Googling for a Gig

A recruiter at the Internet company whose name is synonymous with search says that working there isn't the same as surfing there—even if you can do both in flip-flops

With fun perks like free lunches, on-site massage, and weekly roller hockey games, it's no wonder that Google (GOOG) is high on the list of where college grads want to work. After all, the company was launched from a Stanford University dorm room, and Staffing Programs Director Judy Gilbert says working at Google is still a lot like being at a college campus.

While most of the Internet company's undergraduate hires are in technical fields like software engineering, she says Google is also hiring top-notch candidates for positions in sales and marketing. She spoke with BusinessWeek.com reporter Kerry Miller about what it's really like inside the Googleplex and revealed the one answer students shouldn't give when interviewers ask, "Why are you interested in Google?"

Google ranked No. 2 in this year's Universum Survey of where college grads most want to work and fourth among undergrad business majors (see BusinessWeek.com, 6/4/06, "They Love it Here and Here and Here")

Certainly, we have a very visible brand, as a company as well as an employer, and I think it's very difficult to separate those. But, at the end of the day, we don't know quite what drives it. We're just flattered to be near the top of the list. We like being popular.

And does that make it easier to find good talent, or does it actually make it harder—since you have so many people clamoring to get your attention?

It's a good problem to have, but there is a little bit of both. We're very selective about the people that we hire. It's very important to us to find the right match. There are some very smart people who are enormously capable, but for various reasons, they're not likely to be very happy or successful at Google. Part of what we try to do throughout our hiring process is to spot that, so that candidates can get to know us and understand what it would actually be like to work at this place vs. what it's like to experience Google as a user or as a customer. But we're more than happy to wade through piles of résumés and applicants if they're coming to us.

How fierce is the competition?

For most of the positions for which we would hire entry-level people, we're not looking to fill a particular number of chairs. It's not like there's one position that's up for grabs and we're going to look at five candidates and pick the one we like best. We want to try to hire everybody that we find who we think would be a good fit for that position and successful, long-term, in this company. It's one of the things that's hardest to talk to students about because there is this sense that the guy who goes in to interview right after is someone you're competing with, and that's really not the way we think about it here.

What types of jobs are open to undergraduate business majors?

Most of the undergrad hiring that we do is for software engineering positions, so it's technical. But there are positions available for people who do not have a technical background and who are interested in the business side of things. The biggest groups into which we hire business-oriented undergrads are in our online sales and operations world. So these folks come in and they support our products like AdWords and AdSense, and they learn the tools inside and out. They work in small teams, and they interact with customers and prospective customers.

What's the career path like for a new hire in online sales?

A new hire would start as a coordinator, and they move up from there. They're given progressively more responsibility as they demonstrate that they can handle it. And many of the people who come up through that program move into roles where they are managing teams that are not just a batch of grads within two or three years. There's a very structured training program, with clear objectives that you hit at different points in your career, and there's a fairly well-established promotion track.