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Aside Introduction to Google Case Study:

Questions one (1) and two (2) are couched within the HR operation activities, specifically HR activities of Google Inc., considered to be a highly successful HR management company in the world today CITATION FGB17 l 1033 (FGBT, 2017). Google was initially started in 1996 by two Ph.D. graduate students in computer science at Stanford University, Larry Paige, and Sergey Brin CITATION Bel20 l 1033 (Bellis, 2020). The story of Google is quite interesting from a litany of business and personnel development perspectives. Googles success with its HR strategy of attracting the best of the “bright-creatives” has significantly contributed to making a businesslike Google, and now it’s offshoot Alphabet Inc., the incredibly successful company it is throughout the world today.

The name Google was inspired by the name, “googame”. This is the numeric name for 1 with 100 zeros, and found in the book of mathematics, “Mathematics and the Imagination”, by Edward Kasner and James Newman. According to the founders, the name would ultimately represent the inordinate quantity of information and data a search would ultimately be sorting through CITATION Bel20 l 1033 (Bellis, 2020).

Page and Brin went on to collaborate on a number of research projects giving rise to projects with names like called Backrub, where backlink analytics was introduced. They also produced a search software called PageRank that was highly received by the tech industry. There were other tech projects being carried on by Page and Brin which all led to the development of their Google search engine.

Google was initially begun as a project on a shoestring budget, which the developers worked on in their dorm rooms at the time. They ultimately built a low cost network server utilizing borrowed computers CITATION Bel20 l 1033 (Bellis, 2020).

Google worked feverishly and furiously gathering extremely bright and talented young computer and information systems people amongst the Stanford and other graduate computer science people from other universities to provide additional brain and creativity power in the ongoing development of what was soon to become Google. Inc.

Brin and Paige’s genius strategy of bringing onboard smart and creative people who fit the “think outside the box” culture of the two founders helped turn the Google search engine into a raging hot commodity. It didn’t take long after that for Sun Microsystems co-founder, Andy Bechtolsheim to quickly write a check for $100,0000 immediately after watching the google demo CITATION Bel20 l 1033 (Bellis, 2020). Google incorporated on September 4, 1998. Brin and Paige raised an additional $900, 000 and brought on an additional angel investor, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos CITATION Bel20 l 1033 (Bellis, 2020).

The aside introduction to Google Inc. is important as it reflects the level of intelligence and creativity that led to the rise and international success of Google Inc. and Alphabet Inc. Google restructured its personnel and divisions in 2015, and named the newly restructured company Alphabet. Today Alphabet is ranked is ranked among the top 10 companies in the world today for its value and influence in the industry. Google’s HR department and processes are considered one of the most advanced, effective, and successful HR divisions in the world.

Now on to the discussion questions.

Question 1

If Google continues utilizing personal traits as a basis for candidate screening, then this approach must have been proven successful or Google would not use it. Google thinks out the entire hiring and personnel development process on a level most companies would never be able to comprehend or carry out. Google has thought out every aspect of utilizing personal traits including the legal ramifications to the tiniest degree CITATION Hon19 l 1033 (Honem De Melo, 2019).

Brin and Page being two incredibly bright computer scientists, started their company based on their personal beliefs that technologists themselves are best suited for understanding and developing future technology. This resulted in Brin and Paige developing its hiring algorithms to prioritize computer science majors who were amongst the top students from the best science and tech focused universities CITATION Str17 l 1033 (Strauss, 2017).

By 2013 Google had amassed a significant amount of employee personnel data. It then decided to test the initial hiring hypothesis of its two founders by grinding, crunching, and comprehensively analyzing the entire employment process. This included the hiring, firing, evaluating, promoting, etc., since Goggle’s inception in 1998. This highly complex analysis on the personal traits and qualities of Google’s employees was named Project Oxygen CITATION FGB17 l 1033 (FGBT, 2017). The results of Project Oxygen gave Google the green light to utilize personal traits in selecting their highly successful future “Googlers”. Project Oxygen was conducted because Google needed to reassess their hiring processes and candidate traits filters. The results from Project Oxygen came as a huge awakening to everyone involved.

The scientific results led to the conclusion that expertise in STEM (science, tech, engineering, mathematics) was at the bottom of the most important eight qualities of Google’s best people. Project Oxygen revealed the top seven attributes of success at Google are the soft skills. These are skills considered to be personal traits and qualities, including: effectively communicating, listening, and coaching while embracing different points of view and values. However, it did not stop there. Connecting the dots between complex ideas all while showing empathy towards and support of one’s colleagues is just as crucial as being a critical thinker and problem solver CITATION Sam16 l 1033 (Samsung, 2016).

