Acquiring the best talent provides organizations with an important competitive advantage, particularly when selection systems are aligned with strategic objectives. Chapter 6 pointed out one key aspect of hiring the best talent: the recruitment and selection funnel. As noted there, having more candidates to choose from in the funnel gives an organization the highest probability of hiring the best. In other words, all things being equal, it’s better to choose from 10 qualified job candidates than from just two.
Now consider the size of the recruitment and selection funnel at Google, which is one of the most admired employers in the world and has been ranked at the top of Fortune’s list of “best companies to work for” for many years. By some estimates, Google receives as many as 2 million job applications each year but only hires about 5,000 of those applicants. So, the chances of an applicant landing a job at Google are about 1 in 400; it is not impossible to get a job there, but it is not going to be easy. One thing

Case Discussion Questions 1. Although having more applicants to choose from is a good thing, can there be such a thing as too many applicants? For example, how might a company like Google process 2 million applicants per year, short of interviewing all candidates?
2. Although hiring “from the gut” is generally not the best approach to selection, do you think that this approach may have some advantages?
If so, what are they? Do you think that this sort of approach enters into Google’s hiring processes?
3. In addition to using interviews, how might Google select employees for certain jobs such as programmers? How would you decide which types of assessment(s) are most important for hiring programmers that best fit the job?
4. Teamwork and being able to admit mistakes are also factors that seem to fit well with success at Google. How could these sorts of factors be assessed in the selection process?