The MBA Route to Google

With work-life balance the top priority for new MBAs, it's perhaps no surprise that Google (GOOG )—well-known for its laid-back culture and fun perks—is high on the list of where MBA grads want to work. Google ranked No. 2 in this year's Universum Communications survey of 5,000 MBA students' most desirable employers, behind only McKinsey & Co.

A career at Google offers MBAs much more stability and longevity than offered at dot-coms past, but staffing programs director Judy Gilbert says Google is still looking for risk-takers—that means having a startup on your résumé is a plus, even if the company went bust.

Recently Gilbert spoke with BusinessWeek.com reporter Kerry Miller about what it's like working for Google and discussed job opportunities for undergrads (see BusinessWeek.com, 7/20/06, "Googling for a Gig").

Miller and Gilbert also spoke about Google's MBA hiring efforts. Here's an excerpt of that conversation:

How stiff is the competition for MBAs who want to come to Google?
This year, we'll probably be hiring between 50 and 100 MBAs, primarily at our headquarters in Mountain View (Calif.) and in New York, as well as our international locations.

Where do you recruit?
We do most of our recruiting at six schools, which would be Stanford, Haas, Harvard, Kellogg, MIT, and Wharton.

We also do individual events at some of the other schools. I know we've done things with the University of Chicago. We've got a lot of alumni from there, and we've hired people out of Tuck and the University of Michigan.

However, we just started a program last year to do MBA-level business-hiring in...

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