How to get a job at Google

In the heart of Silicon Valley a stark black and white billboard posed a mathematical question for commuters on Highway 101.  The billboard read:{first 10-digit prime found in consecutive digits e}.com

Some curious people did log on to the web to solve this and were led to another web page with another equation to solve.  A few more equations and web pages later led them to a page on Google Labs, the company’s research and development department, which read: “One thing we learned while building Google is that it’s easier to find what you’re looking for if it comes looking for you. What we’re looking for are the best engineers in the world. And here you are.’  It was Google recruiting.

A Google spokesman explained this unusual approach by saying ‘As you can imagine, we get many, many resumes every day, so we developed this little process to increase the signal-to-noise ratio.”

Wow, what a great way to recruit and reward curiosity.    There is an old adage that says ‘Curiosity killed the cat’.  Compare that with what Einstein who said ‘I  have no special talent, I am only passionately curious’.  An attribute cherished by Google too.

Our challenge as communicators is how to invoke curiosity in our audience? How do we increase the signal to noise ratio? Instead of always providing the answers and could we replace the industrial mindset communication frame of ‘Tell them once, tell them again and tell them that you told them’, with a frame that arouses curiosity and gets people to pursue the answers instead.