy applied by Google entails innovation, a large portfolio of products, broad market coverage, and effective marketing.

Google has created a global customer base covering various types of customers of varied age, social and economic class, as well as political and religious affiliations.

The second strength is good human resource planning and management strategies. Google has demonstrated strong ability to create a cohesive and inclusive work environment that helps maintain high employee morale.

They have effective employee motivation and retention strategies that include good remuneration packages and workplace benefits.

The third strength is effective change management strategies. Innovation creates need for regular change implementation at Google, and it has effectively managed to introduce without compromising its corporate culture.

Other notable strengths of Google include effective leadership and management strategies, financial stability, customer goodwill, and a strong corporate culture.

The first weakness is poor recruitment strategies. The human resource department at Google receives numerous applications from potential employees from various parts of the world.

Google ignores these applications because its owners prefer to hire graduates from Stanford University, their alma mater.

This strategy locks out very qualified and competent individuals who could bring a new dimension into Google’s way of conducting business.

The second weakness is poor implementation of employee retention strategies. Although the company has developed strategies for reducing employee turnover, poor implementation has forced some top managers to leave and join their competitors.

When employees leave and join a competitor, the competitor most likely counters their efforts in the market.

The third weakness is unreliable partnerships. Google formed numerous partnerships with many companies in a bid to increase its market share. Some of these partnerships failed to fulfill their desired potential, leading to poor management of some portfolios.

Opportunities

The outside environment offers Google numerous opportunities that can be exploited to improve stability in the market.

The first opportunity is to integrate its services with computer software in order to attract more users. This means that Google can form partnerships with computer software developers like Microsoft to have their products integrated during production.

Google plans to launch an operating system called chrome that will enable it compete effectively with companies such as Microsoft.

Although it will be challenging to convince people to try out a new operating system for their personal computers, Google can look up to its operating system for smart phones that has been a huge success. This will motivate them to go ahead with the launch.

The operating system is cost effective, reliable and its usability suits needs of many internet users. This is an opportunity Google can exploit and stamp its control of the internet service market.

Other opportunities include expansion of global market presence, integration of research and development skill in its activities, as well as development of new business partnerships for growth of its brand.

The first threat is Google’s inability to provide enough motivation to part time employees who work on various projects. Many of these employees do not receive allowances and this might derail their human resource development strategies.

The second threat is court battles instigated by its major competitors. Yahoo, Amazon, and Microsoft among other companies have filed a case to stop Google from digitizing and getting exclusive rights for the concept of online advertising.

The third threat faced by Google is the dynamic nature of competition in the industry. There is need for increased innovation to ensure that the company does not lose its market leadership to emerging competitors.

Google needs to apply certain approaches to ensure that it makes the best out of its strengths, do away with weaknesses, seize available opportunities, and eliminate all threats from the external environment.

The first recommendation is need for Google to further reflect on its mission statement and develop it. It is important for Google to know that all their competitors are seeking to provide the best services on the market. Thus, it needs to rethink how it can maintain its market leadership.

The second recommendation is that Google needs to reorient its organizational structure and culture to promote development of its brand. Google needs to develop effective strategies for change management, which is an effective tool for organizational success.

Thirdly, Google needs to revise its recruitment strategy to include graduates from other institutions who can provide an extra dimension to its organizational development.

Google currently applies a strategy that its founders started, of picking their employees from Stanford University, as they believe its graduates have the essential competencies.

Maintaining market leadership is a function of human resource management that involves applying effective recruitment strategies.

Employee recruitment entails developing an attractive remuneration and benefits package for all workers. This helps to reduce employee turnover because they will be satisfied and motivated to work.

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IvyPanda. (2019, July 5). Google Case Study: SWOT Analysis. https://ivypanda.com/essays/google-case-study-analysis/

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IvyPanda . 2019. "Google Case Study: SWOT Analysis." July 5, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/google-case-study-analysis/.

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