Google - Case Study

Google – Case Study
Fortune magazine named Google the best of the 100 best companies to work for, and there is
little doubt why. Among the benefits it offers are free shuttles equipped with Wi-Fi to pick up and
drop off employees from San Francisco Bay Area locations, unlimited sick days, annual all-
expense-paid ski trips, free gourmet meals, five on-site free doctors, $2,000 bonuses for referring
a new hire, free flu shots, a giant lap pool, on-site oil changes, on-site car washes, volleyball
courts, TGIF parties, free on-site washers and dryers (with free detergent), Ping-Pong and
foosball tables, and free famous people lectures. For many people, it’s the gourmet meals and
snacks that make Google stand out.
 For example, human resources director Stacey Sullivan loves the Irish oatmeal with fresh
berries at the company’s Plymouth Rock Cafe, near Google’s “people operations” group. “I
sometimes dream about it,” she says.
 Engineer Jan Fitzpatrick loves the raw bar at Google’s Tapis restaurant, down the road on
the Google campus.
 Then, of course, there are the stock options—each new employee gets about 1,200
options to buy Google shares (recently worth about $480 per share). In fact, dozens of
early Google employees (“Googlers”) are already multimillionaires thanks to Google stock.
 The recession that began back in 2008 did prompt Google and other firms to cut back on
some of these benefits (cafeteria hours are shorter today, for instance), but Google still
pretty much leads the benefits pack.
For their part, Googlers share certain traits. They tend to be brilliant, team oriented (teamwork is
the norm, especially for big projects), and driven. Fortune describes them as people who “almost
universally” see themselves as the most interesting people on the planet, and who are happy-go-
lucky on the outside, but type A—highly intense and goal directed—on the inside. They’re also
super-hardworking (which makes sense, since it’s not unusual for engineers to be in the hallways
at 3 a.m. debating some new mathematical solution to a Google search problem). They’re so
team oriented that when working on projects, it’s not unusual for Google team members to give up
their larger, more spacious offices and to crowd into a small conference room, where they can
“get things done.” Historically, Googlers generally graduate with great grades from the best
universities, including Stanford, Harvard, and MIT. For many years, Google wouldn’t even
consider hiring someone with less than a 3.7 average—while also probing deeply into the why
behind any B grades. Google also doesn’t hire lone wolves, but wants people who work together
and people who also have diverse interests (narrow interests or skills are a turnoff at Google).
Google also wants people with growth potential. The company is expanding so fast that it needs
to hire people who are capable of being promoted five or six times—it’s only, the company says,
by hiring such overqualified people that it can be sure that the employees will be able to keep up
as Google and their own departments expand.
The starting salaries are highly competitive. Experienced engineers start at about $130,000 a year
(plus about 1,200 shares of stock options, as noted), and new MBAs can expect between $80,000
and $120,000 per year (with smaller option grants). Most recently, Google had about 10,000 staff
members, up from its beginnings with just three employees in a rented garage.
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Of course, in a company that’s grown from 3 employees to 10,000 and from zero value to
hundreds of billions of dollars, it may be quibbling to talk about “problems,” but there’s no doubt
that such rapid growth does confront Google’s management, and particularly its “people
operations” group, with some big challenges. Let’s look at these.
For one, Google, as noted earlier, is a 24-hour operation, and with engineers and others
frequently pulling all-nighters to complete their projects, the company needs to provide a package
of services and financial benefits that supports that kind of lifestyle, and that helps its employees
maintain an acceptable work–life balance.
As another challenge, Google’s enormous financial success is a two-edged sword. Although

