Google employs leading-edge recruiters to find its top talent, and we can learn a lot from their hiring practices. Michael B. Junge, a recruiter for Google, shared a few of his recruiting tips.
Resumes
Resumes don’t always represent the job seeker in the best light. Sometimes an individual may be perfect for the job, but their resume doesn’t have the right key elements to project that to a recruiter.
I’m sure you have heard before that a resume should have active instead of passive language. Describing experience with results more than duties and responsibilities gives the reader a better picture of what that candidate can do. Your resume is more likely to get read if it has words like ‘built, delivered, initiated, designed,’ than if it has words like ‘responsible for.’ Hiring managers and recruiters are pros at picking up language-based clues that describe a high-performing candidate, as well as incongruent statements. An employer wants to look at people who can deliver and perform, and your resume needs to show accomplishments to be considered as a valuable candidate.
Keywords are vital today on both the resume and LinkedIn profile. If a computer program is used to sort through the resumes for a particular job opportunity, having the right keywords will help you get the attention of the hiring manager. In a LinkedIn profile keywords are essential to being found by recruiters and hiring managers since this is the primary way they search in LinkedIn.
Social Media
A recent study by CareerXroads showed that while social media’s impact is growing, 38.9% of companies manage prospects and candidates with social media tools. Keep in mind this survey was conducted from a small group of companies. However, worth noting is that almost 40% of these companies are using social media in their searches today.
LinkedIn is still the leader of social media networks for recruiters and hiring managers. They use LinkedIn to search, identify, validate, and connect with prospective candidates. They find this resource one of the best when looking for hard-to-find talent and niche skill sets.
Of course when hiring Google employees, one of the criteria is to have fun. Their recruiters look for employees who enjoy everything from the hiring process (yes I can hardly believe that) to creating logic puzzles for engineers.
Today’s employers are looking for subjective performance traits like attitude and enthusiasm as well as objective performance and skills. Ideal candidates possess the ability to tackle challenges and enjoy the process. What do employers get from this? It is perceived that if a candidate enjoys proving their skill level through tests or interview processes, it can give an employer a birds-eye view of what they might expect from this employee in the future.
While you might not be looking for a position at Google, you can take-away some of the insights from one of their recruiters. Most all companies are looking for generally the same type of person to hire. Be sure your resume, online presence, and interviewing skills are a winning combination.
