
Hire by Google: Applicant tracking system and recruiting software (2017) - iovrthoughtthis
https://hire.google.com
======
hkdobrev
We're using it as our applicant tracking system.

My feeling is this is a separate team as it's in the end hosted on
hire.withgoogle.com. Probably the team got acquired and it was initially run
as an experiment. Anyway, this is just an assumption.

The tool is quite good and the price is not that high compared to others. It's
like an add-on on top of G Suite compared to the built-in apps, but has pretty
tight integration with GMail and Calendar.

You can configure it quite a bit and the only thing that seems to be inherited
from Google own hiring practices is the interview scheduling where X number of
people would do back-to-back interviews with the candidate. But this could
also be worked around if not needed.

One thing which is a weak spot is the careers iframe you can embed. They also
provide a JSON feed so you can render yourself, but the built-in rendering is
so basic they basically force you not to use it.

Overall, we're pretty happy with it for the couple of months we've used it and
it certainly is neither a blocker or an enabler of bad hiring practices as
mentioned in some of the other comments.

~~~
ageitgey
> My feeling is this is a separate team as it's in the end hosted on
> hire.withgoogle.com. Probably the team got acquired and it was initially run
> as an experiment. Anyway, this is just an assumption.

You're correct, it was a startup they acquired -
[https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/bebop](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/bebop)

~~~
hobo_mark
Wow, so that's how Diane Greene ended up at Google? (she's now CEO of Google
Cloud).

~~~
fstanis
She also sits in Alphabet's Board of Directors:
[https://abc.xyz/investor/other/board.html](https://abc.xyz/investor/other/board.html)

IIRC, she's been there since 2012. Her role in Google [Cloud] came much after.

------
amitutk
I wanted to purchase subscription to Google Hire. I literally had the credit
card in my hand. But there was no way to pay. Not even a way to sign up for a
free trial right away. I called them several times, no response.

More than a month later, someone finally responded. The person sounded like he
is doing me a favor by getting back. In the meantime I started using another
ATS that worked well for us. The salesperson response was effectively, "duh
... we are Google".

I see they have the pricing online now: [https://hire.google.com/request-
demo/](https://hire.google.com/request-demo/). But still no way to pay or sign
up for a trial right away.

~~~
doh
I signed up to see what it looks like. I immediately received this email

    
    
      Thank you so much for your interest in Hire by Google. Here's [0] a short 
      video demo to see Hire in action. For more in-depth info on Hire features, 
      check out our YouTube channel [1]. 
      You can also sign up for a live Hire demo webinar here. [2]
    
      An annual license for Hire is just $100/month for companies 
      with less than 25 employees, and $200/month for companies with 
      26-50 employees.
    
      If you're ready to move forward, just reply to this email and I'll be 
      happy to send you an order form to add Hire to your G Suite account. 
      Please don’t hesitate to reach out to me if you have any questions.
    
      Looking forward to hearing from you soon!
    
      PS - If you are larger than 50 employees let me know and we can provide a quote.
    
    

[0] [https://info.hire.bebop.co/Introduction-to-
Hire.html](https://info.hire.bebop.co/Introduction-to-Hire.html)

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs0N4b7N8wLY6_4ZHar70Cg/vid...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs0N4b7N8wLY6_4ZHar70Cg/videos)

[2]
[https://info.hire.bebop.co/HireWebinarSeries.html](https://info.hire.bebop.co/HireWebinarSeries.html)

------
neil_s
So much FUD about Google collecting "data" in this thread, from people who
think data is just automatically equivalent to heaps of money.

This is a paid software product for businesses, which makes Google money and
has a strict data usage policy saying "G Suite customers own their data, not
Google. The data that G Suite organizations and users put into our systems is
theirs, and we do not scan it for advertisements nor sell it to third
parties."

