Named after the mathematical term for a one followed by a hundred zeroes, Google’s rise over the past few years has been nothing short of meteoric. As the world’s most famous internet company, Google offers everything from video site YouTube to a program that lets you explore the night sky. Needless to say, the strings of zeroes alluded to by the company’s name could just as easily refer to its balance sheet.
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The Inside Buzz View
Graduate Careers at Google
With its success and unorthodox working practices, Google has emerged as one of the most popular place to work for graduates and it’s determined to get the most intelligent and creative employees it can. Occasionally it’s gone to unusual lengths to get the attention of the best and the brightest: it once put up a billboard outside Harvard University posing a difficult maths equation. The answer, followed by ‘.com’, led to a special puzzle-filled website the company had set up. Those who completed the challenges were directed to the company’s recruitment site. If you’ve made it this far, the company doesn’t have to go to such lengths to get your attention, but that should give you idea of the calibre of person they’re looking for.
As you’d expect, jobs are advertised and applications are accepted online. The majority of positions tend to be for software engineers, requiring a computer science or similar degree, while those with an MSc, PhD or MBA could try straight for product manager.
Graduates are encouraged to apply for regular positions and in addition, there are a small number of positions each year advertised especially for new graduates in technical, design and product management; these are advertised all year round. If you’re not a computer whizz, there are a range of other opportunities, from communications and public affairs to financial management. If you’re interested in advertising sales, you also have the opportunity of applying to the company’s small Manchester office.
Once you’ve submitted a CV, you’ll face a phone interview followed by a succession of face-to-face interviews including, for technical positions, problem-solving tests.
Google Graduate Recruitment Info
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Google Profile & Stats
Google is to the internet, what Microsoft is to PCs; you will have almost certainly, perhaps inadvertently, used one of their products, and would have to try pretty hard to avoid stumbling across them on a regular basis. If you didn’t use Google to find this page, then you’re one of less than 30% of web-searches who forgo the convention. But either through Gmail, Google-managed ads or with the advent of their browser Chrome, you will have come across this internet king at some time or another.
This e-domination isn’t too bad for a bedroom project of two Stanford University students, Larry Page and Sergei Bri. Then called “BackRub”, the aim was to create a piece of software that could track the links back to any website from the rest of the, then tiny, world wide web. The mission was to organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful, and by 1998, the software had begat a search engine – Google.com.
Named after the mathematical term for a one followed by a hundred zeroes, the duo’s search engine produced far more useful results than any competitor due to their link-tracking technology. Google very quickly became a household name and by 2004, it was the world’s most popular search engine. Not ones to rest on their laurels, extra features were added in-house, such as the image search. Others were secured through the acquisition of other companies, such as its blogging service. But then Google did two very significant things: it launched Gmail, expanding into the massive email market and took itself public. The young company cut its starting share price over fears it was overvalued, but saw the shares soar in the first few days of trading. And they’ve soared ever since, as Google has continued to expand into virtually every corner of the web. The strings of zeroes alluded to by the company’s name could just as easily refer to its balance sheet.
Google is now the world’s most famous internet company, offering everything from the video site YouTube – bought in 2006 for a cool $1.65 billion – to a program that lets you explore the night sky. And although software innovation is the key to Google’s success, in many respects it is actually an advertising company. It makes millions in advertising through its AdWords system, targeted adverts based on user’s searches, both on its own site and on thousands of others.
Stories of life at the “Googleplex”, the company’s Mountain View, California headquarters, have become legendary: the free gourmet food, the lava lamps, space-hoppers and the dogs in the workplace. Well, the good news is that the same unusual – or, as more traditional businesses might think, plain silly – aspects of life at Google apply equally in the UK. The 600 person London office, which houses both technical and sales staff, boasts the full complement of Googley treats (apart from free onsite childcare). Are the company’s founders mad? Not exactly: they claim the approach fosters a creative atmosphere that enables ideas to flourish. If you’ve ever tried to think outside the box when you work in a cubicle, you might see their logic. The company even allows all technical employees to spend 20 percent of their time on their own ideas. More regular perks, like medical insurance and a pension plan, are also available.
