By Anthony Balderrama
Earlier this year, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman interviewed Laszlo Bock, Google’s senior vice president of people operations. Basically, he’s the person in charge of hiring all the bright minds at one of the biggest technology companies in the world. Not a bad gig. At the time, Friedman wanted to understand Google’s hiring process.
More recently, he sat down with Bock again to find out what advice he would give all job seekers, not just those trying to work at Google. After all, not everyone can or wants to work for a tech giant, but finding out how one of the world’s leading companies evaluates job seekers can only help your own search.
He gave some great advice and insight into how he views applicants. We’ve picked four tips that we think are most important and helpful to anyone looking for a job:
1. A good résumé relies on a simple formula
According to Bock, your accomplishments should be framed as action items: “The key is to frame your strengths as: ‘I accomplished X, relative to Y, by doing Z.’”
Listing your daily activities are not that important without context. Instead, bock tells Friedman how to make a hiring manager care about your work history:
“Most people would write a résumé like this: ‘Wrote editorials for The New York Times.’ Better would be to say: ‘Had 50 op-eds published compared to average of 6 by most op-ed [writers] as a result of providing deep insight into the following area for three years.’ Most people don’t put the right content on their résumés.”
2. Interviews are about your communication skills
“Most people in an interview don’t make explicit their thought process behind how or why they did something and, even if they are able to come up with a compelling story, they are unable to explain their thought process.”
Bock says you should be explicit about what you have to offer. Tell them what you have to offer, give them a story about it and then explain how that story was relevant to your skills. Don’t make the interviewer do any guesswork.
3. Creativity + logic = desirable worker
You might not expect a tech giant like Google to be equally passionate about creative minds as they are about analytical, logical workers. Yet, Bock says someone who has the right balance of both creativity and structured thinking is a rarity.
If you think about the success of Google or any company, you quickly realize they rely on innovative ideas and people who can carry them out. All businesses need employees who are trying to stay ahead of the competition with new ideas, but ideas don’t magically turn into successful ventures. You need strategy to carry it through.
4. Make the most out of college
College is a a commitment that takes up your time and money. Don’t just coast by with no goals in sight. Bock tells Friedman, “The first and most important thing is to be explicit and willful in making the decisions about what you want to get out of this investment in your education.”
Earlier this year, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman interviewed Laszlo Bock, Google’s senior vice president of people operations. Basically, he’s the person in charge of hiring all the bright minds at one of the biggest technology companies in the world. Not a bad gig. At the time, Friedman wanted to understand Google’s hiring process.
More recently, he sat down with Bock again to find out what advice he would give all job seekers, not just those trying to work at Google. After all, not everyone can or wants to work for a tech giant, but finding out how one of the world’s leading companies evaluates job seekers can only help your own search.
He gave some great advice and insight into how he views applicants. We’ve picked four tips that we think are most important and helpful to anyone looking for a job:
1. A good résumé relies on a simple formula
According to Bock, your accomplishments should be framed as action items: “The key is to frame your strengths as: ‘I accomplished X, relative to Y, by doing Z.’”
Listing your daily activities are not that important without context. Instead, bock tells Friedman how to make a hiring manager care about your work history:
“Most people would write a résumé like this: ‘Wrote editorials for The New York Times.’ Better would be to say: ‘Had 50 op-eds published compared to average of 6 by most op-ed [writers] as a result of providing deep insight into the following area for three years.’ Most people don’t put the right content on their résumés.”
2. Interviews are about your communication skills
“Most people in an interview don’t make explicit their thought process behind how or why they did something and, even if they are able to come up with a compelling story, they are unable to explain their thought process.”
Bock says you should be explicit about what you have to offer. Tell them what you have to offer, give them a story about it and then explain how that story was relevant to your skills. Don’t make the interviewer do any guesswork.
3. Creativity + logic = desirable worker
You might not expect a tech giant like Google to be equally passionate about creative minds as they are about analytical, logical workers. Yet, Bock says someone who has the right balance of both creativity and structured thinking is a rarity.
If you think about the success of Google or any company, you quickly realize they rely on innovative ideas and people who can carry them out. All businesses need employees who are trying to stay ahead of the competition with new ideas, but ideas don’t magically turn into successful ventures. You need strategy to carry it through.
4. Make the most out of college
College is a a commitment that takes up your time and money. Don’t just coast by with no goals in sight. Bock tells Friedman, “The first and most important thing is to be explicit and willful in making the decisions about what you want to get out of this investment in your education.”
Once there, said Bock, make sure that you’re getting out of it not only a broadening of your knowledge but skills that will be valued in today’s workplace. Your college degree is not a proxy anymore for having the skills or traits to do any job.Basically, his advice comes down to being specific. What have you done? What can you do? What will you do? You’ve only got a hiring manager’s attention for a few moments — don’t waste a second of it being vague or assuming they’ll understand what you really meant.