It’s Not Always About Credentials

googleofficesOne of our faculty posted this article the other day — “Why Google doesn’t care about hiring top college graduates” — and I thought it worth re-posting here. In the article, Google’s head of people operations, Laszlo Bock, discussed the qualities that the company seeks in people they hire: “And increasingly, it’s not about credentials.”

Instead, they find it is about a certain approach to managing new information and working as part of a team — intellectual humility, they call it. Without it, Google finds that people tend to

commit the fundamental attribution error, which is if something good happens, it’s because I’m a genius. If something bad happens, it’s because someone’s an idiot or I didn’t get the resources or the market moved. … What we’ve seen is that the people who are the most successful here, who we want to hire, will have a fierce position. They’ll argue like hell. They’ll be zealots about their point of view. But then you say, ‘here’s a new fact,’ and they’ll go, ‘Oh, well, that changes things; you’re right.’

There’s something to think about as you make your way through your undergraduate degree, which sometimes involves frustrating group work situations and often has you learning new information that turns your assumptions on their head.

So just what are the skills that you’re gaining? You might be surprised someday when you find out what comes in handy and what proves less than relevant.