Revealing organizational strategy via job ads
SteveI caught this piece on Gamespot.com about Google's recent job listing for a position called 'Product Manager - Games', located at Google's Mountain View, CA headquarters. Here's the information about the role straight from the job listing on the Google careers page:
Rare opportunity to grow a brand-new business - Games at Google! We are looking for a strategic, technical and game-loving Product Manager to drive Google's gaming strategy. You will design strategies for game distribution and discovery, player identity, game mechanics, and more. In addition to designing a great user experience and building out key partnerships, you will be significantly influencing Google's social platform as you work directly with a critical set of early adopters, game developers. Interesting and impactful decisions involving social gaming, privacy, virality, business, and technical APIs await you and the strong, passionate team of gamers you will work with.
Sounds like a pretty interesting and challenging job, right? A chance to really shape and drive what one day might end up being an important line of business for one of the biggest tech companies in the world in a space that is super-hot right now - think Farmville, CityVille, et. al.
So Google is getting more serious about social games as evidenced by this job listing. Before the news of this listing broke, perhaps that was not so obvious. According to the Gamespot piece 'indicates that Google is definitely planning to get into the games business.' The strong implication is that the posting for the Games Manager job was the validation of some ongoing rumors about Google's potential involvement in the space.
But I am not highlighting the post just because it seems like a cool gig, but to wonder a bit about how often organizations reveal their business strategies via public job ads. Let's play devil's advocate for a second and pretend that Google had some kind of skunk works project underway meant to try and make a splash in the social gaming space. It would make sense to keep that information on the DL, grab some engineers from other internal groups, have your execs and recruiters work their networks on the phone or online to seek out the talent they need, and really do what they could to keep the word that they were looking for a rockstar Games Manager off the radar of the rest of the Silicon Valley talent sharks.
Again for the purposes of this piece we are assuming Google would benefit from keeping these aspirations for Social Gaming under wraps for a while, so posting an ad like this sends a red flag up to all the other competitors in the space, and gives them public affirmation and impetus to take action, either offensive or defensive. Does the job ad serve as a signal of strategy that a smart recruiter would have never posted publicly, preferring to work this under the radar so as not to broadcast the company intentions in the space?
Is lazy or ineffective recruiting giving away too much?
Or is Google pulling a classic sleight of hand maneuver, posting a job it really will never fill, fr a business it may or may not be interested in, just to throw the pack off of the scent?
How much do you monitor the job ads of your competitors?
Reader Comments (4)
In my experience the more you say in a job ad that arouses interest and intrigue,the better. It had to be honest of course, and it's a no-no if it's deemed to be confidential information but who wouldn't want to hear of new innovations and challenges, working at the leading edge of something? Humans are led by their emotions. Too many job ads fail to stimulate whatsoever. They are flat, lifeless cut and pasted checklists with all the allure of a dead sheep. The more you tell, when told well, the ore you sell - the job AND the organisation.
Agree on both counts: job postings can be a great way to pick up company information. How much they are hiring, in what category, and where. Also, very much agree with Alconcalcia's comment on most job postings having "all the allure of a dead sheep." Great companies don't worry so much about what everyone else is doing; they focus on their own plans and on hiring the best candidates. So in this case my vote goes to Google for their choice to make it sound exciting, even if they gave a little away. Ultimately, what did they really give away? I don't see any loss for Google here.
Back when I was an employee, I used to peruse the job postings of our competitors to figure out where they were headed next. This is nothing new. The only way companies can avoid this is to use a recruiter and "hide" their identities, thereby reducing their chances of finding top talent.
freelance writer