Dive Brief:
- Companies are way too concerned with where job applicants went to college and other insignificant success factors, according to Google’s top human resources executive, Laszlo Bock.
- Bock says what they should be focused on instead is "curiosity, leadership ability, culture fit, and lastly, whether people can actually do the job."
- Google used to consider where applicants went to school but after looking at the data, Forbes resports, Bock and his team found was that there was no relationship between where employees went to school and how those people actually performed in their jobs.
Dive Insight:
Speaking to a group of of business leaders, academics and public servants at the Forbes Reinventing America conference in Detroit on Tuesday, Bock said hiring smarter from the start will save employers money. Curious thinkers will learn on the job and require less training, he added, but too many companies rely on tired interview questions or brain teasers that don’t reveal much about whether a person will actually be motivated on a day-to-day basis. Also, employers can get bogged down by old assumptions and implicit biases.
“That has been one of the keys to our growth, making sure we get the right people in from the beginning,” Bock said at the event. “If you get that right, you hire amazing people, they’ll be fine, and they’ll do amazing things.”