Google's head of talent has a simple thought exercise to help managers avoid hiring only people who are just like them

Courtesy of Google

Kyle Ewing is Google's head of talent.

• Google talent chief Kyle Ewing encourages hiring managers to think about the skills they want job candidates to display.
• It's part of the company's shift from credentials, like college degrees, to specific competencies that are important for the role.
• Google also emphasizes culture add over culture fit, or the ways a candidate enhances the company culture instead of fitting in with what already exists.
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Google has spent a lot of time thinking about the best ways to hire top talent.

One key strategy the company has hit on is making sure it hires people for the right reasons.

For example, a manager might show a preference for a job candidate who graduated from the same college they did. Even if the candidate's experience on the Yale lacrosse team has no bearing on their ability to do the job, it may sway the manager's decision anyway. In fact, the manager may wind up choosing the fellow alum over another candidate who would be a more valuable asset to the organization.

Kyle Ewing, Google's head of talent and a 13-year company veteran, has learned that even the most well intentioned leaders may display this type of unconscious bias in their decisions at work. So it's important to develop simple steps to check those gut feelings.

"It's absolutely human nature" to see that a job candidate worked at McKinsey just like you did, and get excited about bringing them onto your team, Ewing told Business Insider.

The question you should ask yourself next, she said, is, "What were the skills that I developed at McKinsey and how might someone else be able to demonstrate that?" (You can replace "McKinsey" with the name of your alma mater, or childhood neighborhood, or any other community you've belonged to.)

That question about specific skills reflects Google's emphasis on hiring based on competencies versus credentials, and the broader trend in the tech industry of prioritizing skills over fancy degrees. That way, employers are more likely to snag the best person for the job and not the person who looks the best on paper.

The shift from competencies to credentials is underpinned by the soaring costs of higher education, which have made college less accessible, and by the growing demand for technical skills, which don't necessarily require formal schooling. HR execs are also more vocal than ever before about the importance of building a diverse and inclusive workplace.

Across industries, Ewing's strategy to minimize unconscious bias may prove highly useful for hiring managers.

Google trains its employees on how to manage unconscious bias in hiring practices

Google has been studying effective hiring practices for years, and applying what it learns. The company conducts structured interviews, meaning all candidates for a specific role are asked the same questions and are assessed according to the same rubric.

In particular, Google has focused on mitigating the influence of unconscious bias in its hiring decisions. Unconscious biases include stereotypes about certain groups of people that you don't realize you have. For example, you might automatically assume that people from San Francisco are smart, or that people who studied journalism are slackers, even though neither assumption is necessarily founded in reality.

To help make its staff aware of unconscious biases - and better positioned to challenge them - in 2013 Google started offering training on the topic. The training includes an overview of why we have unconscious biases, and some strategies to overcome them in the workplace.

Ewing said Google offers a variety of training programs for hiring managers, which include both in-person sessions and online resources. A key focus area is hiring for culture add, versus culture fit. Managers are encouraged to look for people who will make the team more productive, even (and especially) if those people don't look or act like everyone else on the team. It's a strategy that experts say facilitates diversity, and in turn, innovation.

Google values a candidate's ability to add to the organization over how well they fit with the current culture

Managers at Google are encouraged to start the hiring process by thinking about the composition of their team, Ewing said. Specifically, "what skills and experiences are already present, and what do you want to add?"

Say a manager realizes they need someone with strong sales skills. Ewing reminds the manager that a candidate who hasn't worked in sales could still display those skills. "You might need someone who's motivated by quotas, or who's really good at reaching ambitious goals," she said. That person could just as easily come from the nonprofit world; a background in enterprise sales isn't a must-have.

"We're really encouraging folks to stop anchoring on what's been demonstrated through the school they went to or the specific company they worked for," Ewing said. Instead Ewing wants managers to evaluate job candidates by asking, "What skills do they demonstrate and what can they add to [my] team?"

Beyond Google, top tech companies like Apple and IBM are hiring employees who have (or can develop) the requisite skills for the job, even if they don't have a college degree, Business Insider's Allana Akhtar reported.

Jason Fried, the CEO of web-app company Basecamp, has said that he "throws résumés out the door" because they don't "say anything really about what someone's capable of." Basecamp is more interested in a candidate's communication skills, which is why candidates are asked to complete a sample project and then explain their thought process in a written summary.

Patty McCord, who was the original chief talent officer at Netflix, previously told Business Insider that the concept of "culture fit" is a "really foolish notion." She's seen too many interviewers try to hire a job candidate because they seem likeable. But "we're not hiring [the candidate] to have a beer with us," McCord said.

Unconscious bias doesn't make you a terrible person - but it's important to challenge your automatic thoughts

Among the Google employees who indicate on their LinkedIn profile which schools they've attended, the most popular are Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley. Stanford is No. 6 on US News & World's Best College Report; UC Berkeley ties with the University of Southern California as No. 22. Both schools are among the US universities that produce the wealthiest alumni, according to a 2019 WealthX report.

That information doesn't mean Google shows a preference for these alums. But it suggests that the company still has plenty of room to expand its pool of applicants to include people who didn't attend an elite school.

In general, it's helpful for both hiring managers and job candidates to remember that unconscious biases don't make someone a terrible person. As Sarah Greenberg, lead coach and program design lead at digital coaching platform BetterUp, previously told Business Insider, anytime someone is considering a new hire, they're assessing whether they can trust the person with the job and whether the person is competent. When it comes to trustworthiness in particular, we're often looking - consciously or not - for those who are similar to us.

The important thing is for leaders to recognize that they may be biased in one way or another, and to make sure those unconscious biases don't have undue influence over their behavior.

When you think about what a candidate can add to the organization, Ewing said, "it really opens up the possibility of considering folks that don't fit a preconceived profile." The person might look at the same problem differently from their coworkers, drawing on their unique background and experience. That variety, Ewing said, creates the "possibility of a different perspective and a diversity of thought."

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