HR tour to the leading Silicon Valley companies

Silicon Valley HR management gurus shared their experience with us. The participants got much new and effective information and plenty of positive emotions, coming back home with new ideas and useful contacts! Now it’s time to implement everything in practice!

hr_tour_report

Organizer: - FastForward

Monday

The tour started with a visit to Google. The participants found out a lot of interesting things both about the company itself (and its corporate culture) and the main features of HR and recruiting in Silicon Valley. These are 2 structures which do not interact. Recruiters look for and hire people, while at present there are no open bases of potential human resources in the Valley. Recruiters have to do constant headhunting through LinkedIn or attending various events where they can meet prospective candidates for the post. A recruiter’s job is similar to that of a sales manager but it involves “hunting” employees and not customers. However, open “recruiting” is prohibited by law. That is why recruiters attend special workshops and seminars to share information about the company – if someone from the audience is interested, he may find out detailed features of the vacant posts.

An interesting fact: rendering a candidate for his company, a recruiter has no right to ask too personal questions, such as the age, religious denomination, origin, etc. because the candidate may take him to court. To add, according to the legislation, there shall be no less than 4% of coloured people in the company’s staff.

Talking about HR, it is worth mentioning that this term is being gradually abandoned and replaced by the notion of “operations” (“ops” for short). In Google, each department is responsible for its own ops or HR. Among 28,000 company’s employees 15% are members of the ops team. Their main task is to communicate corporate culture to the employees of their department and to monitor implementation of corporate values and everyone’s comfort. For this purpose the ops check twice a year whether an employee feels comfortable in the company, what motivation and goals he has.

The operations department consists of many subdivisions and each of them has its own mission at the company. For example, the bonus subdivision is responsible for perks and bonuses for the employees depending on their contribution to the company’s development.

google

The tour participants also learned about the specifics of applying for a post in Google. It is known that the company hires a great number of interns to give them a certain range of tasks. The interns who have coped with their tasks are tested for compatibility with the company’s corporate culture, and if a person has gone through this stage as well, he has 2 months to reveal his potential and sign a longer contract with the company. As a result, only 3% of the interns are employed. Moreover, each employee is given 2 years to prove his dedication to the common goal and desire to move further. If an employee has exhausted his potential by the end of this period, they say goodbye to him.      

Also it was fascinating to get to know that all the companies of Silicon Valley, unlike those of Eastern Europe, are opposed to distance working. Their management groups believe that working in a team exclusively ensures creation of a good product.

Then the group went to Stanford University. There had been a graduation ceremony the day before, so the atmosphere was unusually quiet. The visit to Stanford was mainly aimed at showing the cradle of the Valley’s talents. Today Stanford wants to develop business acumen in each of the students. The group found out about Stanford’s art studio serving as a platform for workshops where the students discover opportunities for implementing their ideas. Stanford provides all tools for this and teaches them how to begin putting their projects into action.

For instance, the students are divided into groups and each group is given $5 to transform it into a much larger sum in a week. At the end of the week each group has to present its project during 30 minutes. There are a lot of chances to earn money but one must understand that it is not about the money he has, but about the opportunities. Someone may bake and sell pies, another one may pump up bike tires for $1 (and there is certain demand, since the University occupies a huge territory where the bicycle is the main transport). Nevertheless, once the winners were the guys who sold their 30 minutes of presentation to several famous Silicon Valley companies for advertisement. This group earned about $200,000 for a half an hour.

Such projects later grow into serious startups. For example, a group of the students went ahead and booked places at a popular restaurant with such long queues that you could spend 2-3 hours waiting for your turn. Now they can boast having an extremely popular startup with impressive turnover. 

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Tuesday

The second day began with a visit to Box. The group was greeted by one of the company’s managers, who told them about how he sees working with HR as an employee. The group learned how future staff members are selected at the department manager’s level, when, for example, an engineer chooses new people for his team. Each stage of selection has its own cases and assessment scales. It was fascinating to get new information on how the managers get new people to adapt to their corporate culture. One should add that staff selection is much about teamwork. A mentor is appointed to each new employee to coach him and help him understand the business. After each week of the trial period the mentor assesses the candidate, while the candidate does the same for the mentor. In the end, everybody works for common positive results.

Another interesting fact at Box was about the innovation days when each employee can work on the idea he does not have enough time for because of his direct duties.

 

Then the group set off to Starbucks. One should say that it is not only a coffee chain. It is an example of balance between care about the employees, their comfort and order at work. Furthermore, the employees get pleasure from their work, as Starbucks “sells not coffee but emotions”. All the employees have a common goal and the company helps them in achieving it in all possible ways. It is the only company which pays for education of their employees’ children. Innovation is also encouraged a lot. For instance, the girl who invented the recipe of Frappuccino, ice coffee ranking #1 in popularity now, was provided with her own property by the company.

