Google CFO Patrick PichetteMichael Falco
Google Inc.'s current search for new talent is so urgent, the company's own chief financial officer is giving a recruitment pitch.
"Please tell Canadians to send their CVs in," said Patrick Pichette, the most senior Canadian employee at Google. "We're not really tied by a quota - anybody who's a great fit, we'll hire them."
The world's most popular search engine has spent considerable effort this year trying to convince talented potential employees that 2011 will be, in Mr. Pichette's words, "the biggest year ever" for hiring at Google. The company announced its expansion plans during last month's quarterly earnings call.
Since Google's biggest hiring year up to now was 2007, when it picked up around 6,000 new employees, some analysts are predicting the company will hire about 6,300 people this year - the equivalent of about 25 per cent of its current 25,000-person work force.
In Canada, that percentage could be even greater. Mr. Pichette said the company increased its Canadian work force - currently about 200 people - by 50 per cent last year, and he expects at least the same increase this year.
The worldwide recruitment push comes just two years after Google announced the first round of layoffs in its history, as online advertising and related revenue sources took a hit during the global recession. The company laid off 100 people in January, 2009; all of the slashed positions were in human resources.
Today, Google has the opposite problem. The tech sector largely led the economic rebound and a host of new, fast-growing competitors such as Facebook and Twitter have made the search for top-quality talent much tougher. Perks that were once rare at other firms, such as free meals and paid time to work on personal projects, have become the norm at some of Google's new rivals.
In response, Google announced a number of measures aimed at attracting new employees and keeping the ones it has from defecting. Late last year, the company announced a $1,000 (U.S.) cash bonus and 10-per-cent raises for all its staff. In the case of specific, high-value talent, Google has also reportedly offered hundreds of thousands of dollars in stock as a way to keep certain employees from moving to competitors, especially Facebook.
Although some investors have voiced concerns about the impact of Google's reinvigorated hiring and retention practices, analysts have tied new hires to increased revenue growth. Credit Suisse analyst Spencer Wang recently found a 94-per-cent correlation over the past five years between Google's net revenue growth and the year-over-year increase in its work force.
"To us, this seems to suggest that Google hires to support top-line growth, which is logical," he said in a note, first reported in The Wall Street Journal. "Said another way, if historical patterns hold, this could be seen as a positive indicator for 2011 revenue growth."
In Canada, Google's hiring spree will likely take place primarily in three cities: Toronto, where the company does much of its sales work; Waterloo, Ont., where its employees work on key products, such as mobile applications; and Montreal, a growing engineering and sales hub.
Perhaps the most significant shift in Google's Canadian hiring strategy is the addition of more program manager positions. Program managers often lead teams working on fast-growing projects, and the company sometimes gives the title to the founders of small startups it purchases. As such, the addition could lead the way for more large-scale Google initiatives to be managed out of Canada.
But the company faces many challenges. Rivals such as Facebook are also expanding their operations, targeting the same talent pool. Indeed, Google expects it will not be able to hire enough people this year to meet its staffing goals (the company's Canadian jobs page currently lists 22 open positions).
For years, Google's hiring process was the stuff of computer-geek legend, as the company became famous for unusually difficult skill-testing questions. In one famous example from its early days, Google took out a billboard ad showing an extremely difficult math equation. Those who solved the equation were eventually directed to the Google hiring website.
Mr. Pichette said the hiring process has been "dramatically streamlined" in the past year, but that applicants should still expect to be quizzed on a broad variety of topics.
"We are an unconventional company," he said. "And we're looking for unconventional people."