Google PR Doesn’t Want To Hire Professionals
Put this in the “Doesn’t Surprise Anyone” category.
Tom Foremski was at Google last month, talking to David Krane and Brian O’Shaughnessy, corporate communications guys at the search company. They told him their staffs are being doubled this month, which is similar to what I heard in February from PR guys at Google New York. Google’s hiring a lot of people in public relations, as any growing company will have to do.
What is shocking is that they revealed that it is the policy of Elliot Schrage, head of corporate communications, that Google does not hire anyone for PR with PR experience. Yeah, no one. No one with experience at an advertising firm, no one with journalism experience, and no one with PR industry experience. They only hire top grads from the top schools.
How utterly bullheaded. The PR industry is filled with people who have become stars without getting specific degrees, especially since some of the most ambitious and talented people were too hungry to sit through useless classes on PR theory. Many of the greatest journalists ever never got journalism degrees. I took journalism courses, and I dropped them, because they taught me nothing about the profession and didn’t give me the skills I needed.
More importantly, Google’s PR doesn’t work. The entire industry knows it, the entire media knows it. If it isn’t working, and you’ve got the most unorthodox hiring policy of any major corporation, then you change the policy. Public opinion of Google is dropping, and that’s the job of the department that refuses to hire anyone with demonstrated talent!
At least I don’t have to worry about whether I’ll ever work at Google. Now I know not to bother.
Seriously, who thought this was going to work? You need some experienced people who know how things work, otherwise you make mistakes from having a ton of academic and zero practical experience.
A note:
Elliot Schrage
Vice President, Global Communications & Public AffairsElliot Schrage is a lawyer and business advisor with 20 years of experience at the intersection of global business strategy and public policy.
I think to say that public opinion is dropping is a bit of an under-exageration in the UK (im not too sure about the USA). Our media here are continually winding us up with stories about how google is building up huge databases of information about us in order to eventually gain control over our lives and sell our secrets and rule the world etc… The public here is becoming slowly scared of google, and google themselves are doing NOTHING to stop it. I have never heard a word of defnese from google, only more announcments about new products which the media are keen to point out are profiling us.
Comment by Mortalmatt | June 16, 2007
[…] האם יכול להיות שגוגל לא מעוניינת באנשי יחסי ציבור מנוסים? קשה להאמין, אבל עדיין שווה הצצה. […]
Pingback by מקבץ יומי: ראיונות בגוגל, פרצת אבטחה ב-Google Docs ויחסי ציבור » Ben-Ari.Name | June 18, 2007