Look out: I agree With Google

I don't know about you but I have mixed feelings about Google. Like many I respect their creativity and forward thinking. They are my favorite search engine and I have a gmail address and Google+ identity. I am right this minute using their blog site, blogspot and I believe the standards they have set did more to improve the web experience for all of us beyond what anyone else has done.

And they are the most invasive data grabbers in my life. Maybe in anyone's. Except NSA.

Today I want to focus on their style of doing things, in this case the way they recruit and hire talent. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times wrote a column a couple weeks ago discussing how Google goes about the talent acquisition process. Here's the link if you wish to read it, but wait til later for that, please.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/opinion/sunday/friedman-how-to-get-a-job-at-google.html?alg=44FR7

The point he make is that although Google is certainly in a position to demand the top graduates from the top schools exclusively, that isn't their practice. Let there be no mistake, if they re looking for specific technical expertise, they do go to the top of the top. But for much of their work, there is no known skill. They want to do things no one has done before. That means no one has studied it in school, at any level. This is about finding people who will take them around the corner no one has seen. Kind of like the Apollo astronauts seeing the far side of the moon for the first time. And some of the corners don't have as much predicted as the moon situation in which everyone expected the other side to be much like the side we had always seen. And it was.

In cases like that Google is looking for someone who may be the next different thinker. I could refer to Steve Jobs or some other garage wizard, but lots of lesser creations spring from the mind that thinks along these lines. But lesser is merely a comparative that isn't really relevant. In order for Steve Jobs to have developed the Apple computer, lots of other apparently lesser new ideas needed to be discovered by many other people. For example Jobs didn't create the mouse, that was done by Douglas Englebart, who is well known in his design world, but not so much to the average computer user.

Are you looking for a job? Are you looking to hire someone new? Are you facing a situation or feeling discomfort about something in your life or business? If so, are you looking at the problem or situation the way Google is looking at hiring, or are you assuming the solution needs to come from some specific idea you have had for a long time? maybe one that is not actually relevant to the situation?

These are typical situations in which a coach is an ideal addition. A wise person once said to me that if a person wants something in their life and they don't have it, it's because they can't do it by themselves or it already would have been manifested. This is also true for groups. And it's a corollary to this that the addition of an outsider, a coach, is not going to do anything except help the person or group expand their thinking so that the path becomes clear.

Let your vision expand and gain the clarity you need today and in the future. Call us at Paeon and let our experience and processes help you help yourself.

773-817-6700