Google and Alibaba’s Talent Views: No matter how difficult it is to recruit talents, you will never force yourself to settle down!

　　If you go to Google for a job, it takes half a year or even longer from starting to submit your resume to being hired, and you have to attend about 20 interviews before you get the offer.

　　In Chinese technology companies, what I see is that some people change two jobs in half a year. Talent is the most valuable resource for every company. Things are done by people, and businesses with great influence are often created by very few particularly outstanding people.

　　For example, Jonathan Ivey, who just left Apple a while ago, as Apple's chief designer, the products he led to the glory of Apple over the past decade. As soon as the news of Jonathan leaving Apple was announced, Apple's stock price fell by $9 billion.

　　This actually doesn't reflect Jonathan's true value. Because once there are no products as excellent as in the past, Apple will gradually lose its competitiveness in its future development. This is far from measuring $9 billion. Google has invested greatly in treating outstanding talents. In addition to the terrible recruitment process mentioned at the beginning, every Googler involved has to invest 150-500 hours for each talent they recruit.

　　They also counted that in order to recruit 1,000 people, they invested the same time as 125 people full-time time. In order to recruit 5,000 employees, they start from 1-3 million candidates every year.

　　That is to say, only about 0.25% of candidates can get positions, and Harvard University enrollment is 6.1%, which is 25 times more difficult to get into Google than to get into Harvard University. In the book "Redefining the Team", Google Chief Talent Officer Laslow Bock counted the above figures.

　　Many people become particularly sensitive to talents after having the idea of ​​starting a business. Every time they meet new friends, they will pay special attention to the other party’s experience and background.

　　If you meet someone who is particularly outstanding, start to wonder if it is possible to cooperate with this person or even if it is possible to bring it to your own team.

　　If it is not possible for the time being, then keep in touch first, and try every means to make some contact together first, so that you can know the other party’s progress from time to time, and at the same time, in the process, you can feel whether the communication between the other party is smooth, whether the underlying values ​​are consistent, and whether it is reliable to do things. After starting a business, your views on talents will undergo a great change. Before starting a business, talents are highly valued in their professional abilities; after starting a business, their professional abilities are placed very low, and they are not even a key factor in judging a person.

　　In Redefining Team, I saw Google doing something similar to talent, such as Google would like to hire smart and curious talents who don’t necessarily really understand the work they do. Driven by curiosity, it will be particularly easy to be familiar with your work. After starting a business, many founders of startups have discussed their views on recruiting talents. Whether it is Internet companies that receive high financing and rapidly develop, companies that are heavily in assets and have low gross profit in traditional fields, or middle-level managers of giants like Alibaba, they have surprisingly consistent views on recruiting talents: if it is not suitable, don't make do. No matter how difficult it is to recruit talents, don’t force yourself to settle.

　　Laslow, the author of Redefining the Team, said they would rather miss a few amazing employees than try to avoid hiring a poorly performed employee.

　　Small companies (Google was a small company back then) cannot afford to have a person who performed badly. Poorly performing employees and scheming people will bring viral reactions to the entire team. Such consequences require continuous management time to guide or persuade them to withdraw.

　　The bosses were very touched at this point.

　　There is a story where an employee of a company (a key) once had a very good background and very strong ability.

　　However, at work, the leader found that she would deliberately deceive very small things. Later, she found that she had different points of the same thing and each colleague's narration on the same thing, and deliberately guided each colleague to make a one-sided judgment on this matter. After learning more about a number of things, she asked her to leave the company.

　　Later, I found out that before she joined our company, she had the secrets of the previous company and negotiated with the boss of the previous company and received hundreds of thousands of "confidential material fees" when she left the company. Fortunately, when the leader found signs of problems, he handled them very resolutely and did not bring too much adverse consequences to the company. When I was deeply understanding everything, the scene that came to my mind was: the company was infected with a virus, and the virus was spreading to other organs. In February 2011, Alibaba experienced a personnel shock that affected the industry. Wei Zhe, who made great contributions to Alibaba, was fired because Alibaba found that about nearly a thousand (0.8%) of Chinese suppliers were suspected of fraud. The report at the time said that in order to pursue high performance, some sales personnel deliberately condoned or neglected, allowing some external elements to enter Alibaba's membership system and organized fraud. A total of 100 sales personnel were involved.

　　Wei Zhe, who was then CEO of Alibaba, could not refuse all this. In order to maintain Alibaba's customer first value, Jack Ma had to cry and "kill" Wei Zhe.

　　Wei Zhe himself stated in an announcement about the incident that he resigned because he did not defend Alibaba's values.

　　In Redefining Team, Raslow mentioned a case because Google pursues an extremely transparent culture within it, and they would disclose information that many companies seem to be confidential to all employees at employee conferences. They will try their best to disclose new products that are being secretly planned internally and major decisions of the company.

　　A friend worked at Wandoujia and also experienced this almost completely open and transparent culture: at the end of 2012, Wandoujia received $120 million in financing, making it the startup company with the largest amount of financing that year. After the financing was confirmed, the company's founder first announced the news at the internal general meeting of staff, and only after a month did the news officially announce it in the media.

　　You need to know that for the company's management and the board of directors, this takes great risks. Once the employee leaks the news in advance, it will immediately trigger external reports and interpretations. Reports at this time will cause great inaccuracy and distortion, causing a lot of unnecessary speculation and trouble. The outside world's view of the company will inevitably be affected.

