Korea's Google challenge

By John Burton

Many American university graduates regard Google in the same way as their Korean counterparts view Samsung Electronics: it is their top choice for a job. But there is one important difference. Among the new hires at Google are those with little or no college university ― and I'm not talking about the kitchen staff. Such a state of affairs at Samsung or any other leading Korean company is unimaginable. Paper credentials are the key to success.

As Korea grapples with the Sewol tragedy, one of the clear lessons is the failure of Korean management to respond to a sudden crisis. Anyone familiar with Korean government ministries or the chaebol knows that their ranks may be filled with people who have graduated from a SKY university but have become trapped in a bureaucratic machine that runs on paper and discourages initiative, innovation and independent thinking.

Korean organizations remain caught in what Joi Ito, the director of the MIT Media Lab in the U.S., calls the "before Internet" age where a map is the primary means of guidance, while Google inhabits the "after Internet" age where a compass is needed to master rapid shifts. A failure by Korea to make the transition bodes ill for the country's future performance. Having created some of the world's best hardware, Korea now needs to change its social software.

Google was once as addicted to credentials as any Korean company. It refused to consider any job candidates who had less than a 3.5 grade point average at university. But given Google's obsession with mining and analyzing Big Data, it reached an interesting conclusion: GPAs and test scores were worthless in predicting a person's success at the company.

Google determined that the ability to perform well at university is completely unrelated to work performance because the academic environment is an artificial one. "One of my own frustrations when I was in college and grad school is that you knew the professor was looking for a specific answer. You could figure that out, but it's much more interesting to solve problems where there isn't an obvious answer. You want people who like figuring out stuff where there is no obvious answer," Laszlo Bock, who is in charge of hiring at Google, told The New York Times.

Bock goes so far as to say that going to university may be unsuitable for most young people because they have little idea of what they want to achieve from their education, which is why Google is willing to hire people with no college degree.

So what determines if you are good enough for Google? The short answer is an ability to demonstrate that you can create value from what you know.

And how does Google determine that? One way is subjecting potential workers to a behavioral interview. The goal is to identify those with a general cognitive ability to learn things quickly and solve problems because they are adaptable and have an analytical mind. The best candidates are those who display both creativity and disciplined thought processes.

The interview is meant to show how a candidate's thought processes can create value. A standard question would be "Give me an example of when you solved an analytically difficult problem?" The answer reveals how the person dealt with a real-life problem as well as the candidate's sense of what is difficult.

Finding those with the knowledge to understand and apply information includes seeking persons who have been willing to study difficult courses at school, such as computer science and math, to master sought-after skills even though it may result in lower grades than easier subjects, such as economics and psychology.

Google is not alone in accepting those without a college degree. After all, two of the most successful American companies in the Internet age, Microsoft and Apple, were founded by college drop-outs Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.

In contrast, Korean education has been heavily influenced by an examination system that dates back to ancient China. To use Ito's analogy, most Korean students are being equipped with a map, but not a compass, to help navigate an increasingly uncertain future.

Unfortunately, there is little incentive for this system to change in Korea since there are too many vested interests involved, including the university students themselves. When Samsung recently tried to tweak its hiring process by relying more on candidate recommendations from university heads and revise its 20-year-old Samsung Aptitude Test, there was a quick and furious public outcry.

Samsung said it was using the recommendations to help identify talented students, but public criticism focused on charges that the group was discriminating against some universities and favoring others. With so much invested in a university education and test training, imagine the reaction if Samsung suddenly declared that 10 percent of its next intake would not have to have a college degree.

John Burton, a former Korea correspondent for the Financial Times, is now a Seoul-based independent journalist and media consultant. He can be reached at john.burton@insightcomms.com.