Thus, the old pre-reqs are out: GPAs, transcripts, SATS. In fact, Google is beginning to disregard academic educations altogether: they're just not a good predictor of success at the company. Says Bock, "After two or three years, your ability to perform at Google is completely unrelated to how you performed when you were in school, because the skills you required in college are very different. You’re also fundamentally a different person. You learn and grow, you think about things differently."
According to the Times, Google is putting its money where its mouth is: they've actually increased their hires with no college education—14% of some of its teams have never been to school, according to Bock.
Instead, the emphasis is on hiring candidates who are leaders, and work well in teams. The only way to discover this, says Bock, is through "structured" behavior interviews that assess how a person makes decisions. The winning interviewees will be able to demonstrate that they are "consistent and fair in how [they] think about making decisions and that there’s an element of predictability." This is key to building trust among team members once hired, he explains. "If a leader is consistent, people on their teams experience tremendous freedom, because then they know that within certain parameters, they can do whatever they want. If your manager is all over the place, you’re never going to know what you can do, and you’re going to experience it as very restrictive."
"How to Get Started Make sure you already have a Google+ account (and optionally a company page), then follow these steps. Install (or make sure you have installed) the Google Talk plugin. Follow all of the instructions to install the plugin. Then login to your Google+ account (see image for placement of steps): Click the link to "Start your own hangout" in the right column. Check in the top right corner and select the personal account or company page you want to use to host this hangout. If you have multiple cameras and microphones connected to your computer, make sure you select the one you prefer to use first. Invite an entire circle, individuals or select Public. The interface to start a hangout has a clean, simple design. Here some tips for successful hangouts: Give yourself time to practice. I'm part of a group of women on Google+ who routinely test out new features privately before we open up public hangouts. Create the list of people you want to invite by putting them all in a circle. Then just invite the circle. Create any documents you are going to share ahead of time in Google Docs to easily add them to the hangout."