　　Google employees leak information every year. Once the information is leaked, the company will investigate it. Once conclusive evidence is found, the employees who leak information will be fired immediately.

　　Schmidt, who was Google's CEO back then, would also tell everyone at the employee conference: Someone leaked the information in our meeting and we fired the person involved.

　　Even if it is leaked, Google still insists on keeping its internal information open and transparent. Because only when every employee knows enough background information can they know how to make judgments and choices in the context of large information. A partner who worked as a middle-level management at Alibaba once said that he used to be the president of a traditional software company. In that software company, a lot of the work the management usually does is to constantly grasp the information gap, so that better resources and opportunities can be obtained through the information gap.

　　After arriving at Alibaba, they were extremely open and transparent, and it was basically difficult for those who were scheming to survive. At this time, they could only do one thing: speak by their performance.

　　He said he likes Alibaba's culture very much, which makes him more purely devoted to his work and does not need to spend energy thinking about using his tricks to obtain resources and opportunities.

　　He also gave an example that their internal risk control is extremely strict and they are not allowed to accept customer reception. They must pay for their meals themselves. The gifts they receive cannot exceed 50 yuan, and those who exceed 50 yuan must be handed over. Several years ago, I heard that Alibaba has the so-called "smelling officer" role. All candidates who go to the Ali examination will be "sniffed" by the interviewer in the last round.

　　At that time, it caused quite a lot of discussion in the technology media circle. Many people think this is too ridiculous. Do people who interview a technology company still have to smell it? Too unscientific? I felt very strange when I saw these discussions, and even laughed at Alibaba's system in my heart.

　　After starting a business, the entrepreneur said that although he had not experienced such an interview process personally, I can fully understand Alibaba's approach. The "taste" here is not the body odor of the body, but the "taste" of a person doing things for others, that is, whether the cultural values ​​match and whether they are like an Alibaba person. If you don’t look like Alibaba, you won’t be able to help you no matter how powerful you are. If the candidates are very similar to Alibaba, they will consider it even if they do not necessarily match their professional abilities.

　　At this point, Alibaba and Google are very similar. They value a person's fundamentals, and professional ability is not the most critical consideration. I have seen a similar statement on the official account that specializes in talking about music. I went to see a singer and used two words to distinguish: technology and mind.

　　For example, Zhang Jie has first-class singing skills, but he is not popular; Stefanie Sun's singing skills are not the best, but his heart is simple and moving, so he is very popular among fans and passers-by. If you only use professional skills to discuss, it would be boring to say that Zhang Jie is better than Stefanie Sun.

　　The human underlying operating system is first of all sentimentality, and then rationality. A person's nature or taste is the sum of all his past experiences, experiences, thoughts and environments. Even if you are deliberately, it is difficult to disguise yourself as another person. In Google's recruitment, they will also look at whether a person is like Google, that is, whether he has the taste, temperament or character of Google. The so-called similar smell is not only about choosing one's own partner, partner and friend. The greater the company, the more it will match a person's similar smell.

　　In terms of recruitment, Google has exhausted all kinds of methods and came up with various creative ideas to advertise; continuously increased internal recommendation bonuses, asked employees to recommend their friends; asked external companies to recruit talents for themselves; posted recruitment information on recruitment websites...even including acquiring excellent startups to obtain outstanding talents.

　　However, all these methods have extremely limited results in improving recruitment efficiency.

　　Publishing recruitment information on recruitment websites is basically the worst effect;

　　Because Google’s requirements for talent are too high and the standards are too unique, it is difficult for external companies to help;

　　When I came up with particularly creative advertising ideas, many people came to submit resumes, but it was difficult for anyone to enter their last round of test questions;

　　Continuously increase the internal recommendation bonus, but the effect of internal recommendation has not changed significantly;

　　The talent acquired through acquisitions is indeed very excellent, but many of them have changed greatly after losing their product dominance and ownership. Many people are waiting for the contract to expire, and go back to work on new projects or start a business again.

　　In other words, the talents they have spent a lot of money to acquire are actually not invested in the products and work after the acquisition like they start their own business.

　　After trying all the ways, Laslow discovered a more critical problem:

　　Excellent talents don’t come out to find jobs. Excellent talents have a sense of accomplishment in their current jobs, and they also have satisfactory rewards, and have their own space. They don’t want to go out and find a job at all.

　　In order to find an excellent talent, Google's senior manager went from the beginning of contact with the other party to changing three jobs during this period, and it took ten years to finally join Google.

　　Even so, Laslow still said in the book that no matter how difficult it is, since we must adhere to two principles:

　　1. Don’t succumb to pressure.

　　2. Persist in quality.

　　To recruit the best talents, the best recruitment skills are: have a group of core talents.

　　He has a colleague who always keeps 200 resumes of Google employees in the office. When a candidate is on the go-to-eye about joining Google, he will throw this bunch of resumes in front of the other side: You must work with these people.

　　Excellent people hope to work with excellent people. There is a movie called "Beautiful Mind", which tells the story of Nobel Prize winner John Nash. Nash once suffered from severe schizophrenia and was even treated as a lunatic by many people during his time at Princeton.

　　Imagine if we saw such a lunatic on the Princeton campus at that time, could we identify him? Are you capable of talking to him? Can you help this person a little while talking to him? Or at least not treating him as a lunatic, treating him as an ordinary person or even a genius, can it have a little good impact on him?

　　If this answer is OK, then many entrepreneurs will have such a little value when starting a business.