Google usually wins the recruitment race when it comes to competing for new employees against
competitors like Microsoft or Yahoo!, Google does need some way to stem a rising tide of
retirements. Most Googlers are still in their 20s and 30s, but many have become so wealthy from
their Google stock options that they can afford to retire. One 27-year-old engineer received a
million-dollar founder’s award for her work on the program for searching desktop computers, and
wouldn’t think of leaving “except to start her own company.” Similarly, a former engineering vice
president retired (with his Google stock profits) to pursue his love of astronomy. The engineer who
dreamed up Gmail recently retired (at the age of 30).
Another challenge is that the work involves not only long hours but can also be very tense.
Google is a very numbers-oriented environment. For example, consider a typical weekly Google
user interface design meeting. Marisa Meyer, the company’s vice president of search products
and user experience, runs the meeting, where her employees work out the look and feel of
Google’s products. Seated around a conference table are about a dozen Googlers, tapping on
laptops. During the 2-hour meeting, Meyer needs to evaluate various design proposals, ranging
from minor tweaks to a new product’s entire layout. She’s previously given each presentation an
allotted amount of time, and a large digital clock on the wall ticks off the seconds. The presenters
must quickly present their ideas, but also handle questions such as “what do users do if the tab is
moved from the side of the page to the top?” Furthermore, it’s all about the numbers—no one at
Google would ever say, for instance, “the tab looks better in red”—you need to prove your point.
Presenters must come armed with usability experiment results, showing, for instance, that a
certain percentage preferred red or some other color. While the presenters are answering these
questions as quickly as possible, the digital clock is ticking, and when it hits the allotted time, the
presentation must end, and the next team steps up to present. It is a tough and tense
environment, and Googlers must have done their homework.
Growth can also undermine the “outlaw band that’s changing the world” culture that fostered the
services that made Google famous. Even cofounder Sergi Brin agrees that Google risks
becoming less “zany” as it grows. To paraphrase one of its top managers, the hard part of any
business is keeping that original innovative, small business feel even as the company grows.
Creating the right culture is especially challenging now that Google is truly global. For example,
Google works hard to provide the same financial and service benefits every place it does
business around the world, but it can’t exactly match its benefits in every country because of
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international laws and international taxation issues. Offering the same benefits everywhere is
more important than it might initially appear. All those benefits make life easier for Google staff,
and help them achieve a work–life balance. Achieving the right work–life balance is the
centerpiece of Google’s culture, but this also becomes more challenging as the company grows.
On the one hand, Google does expect all of its employees to work super hard; on the other hand,
it realizes that it needs to help them maintain some sort of balance. As one manager says, Google
acknowledges “that we work hard but that work is not everything.”
Recruitment is another challenge. While Google certainly doesn’t lack applicants, attracting the
right applicants is crucial if Google is to continue to grow successfully. Working at Google requires
a special set of traits, and screening employees is easier if it recruits the right people to begin
with. For instance, Google needs to attract people who are super-bright, love to work, have fun;
can handle the stress, and who also have outside interests and flexibility.
As the company grows internationally, it also faces the considerable challenge of recruiting and
building staff overseas. For example, Google now is introducing a new vertical market–based
structure across Europe to attract more business advertisers to its search engine. (By vertical
market–based structure, Google means focusing on key vertical industry sectors such as travel,
retail, automotive, and technology.) To build these industry groupings abroad from scratch, Google
promoted its former head of its U.S. financial services group to be the vertical markets director for
Europe; he moved there recently. Google is thus looking for heads for each of its vertical industry
groups for all of its key European territories. Each of these vertical market heads will have to
educate their market sectors (retailing, travel, and so on) so Google can attract new advertisers.
Google already has offices across Europe, and its London office had tripled in size to 100 staff in
just two years.
However, one of the biggest challenges Google still faces is gearing up its employee selection
system, given that the company must hire thousands of people per year. When Google started in
business, job candidates typically suffered through a dozen or more in-person interviews, and the
standards were so high that even applicants with years of great work experience often got turned
down if they had just average college grades. But a few years ago, even Google’s cofounders
acknowledged to security analysts that setting such an extraordinarily high bar for hiring was
holding back Google’s expansion. For Google’s first few years, one of the company’s cofounders
interviewed nearly every job candidate before he or she was hired, and even today one of them
still reviews the qualifications of everyone before he or she gets a final offer.
The experience of one candidate illustrates what Google was up against. A 24-year-old was
interviewed for a corporate communications job at Google. Google first made contact with the
candidate in May, and then, after two phone interviews, invited him to headquarters. There he had
separate interviews with about six people and was treated to lunch in a Google cafeteria. They
also had him turn in several “homework” assignments, including a personal statement and a
marketing plan. In August, Google invited the candidate back for a second round, which it said
would involve another four or five interviews. In the meantime, he decided he’d rather work at a
start-up, and accepted another job at a new Web-based instant messaging provider.
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Google’s head of human resources, a former GE executive, says that Google is trying to strike the
right balance between letting Google and the candidate get to know each other while also moving
quickly. To that end, Google administered a survey to all Google’s current employees in an effort
to identify the traits that correlate with success at Google. In the survey, employees responded to
questions relating to about 300 variables, including their performance on standardized tests, how
old they were when they first used a computer, and how many foreign languages they speak. The
Google survey team then went back and compared the answers against the 30 or 40 job
performance factors they keep for each employee. They thereby identified clusters of traits that
Google might better focus on during the hiring process. Google is also moving from the free-form
interviews it used in the past to a more structured process.
Google’s head of human resources has requested an external consulting company come in
and review it practices. Your company was chosen because of its excellent reputation in
providing clients with comprehensive and reflective responses that could be adopted and
implemented by the client. You have been chosen to review Google’s HR practices (case
study and questions), and then provide your responses, recommendations, comments that
will be given directly to Google’s head of human resources.
Please do not delete the questions, just answer each question in the space provided below. All
responses should be comprehensive and through; where examples are requested they must be
relevant to Google and its culture; utilizing the text and other research as applicable. No copying
directly from the text or other sources unless formally cited; all comments must be in the student’s
own words, except those with proper citation.
1. Describe and explain the advantages and disadvantages of correlating personal traits from
Google employees’ answers on the survey to their performance, and then using that as the
basis for screening job candidates. List the advantages and disadvantages then fully explain
your points and provide examples to illustrate those points.
2. Benefits that all organizations pay for its employees obviously represent an enormous
expense. Based on what you know about Google (your research on the company) and on
what you read in the text, how you would defend Google’s expenses of its benefits package to
security analysts who were analyzing Google’s performance; explain fully your rationale of
benefits spending for its employees. Should Google continue to offer those benefits to its
employees or should they ask the employee to pay for some of the benefits or reduce its
benefits? Why or Why not? Provide your recommendations and fully explain.
3. To support its growth and expansion strategy, Google wants (among other traits) people who
are super-bright and who work hard, often round-the-clock, and who are flexible and maintain
a decent work–life balance. List and define five (5) HR policies or practices that you believe
Google has implemented or should implement to support its growth and expansion strategy.
Provide two (2) examples for each of the five (5) policy or practice areas that would contribute
to Google’s growth and expansion strategy.
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4. List and describe the three (3) primary factors that Google must consider as it tries
transferring its culture and reward systems and way of doing business to its operations
abroad. Explain the advantages and disadvantages of a global culture and reward system in
today’s market.
5. Given the values and culture Google cherishes, describe four (4) specific activities you
suggest it pursue during new-employee orientation. Explain your answer and provide
examples to illustrate those activities.
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As another challenge, Google’s enormous financial success is a two-edged sword. Although

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