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Sep 24, 2015
This article is part of a series called Editor's Pick.

It was just a matter of time before the company that vows to do know evil would eventually take over the function that is the most hated in the world.

Don’t get me wrong; Google didn’t come into your organization and start giving your employees performance reviews, yet.  What Google does is much more stealth.

Remember back in April of this year (2015)? Laszlo Bock, the head of HR for Google, released his book “Work Rules!” He then went on a national book tour and was famously interviewed, everywhere, telling anyone who would listen that you don’t need a college degree to work at Google. In fact, Google has found that your college GPA and transcripts to be “worthless” in terms of making a quality hire.

We all kind of chuckled. Well, there goes Google being Google again.

How Google is driving hiring standards

Let’s fast forward to today. Jobvite recently released their 2015 Recruiter Nation Survey. It’s always an interesting read, with great data and metrics, but one metric stood out, to me, above all others:

“57 percent of organizations now report that GPAs are unimportant.”

Do you see what just happened?

If Jobvite would have asked organizations and recruiters in January of this year this same question, prior to Laszlo’s announcement, how do you think this number would be different? I’m telling you the number would have been around 5 percent or less!

GPA’s are unimportant. Really?

Here’s what Google, I mean Laszlo, forgot to tell everyone about why Google can hire people who have never gone to college:

THEY HIRE FREAKING GENIUSES THAT HAVE BEEN CODING IN THEIR PARENT’S BASEMENTS SINCE THEY WERE 12!

What Google is hiring is not what you are hiring

These kids don’t need college. College would bore them. They know more than the professors teaching them. Google gets to hire the top 1 percent of people, not just college grads.

You won’t get these geniuses who don’t need to go to college. You will probably get half-baked nitwits who need college, a good spanking, a few years to grow up, and probably deep therapy.

That’s because you are not Google.

Yet, here we are and you are answering Jobvite’s survey questions and acting like your Google too. Thank you, Google.

Thank you for setting HR back a decade. Thank you for not telling the full story, just swaying opinion by making bold statements. We now get a generation of workers who think they can just jump off their Xbox and into a job paying six figures.

That’s really helpful. You’re brilliant, Laszlo.

Check out Jobvite’s 2015 Recruiter Nation Survey. It’s good stuff, even the stuff that Google brainwashed you to answer.

This was originally published on Tim Sackett’s blog, The Tim Sackett Project.

This article is part of a series called Editor's Pick.
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