In the United States, there are roughly 10 jobs for every qualified candidate in the field of software engineering alone. In a time of so much unemployment, how can Georgians capitalize on this hunger for technical talent?
I work for Google, and having a full pipeline of great recruits is critical to our success. But my interest is also personal. I’m a lifelong Georgian. I went to Carrollton High School, studied computer science at Georgia Tech and have worked in Atlanta technology companies for my entire career. When Google approached me about a job, instead of moving my family to Silicon Valley, I worked with the company to start an engineering office here in Atlanta in 2005.
At Google Atlanta, we’ve read thousands of résumés, interviewed hundreds of candidates and hired a few dozen — all of whom are world-class engineers of the sort described below who could have their pick of job offers from any tech company in the world.
For any tech company, it isn’t unusual to hire only a tiny percentage of applicants, but when those ratios are so small, hiring more people requires a very large pool of qualified applicants.
How can we maximize the number of qualified applicants? It’s a big and fundamental question for Georgia and, in my opinion, it is as much a cultural question as a business and education question.
Most people already know that technology evolves rapidly, and the Internet makes it move faster still. Today’s “top technical skills” are tomorrow’s outdated buzzwords. There is no single set of discrete skills one can learn that will last an entire career in high-tech.
Companies typically care much more about hiring the right kind of person. Ideal recruits are creative, adaptable and autonomous, and they have achieved a deep understanding of core subjects such as math, physics and computer science that make it possible to have a razor-sharp intuition and an ability to assimilate new subjects and technologies quickly, without even the expectation of being trained; they train themselves on the skills du jour as the need arises and with minimum help or structure.
We need to produce not just technology consumers, but technology creators. How can we achieve this kind of workforce in Georgia? I believe that it starts with kids. Google’s analysis of its own engineers found that exposure to computer science in high school, or earlier, greatly influenced their school and career trajectory. Building awareness of engineering subjects among young students is a great starting point, which is why we offer initiatives such as Computer Science for High School (cs4hs.com) and the Google Science Fair. Another place to start is Computer Science Education Week (csedweek.org).
We need to be raising kids who genuinely love learning, especially math, physics and computer science, and not just in the abstract. Being “book smart” is not enough, and no amount of drill-and-kill standardized testing is a sufficient measure of our success.
If, rather than worrying excessively about their test scores, kids have a burning desire to actually build stuff, they begin to view these traditionally daunting subjects as so many tools in their toolbox.
Is physics class interesting? It is jaw-droppingly interesting to the kid who wants to program the next Angry Birds. Is geography fun? It is for a kid who wants to create the next Google Maps. Is geometry cool? It’s extremely cool for the kid who dreams of working on the SketchUp team one day.
It’s tantalizing to imagine a day in Georgia’s future when there is widespread awareness that developing expertise in engineering subjects is not only fun but is also one of the surest paths to success.
Bruce Johnson is Atlanta site and engineering director for Google.
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