Google has been using their personal traits study in their hiring practices for some time now. Google’s most basic premise is to hire “Smart-Creatives” whose personal traits bode those qualities mentioned in the previous paragraph. They have also incorporated personality psychometric testing to identify both the ideal personalities that will fit and elevate Google’s corporate culture and identify those personality traits that may grate against Google’s culture. Google has a superior employee development philosophy and thus the knowledge they gain from employee psychometric testing is used by HR to also help the employees grow and embrace Google culture, and as well help Google management decide where best to assign a newly hired “smart-creative” employee who may need some “personality guidance” CITATION FGB17 l 1033 (FGBT, 2017).

It should be noted that Google is highly aware of Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) and equal rights laws. As a result, Google is very precise when gathering and utilizing current employee personal traits. The traits and procedures Google utilize in its hiring and performance evaluations are well proven in the scientifically conducted studies Google has conducted in its own HR Research & Development (R&D), and its utilization of other research. Google stays with strongly proven, highly successful and acceptable HR methods with respect to Google’s hiring and promotion processes.

It is well known amongst the top corporations and their executive leadership that Google is among the most developed, and highly effective HR divisions . Google refers to them as the “People Operations” divisions. It has become clear by such books like, “Work Rules”, written by Google’s SVP of People Operations, and “How Google Works”, by Eric Schmidt, and its former CEO Bock Laszlo, and Jonathan Rosenberg, current SVP of Product, that Google continuously evaluates talent from its more than 130,300 “smart creatives”, employees in the engineering, design, and sales fields, and who are many times selected from universities across the world CITATION Mac21 l 1033 (Macrotrends, 2021). Google just might know what it is doing with respect to its performance reviews, employee candidate screening, and the use of personal traits in its continued amassment of 10’s of thousands of highly educated, highly motivated, highly creative Googlers who all contribute to make what is now called Alphabet (GOOGL) a top international company today.

Google has an extraordinarily impressive “Google’s People & Innovation Lab”, or what they refer to as, PiLab. This is made up of a team or group of quants whose focus is on employee’s personal traits (performance, happiness, engagement, etc.), and who continually analyze and test across Google’s employee spectrum. These research activities are ongoing 24/7 in support of Google’s personnel activities and utilization of deep data analysies.

Question 2

The value of a company’s benefits cannot be underestimated in its importance for attracting the best employees. Edward L Deci, Professor of Psychology, University of Rochester, proposes the impact of two groups of motivational factors on achieving goals. Desi’s study indicates that using external rewards such as money, can lower employee motivation CITATION Imp21 l 1033 (Impraise, 2021). Another way to present this finding is that other employer-employee relationships or employee engagement factors, and resultant employee support benefits must be more significant in regard to employee or employee team motivation

Tech is a becoming increasingly a crowded industry. YouGov, an internet-based marketing research company, studied 1,400 brands via a poll of 18–34-year-old millennials to discern the top ten brands they would be excited to work for. Not surprisingly, tech companies dominated the list CITATION Swo19 l 1033 (Swope, 2019). In fact, Google was number 3 in a YouGov survey of the Singapore workforce CITATION Swo19 l 1033 (Swope, 2019). The point being is that Google operates at the top of a world’s tech industry stage. Its ability to attract the best of the “smart-creatives” is the key to this success, and its benefits are a major attraction, and significant factor in Google’s ability to attract the best of the “smart-creatives” crowd.

Tech is an industry where more firms are entering every day. As a result, there is a big battle that has emerged in full swing to attract employees from a diminishing pool of bright millennials. The battle for bright millennials is further exacerbated by companies hiring away the best talent from other companies daily. It obviously behooves Google to continue to outbid their competitors with every possible resource at their disposal. Google has been hugely successful in hiring their “smart-creatives” because Google has found their Google “people” perks are a powerful and motivating tool to attract, hire, and retain their talented pool of professionals or what they refer to as “Googlers”.

Google must strive to attract the best, brightest and most creative minds to maintain its standing at the top of the tech industry ladder. Google must attract the best recruits as it strives to continually improve the capabilities, scale, and scope of the fastest, most reliable, and in fact the most efficient search engine on the web. In order to achieve and maintain its place at the top of technology, Google employs the best possible employees who have proved themselves the best in their respective technological fields.