Starbucks is known for its “apron hierarchy”. In order to get a black apron, an employee has to work hard for a long time and reveal himself.

The manager of each coffee shop is a head of a separate small business, his own world, where he sets the rules himself, though these rules do not go further than the corporate culture regulations and the common goal. Starbucks is a company with visible teamwork. Everyone works for the common result and his independent development, whereas the company supports the employees by various means, such as trainings, manuals, courses and workshops.

 

After the visit to Starbucks the group continued the tour at PayPal. This company has never positioned itself as a startup. Its atmosphere is completely different: the work is organised in a more precise and serious way and nobody has any right to make a mistake. The role of the HR department is not as important there as at Facebook or Google, since the workforce itself is a little different. The employees at PayPal aim at stability and high income and are not so eager to leave their job for the sake of another company. They are professional workers knowing the value of themselves.

Wednesday

The third day of the tour started with going to LinkedIn, where the participants had an opportunity to hear about the company’s new products, due to be launched in a month or two, specifics of working with the employees and the corporate culture. The company was positioned as profitable from the very moment of its creation, unlike most startups. Now the LinkedIn staff includes approximately 2,000 employees, among them 600 work in sales. This is a team of the professionals who definitely know what they aim at. Every Wednesday they see the head of the company and listen to a weekly report. These reports are so interesting and useful to everyone that 85% of the employees listen to the live version and the other 15% to the recording because of the time difference.

LinkedIn is an example of balance between well-organized management and care about the employees.  

linkedin

Then the group visited one of Trader Joe’s supermarkets. Some time ago the chain included only 5 stores until purchased by Aldi. Now there are about 3,000 supermarkets labelled Trader Joe’s in the USA. The chain boasts its strong corporate culture. Each supermarket is unique and has its own atmosphere, as it employs its own designer.

The workers of the chain are fully interchangeable and the sphere of each employee’s work may change several times per day. This is an example of great teamwork, when all the staff members teach and support each other.

Trader Joe’s values the quality of products a lot. 90% of the goods come under the private label. The manager of each store defines the wares placement himself taking into account the wishes and demands of the visitors.

The last meeting of the day took place at Kanjoa. They produce questionnaires, on the basis of which it is possible to understand psychological and emotional state of the employees, their motivation, tiredness, involvement and other parameters. How is that possible? Everything is as easy as complicated at the same time. To see a person’s psychological conditions, the questionnaires analyse words, word order and emotional colouring, but not the answers as such. This allows detecting all the nuances which worry the employee at the moment.

The startup has already existed for 10 years. One of its customers is Twitter. The company’s main idea is to detect people’s emotions to understand what they need in the company, how to motivate them and whether the employee is satisfied with everything. This is ensured by the artificial intelligence which processes the questionnaires with extended answers and “scans” each person.

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Thursday

The day began with Technology Credit Union, a financial company operating in providing loans to successful startups on relatively loyal conditions. Their aim is about transparent loans. There the group learned about the features of staff selection, adaptation and encouragement. The average age of the company’s employees is 39-40 years. The emphasis in the encouragement programme is put on the pension fund, as Americans are known to value stable and well-off retirement future very much.

The next visit was paid to Square. The company’s motto is “To make commerce comfortable”. It developed the device which can help to make a payment anywhere by just linking it to your smartphone. Here the participants learned a lot of fascinating things about the staff assessment criteria, their climbing up the career ladder and the main features of staff selection.

Friday

On Friday the group went to Las Vegas for a visit to Zappos. As it is known, the company has adopted a new powers division model – holacracy – which presupposes that all the employees are equal in their rights, like the members of a big family. However, at the same time each employee is awarded with badges of certain colours depending on his working experience and achievements at the company.

 

The participants’ attention was attracted to the “Genie’s lamp” idea. The employees can throw notes with their wishes into this lamp and any of the staff members can anonymously help to realize them. There is such a lamp at each department of Zappos.

The company’s has very close-knit staff and solid corporate culture. The HR managers often arrange family picnics, contests and even an alumni club for the former employees.

The group also visited Work In Progress, also founded by Tony Hsieh like Zappos. But the companies differ drastically and do not interact at all. Work In Progress is a co-working centre for mini-startups. Its management is more traditional than Zappos’s holacracy.

Saturday

red_rock_canyon

The last day of the tour was traditionally dedicated to excursions around the local sights and attractions. The group went to a miraculous place - Red Rock Canyon. The participants also went to see the performance of the world-famous Cirque du Soleil and had a dinner at Picasso – a café visited by the painter himself.  

If you are interested in international experience, new contacts and valuable business knowledge, join us and visit management tours.