[https://gsuite.google.com/learn-more/security/security-
white...](https://gsuite.google.com/learn-more/security/security-
whitepaper/page-6.html)

Disclaimer: I do work at El Goog, but not on this product. I just find the
vague wolf-crying annoying.

~~~
antsar
What about scanning it not for advertising? Like, say, ML training (as
speculated elsewhere in this thread)? Seems like that statement could’ve been
much stronger if Google actually meant that.

~~~
neil_s
Seriously, the page I've linked to is 2 paragraphs, just read it.

It explicitly states that data IS used for ML training, to provide useful
features to the customers:

"Google indexes customer data to provide beneficial services, such as spam
filtering, virus detection, spellcheck and the ability to search for emails
and files within an individual account."

Individual customer agreements may have more specifications on top, but I
don't think any rational company in the world would ask for email without spam
filtering because of some abstract fear of machine learning or "scanning" of
data.

------
bradleyjg
Other posters seem to have concerns about google siphoning data from this
product. I wouldn’t be especially worried about that.

A much bigger concern for me would be that this product is not and will never
be core to google’s business. Will it be around a year from now? Will be
around but utterly neglected as whatever opaque process inside google causes
it to lose interest in yet another project?

I’d rather buy recruiting software from a company in the recruiting software
business.

~~~
clubm8
>A much bigger concern for me would be that this product is not and will never
be core to google’s business.

I think it depends. Is this an internal tool they decided to monetize? If
they're dogfooding it's much less likely they'll cancel it

~~~
jobigoud
> If they're dogfooding it's much less likely they'll cancel it

I think it's just as likely. Another team will create a different product
doing the same thing in a different way and they will now dogfood that new
one.

~~~
mygo
.... umm, no.

If anything they will just change it up and disappoint people who liked it
just the way it was.

As they are doing with GMail.

They _did_ create “Inbox” to do the same thing as GMail (email) in a different
way... But they’re killing Inbox and just making changes to GMail.

~~~
dhimes
...which kind of pisses me off because I use Inbox.

------
jamest
This is the product that evolved from the Bebop acquisition (Diane Greene's
company that was acquired to bring her in to lead Google Cloud).

Crunchbase: [https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/bebop#section-
overvi...](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/bebop#section-overview)

Previous HN discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10839646](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10839646)

------
polskibus
What's next? Google CRM? Google ERP? Similar story to Microsoft' invoicing
system that had been rolled out a while back. The smaller players will most
likely get pushed out (even if their product is better but offers less
horizontally), sometimes while paying for computing power on the platform that
is competing with them.

------
alecco
Since when are Google's hiring practices good? As many of us experienced, the
process is dismal and extremely disrespectful with the candidates. They get
away with it because of their fame.

    
    
      * Bad scheduling of phone interviews
      * No answers for long swaths of time
      * 1 liner rejection emails
      * Terrible matching of skills vs jobs
        (e.g. offering entry level SRE to experienced people)
      * Cookie-cutter interviews
    

Now, what makes me wonder is why are they making this system? What's in it for
Google? And good luck expecting them to keep it up for more than a couple of
years.

~~~
eveningcoffee
> What's in it for Google?

Control and data? Perhaps they have something dystopian in mind?

Edit: It is also another reason to hide from Google.

~~~
andybak
> Perhaps they have something dystopian in mind?

Oh come on. We've all conceded the days of "Don't be evil" are long gone but
Google's type of evil hasn't quite shifted to that of cackling supervillain.
It's an evil bred from arrogance, naivety and self-interest - not from an
active intent to corrupt society.

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
In other words: It's the same kind of evil as all real evil, not the kind of
evil that is purely fictional. Your point being?

~~~
andybak
I think you're making the same point as me in that case. It was morningcoffee
that had James Bond supervillains in mind.

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
IC--I read them more as "something that _is_ dystopian" rather than "something
that is _intended_ to be dystopian".

------
Lio
Google is in publicly collected health care data. Google is in surveillance
via location service. Google is browser tracking.

Presumably if you want to apply for a job with a company that uses Google Hire
you won’t be opt out of Google processing your personal data.

It’s the candidate “discovery” feature that worries me the most. Howlong
before Google offersto prefilter candidates it thinks are bad eggs based on
the profile it’s building on you?