Other tech industry companies are also competing to attract the best and brightest minds as well. It has been shown that to attract and retain these highly capable employees a company must offer more than just great salaries alone. Google has been hugely successful in growing their highly skilled and multi-talented work force by providing their employees with flexible work schedules, a relaxing & motivating environment at work, and a litany of other comfort perks to help p Googlers feel comfortable and creative at their Google “home”. This strategy has motivated Google’s employees to contribute their best to the company and encourages long term employee retention as well.

Other additional physical facilities Google provides are to ensure their “Googlers” have a balanced work-social life, healthy physical life, and creative “whole life”. Google provides the surroundings in their work environs that encourage these dynamics within their employee teams. It is quite common to see various indoor activities like table tennis, fuzzball, pinball, swimming pool etc., at the Google buildings. This means the employees don’t have to look entirely outside the Google culture for maintaining a healthy work-life balance in their lives.

As mentioned previously, Google is competing in a very competitive market (Microsoft, Yahoo, IBM, Amazon, Alibaba, Tesla, etc.) and don’t want to lose their employees to competing tech companies, but rather retain and continue to develop them. Therefore, it is highly justified and in fact necessary for Google to provide the support and services, financial benefits. This includes the “whole life” perks that also help the employees work within an reasonable work-life balance. All the big tech companies typically offer highly competitive wages, so It cannot be understated that Google’s non-salary benefits sets Google apart from its competitors and makes Google attractive to a big number of upper management applicants as well as their employees.

Google strives to recruit and employ the brightest and most creative minds, and professionals who have proven themselves to be amongst the best in their respective technological fields. Google has found that by providing their highly creative and brilliant professionals a flexible work schedule, a relaxing in-house work environment, and a growing array of additional “whole-life” perks, their team of top-quality professionals remains highly motivated. It is the motivation Googles needs for their Googlers to continually contribute their best to the company, and it encourages the high degree of creativity found throughout the Google work environs. Google’s strategy has set them apart from their competitors and makes it highly attractive to both employees and applicants. Google’s history of providing one of the industry’s best work environ demonstrates its total commitment to its personnel, and explains Googles top placement in the “Great Place to Work” list in 2013 and 2014. Google has consistently been in the top 5 in the subsequent years as well. There are other important factors in Google’s success story such as Google’s well researched, and judiciously developed performance management system.

Question 3

The book titled, “How Google Works”, written in 2014 by Google Executive Chairman and ex-CEO Eric Schmidt and former Senior Vice President of Products Jonathan Rosenberg provides a captivating read on Google’s operations. The book about how Google operates its organization provides incredibly firsthand insights into Google’s overall corporate culture, industry strategy, manages it’s talent, decision-making processes, innovation directives, communication platforms, and processes for instances of disruption.

The book authors acknowledge the significant role technology now has in the defining and shaping almost every business sector. Technology’s influence has motivated huge, significant changes throughout a litany of businesses. This has occurred to the extent that the word ‘disruption’ is now a common phrase within many industries and multitudes of companies. These disruptive, unstable, and dynamic conditions and flux in the world of work has led to the coining of a new set of professionals, referred to as “Smart Creatives”, and as purported by Schmidt.. “Smart Creatives” are defined as follows according to the authors:

They are focused, output drive professionals with great creativity and who seamlessly bridge their technical and business expertise in driving valuable output. .

These professionals cannot be taken in by the usual motivators such as pay, and bonuses.

They are highly connected to, and strongly care for their workplace, and the projects they work on.

These are professionals who typically work outside of formal business plans and inflexible schedules.

The ability to hire smart creatives is singular skill that has given rise to own industry. Authors purport that the creation of great products and sound ideas based on technically unique insights is a first step. In addition, maintain string focus on growth rather than revenues and monitoring industry competition are all requisite to maintaining a profitable, original ventures that attract smart creatives.

The biggest challenge however, is retaining those smart creatives after they are hired. High salaries do not fully motivate smart creatives, and they are known to resign from a company or job that is not increasing value to their professional and personal growth. Google maintains its personnel by providing an uniquely engaging workplace culture and a highly developed and proven performance management system.

There are many ways to recruit the best and brightest people. Every company shares that hiring objective of attracting the best and brightest to its company. It starts with a company HR marketing program to make the company and brand known and be viewed desirably by people within the “best and brightest” populations or communities of potential new recruits. Google uses it’s “Crowd Sourcing” collaboratively together in recruiting new candidates and hiring them into the Google corporate family. The use of an ATS-Applicant Tracking System has proven quite successful and is an ideal means of matching the information between applicants and the company’s current population of the brightest and best people. This is referred to as “cross-pollination” at Google and is a proven winner for attracting the best and brightest

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