Posted on 02/25/2014 8:53:58 AM PST by yoe
Harvard business degree. Top-of-class ranking and a 4.0 GPA is what top companies like Google are looking for in new talent, right?
Not right.
According to Google, the Internet behemoth that snaps up other companies like families buy groceries, the top quality it looks for in job candidates is the ability to learn.
Likewise, the crucial ability to step up and lead when needed – or “just as critically, do you step back and stop leading, do you let someone else?” explains Google Senior Vice President of Operations Laszlo Bock.
[snip] And what quality allows for all of these critical attributes? Believe it or not, “humility.”
In a New York Times interview on “How to get a job at Google,” Bock said, shockingly, that “GPAs are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless. … We found that they don’t predict anything.”
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
Google will not hire one group, middle aged.
Exactly, I am more impressed with someone who had a 3.0 GPA who financed their education by working through college, than someone who lived on loans and got a 4.0.
from the article;
“Bock cites a common error in “successful” people without intellectual humility:
“They, instead, commit the fundamental attribution error, which is if something good happens, it’s because I’m a genius. If something bad happens, it’s because someone’s an idiot or I didn’t get the resources or the market moved. … What we’ve seen is that the people who are the most successful here, who we want to hire, will have a fierce position. They’ll argue like hell. They’ll be zealots about their point of view. But then you say, ‘here’s a new fact,’ and they’ll go, ‘Oh, well, that changes things; you’re right.’”
___________________
I think this is the fundamental reason FR is headed for eventual demise.
Pretty much describes the Obama administration. People with worthless degrees. Or is it worthless people with degrees. I forget.
Google will not hire one group, middle aged.That is not entirely true. I am middle-aged, and their recruiters ping me periodically to see if I am interested in leaving Microsoft to come there.
I would agree that there can be a subtle form of age discrimination at some companies. I have definitely seen it at Microsoft, although the interview system there is designed to try and minimize the ability for one person's bias to exclude (or include) a candidate. People make decisions based on their personal beliefs, right or wrong, and there is no way to ever make that entirely fair (or even to say what "fair" is).
“Exactly, I am more impressed with someone who had a 3.0 GPA who financed their education by working through college, than someone who lived on loans and got a 4.0.”
Are you still impressed when the 3.0 student fails to get into med school and the one with the 4.0 does get in ?
And even if they both get into med school, who do you want to be treating you, the one who borrowed even more in med school so he could devote more time to studies or the one who borrowed less so he could have a small loan but did not learn as much about medicine ?
Within a certain range, he is correct. In comparing two people, one with a math SAT of 800, and one with a score of 750, other factors become more important as to which would be a better hire.
But somehow I doubt he would hire somebody as a research scientist who barely passed getting his degree from Podunk U, and had SAT Math & Verbal scores below 400 each, no matter how great a personality the guy had.
“Pretty much describes the Obama administration. People with worthless degrees. Or is it worthless people with degrees. I forget. “
If I remember my ESPN Sports center commercials, the answer is WORTHLESS PEOPLE WITH DEGREES.
From espn:
kid “this may be a stupid question but...”
Chris Berman “there are no stupid questions, there are only stupid people who ask the questions.”
LOL
This appears to be a change in hiring strategy at Google.
Read a book recently about the early days of the company, and they were very proud that their hiring was based almost entirely on metrics. GPA, SAT, etc.
A stupid strategy, IMO, for exactly the reasons described in the article.
One of my mantras is: Another beautiful hypothesis murdered by a gang of brutal facts.
” I am more impressed with someone who had a 3.0 GPA who financed their education by working through college, than someone who lived on loans and got a 4.0.”
dfw! I’m kind of surprised you’d make such a blanket statement!
My lady friend’s daughter started college at 16, Chemistry and Biomechanical Engineering. Her college cost her nothing! She had scholarships and grants though, not loans. The only costs were to her Mom in taxes, as some of the grants carried some tax liabilities. She even got grants to cover cost of living! Companies targeted her for intense recruitment when she was a Sophomore! Graduated 1st in her class. Summa Cum Laude.
She’s a tremendously hard worker, and loves to learn. Total bookworm!
Would you hire a 3.0 student over her, just because she didn’t have to work to pay her way? Actually, she worked tremendously hard,,,, at learning!
Best,
Bogie
In this respect, Google is right.
Thanks for mentioning that.
As a newly senior developer, ~6-7 years out of school, the hiring managers were disturbed I didn’t have my GPA on my resume. When asked for it, I basically laughed at them and told them I had no clue what it was, which was partially true. I know it sucks, but I don’t know the exact number. I’m surprised they didn’t want to know how I did in Mrs Adam’s 4th grade class.
I wonder if Larry and the other one still review every applicant or if they’ve kicked that process. You’d think that after a recruiter, a first round phone interview, an 5-7 hour on site interview with 5-7 people, and a regional review board would be enough, but I guess not.
There's a huge gap between "it works on paper" and " I can make it work in reality", and many what I call "hyper-educated" people, can't traverse that gap.
As I tell my kids, frequently.....reality wins - every time. The sooner you learn to deal with that, the better.
Variant I like: Perception wins all the battles, reality wins all the wars.
Nothing wrong there, to say that there is is to deny that a person has the right to their own thoughts/actions.
I would agree that there can be a subtle form of age discrimination at some companies. I have definitely seen it at Microsoft, although the interview system there is designed to try and minimize the ability for one person's bias to exclude (or include) a candidate.
I can believe that — I had an interview with Microsoft a while back [about two years], about two years, and there were a decent range of ages in the several people who conducted my interview. (I think the reason they didn't move forward with hiring was that I was pretty vocal in my distrust of cloud-based computing/storage.*)
* — I'm former Army National Guard and was deployed to Katrina, where there was no internet connection for a good while, proof that requiring an internet connection for operational software is a bad idea. Moreover, cloud-based storage presents security problems… as illustrated by the NSA's penetration of various corporations's [cloud] storage networks.
>>”I am more impressed with someone who had a 3.0 GPA who financed their education by working through college, than someone who lived on loans and got a 4.0.”
>
> dfw! I’m kind of surprised you’d make such a blanket statement!
> Would you hire a 3.0 student over her, just because she didn’t have to work to pay her way?
If I may, it seems dfwgator’s point was that the ability to intelligently [self-]finance (and motivate) outweighs the rating-number in real-life.
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