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Contest recruitment
Doing It The Google Way
We have all heard of campus
recruitment, of rewarding existing employees who rope in potential
co-workers. But, have you heard of contest recruitment? Here, the
winner gets not just the prize but also a coveted job. Sounds unusual?
Well, Google tried it out last year with good results and presses
ahead. In short, Google has combined its HR strategy with a PR
strategy. This year, the competition started in September and was open
to contestants from across the globe. A qualification round, with
participants from 17 countries, narrowed the final list of contestants
to 5,000. Successive competitions narrowed the final battle field to
50 contestants who received expense-paid trips to participate at
Google's headquarters in Mountain View, US. 'Google Code Jam' is
structured to select the winner as one who can solve a series of
progressively harder programming puzzles. In the 2004 contest, held in
mid-October, the contestants had to solve three puzzles within an
hour. The third puzzle was the most difficult.
Contestants were judged
both on their speed and accuracy. The winner Sergio Sancho of
Argentina walked off with the prize of $ 10,000 and he sure impressed
Google's bright engineers. Prior to the first ever 'Google Code Jam'
held last year, Google test-tried its plan in a small contest and
hired the winner who is now part of its New York-based engineering
team. Software giant Microsoft is known for asking the 'not-so
typical' questions in a typical interview. Some of these abstract
questions have no right or wrong answer, but test the ability to think
on the spot. Books on such interviews have made many an author richer.
Microsoft style interviews have been adopted by several other
organisations across the world. It is time to ask: Shall we see more
contest-based recruitment strategies. One shudders to think how this
would proceed in a law firm. Will the winner be one, that outwits the
partner of the firm?
Courtesy:
Google News
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