Adam Bryant of The New York Times interviewed Lazlo Bock, the senior vice president of people operations at Google, in June 2013 about what he looks for in applicants. What Bryant learned might surprise you. For those of you new college graduates, it wasn’t where you went to school or what your GPA was. In fact, 14 percent of Google's teams are made up of people with no college education. Before students cancel their Fall schedule, Bock is very clear that there are a clear set of skills that Google is looking for. I have said for a number of years that a college education teaches someone critical thinking. That’s it. The English Lit class or Abnormal Psych course is not going to get you the offer at Google.
Google says that it will assess for technical skills if the job is technical, and 50 percent of its jobs are technical. I tell people that technical skills alone are a red herring. I tell people that in many instances, someone gets hired for technical skills and gets fired due to a lack of behavioral skills. So up to this point Bock and I agree. If you are hiring for a technical job like coding, the candidate needs to be able to code. So, if we have done our assessment of our candidates and everyone successfully demonstrated the ability to code, now what? This is where in my work I begin to assess for behavioral skills. So does Google.
Bock says that Google looks at five attributes. I call them behavioral competencies. Google’s list is:
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