Google executive: Grades don't matter

Want a job at Google's growing Ann Arbor campus?

Don't worry about your grades. Or where you went to college.

A top Google executive says it doesn't matter.

"We used to care a lot about where you went to school," Google executive Laszlo Bock said. "We found that that has no relationship with how you perform."

Bock, author of the recently released book "Work Rules!" on the Internet giant's unique hiring process, spoke this morning at the Forbes Reinvent America Workforce Summit in downtown Detroit. He is senior vice president of people operations at Google.

His comments come as Google is planning a major corporate campus in Ann Arbor. The company plans to build a new facility on the city's north side. It will relocate its current Ann Arbor office from the city's downtown to 140,000 square feet of space on Traverwood Drive in 2016.

Google has not disclosed how many employees it plans to add in Ann Arbor, but the growth is expected to be significant. It currently has more than 400 employees in Ann Arbor and Birmingham.

Laszlo said the company has shifted its hiring strategies after realizing that a person's academic background bears no relationship to job performance.

"It is a mistake, and we don't focus on that anymore," he said.

Laszlo also advocated for paying high-performing workers considerably more than low-performing employees in the same job.

"It makes no sense" to pay them only slightly more, he said.

He compared it to the NBA, where superstar LeBron James earns substantially more than average players. No one would argue that James is worth only slightly more, Laszlo says, even though James performs the same job.

Contact Nathan Bomey: 313-223-4743 or nbomey@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @NathanBomey.