~~~
TangoTrotFox
Which in turn would naturally include anybody Google has chosen to blacklist
from their services for whatever opaque reason. Google's vision of the future
seems to have changed fairly starkly in recent years and in a very bad way.
Hopefully this is yet another Google service flop because the alternative is
edging rapidly towards dystopia.

------
sieabahlpark
So when is it shutting down?

~~~
sidcool
This is a GSuite product, so most likely it's not going away for a long time.

------
manbash
This seems to be around since 2017. What am I missing?

------
pknerd
So far Google is not sure about good talent other companies hire. Now with
this system, they can use AI/ML to steal the potential job quitter earlier
than he is hired by the competitor.

Well done guys!

~~~
abalos
Please read this: [https://gsuite.google.com/learn-more/security/security-
white...](https://gsuite.google.com/learn-more/security/security-
whitepaper/page-6.html)

~~~
pknerd
Read above. No where I mentioned about Ads.

------
ironjunkie
I'm wondering when the Google brand is going to go down in reputation.

It seems to me that the majority still sees them as a badge of engineering
excellence and firmly believe that people working there are way above average.
I don't think that's the case anymore despite the huge amount of associated
koolaid.

This product is a typical example of Google using their brand name to get a
product out that otherwise nobody would even look at.

~~~
gomox
If they get interview scheduling integrations right they are already better
than 99% of everything else out there.

------
xae342
They used to not even offer a demo, and on the phone they were pretty glib
about paying for a year to try it out. The fatal flaw was that since it’s not
part of an HRMS system it’s not integrated into the whole employee lifecycle,
so other solutions made more sense. We went with BambooHR which also has ATS
along with everything else you need and was pretty cheap.

------
samfisher83
Is all your data private or google using all the data. It doesn't seem
explicit on the feature page.

------
throw2016
This is a negative business model and should be subject to anti-trust. It's
another ruse to hoover up more data by Google. How are software companies
going to compete with a google subsidized alternative?

Tomorrow google could attack other software verticals with their vampire data
collection business model with negative dystopian externalities for society,
businesses and their employees.

Who is going to pay for all the software employees made redundant by these
kinds of business models? This is a kind of dumping which is illegal in most
economic systems.

~~~
jsnell
You consider selling software for a monthly fee (with the price starting at
$100/month) to be a negative business model? Just how much do you think the
price should have been to not count as "subsidized"?

------
vzaliva
The pricing is wrong. It is based on the size of the company. It should be
based on the number of candidates/resumes in pipeline.

------
shady-lady
a testimonial from that page:

> Scheduling interviews used to take a long time, but now it takes just a few
> clicks

The software must be pretty basic if that's a featured quote. What were the
deciding factors for who they reach out to for these quotes? If that's one of
the better answers, my respect for HR people has sunk to a new low.

------
sqln00b
I'm looking for the counterpart: An offer/application/headhunter/company
tracking system

------
foobaw
Given that there are dominating ATS products like Lever, Greenhouse, etc, this
will likely just quietly shut-down in a few years.

------
lgleason
We need to break up Google ASAP.

------
egberts1
The Google Applicant tracking system is most hostile toward deaf job
applicants, EVAH!

~~~
neil_s
How so?

------
Adamantcheese
Ah yes, yet another applicant tracking system that will likely not solve any
of the problems the other ones have had. Especially since I presume this has
been an internal tool for some time.

~~~
polskibus
It doesn't matter if it is good or bad. It matters that vendor locking
potential becomes greater.

------
jiveturkey
how did this make it onto HN? for some privacy bashing?

srsly, why is this interesting in the slightest?

------
gaius
A candidate's CV contains all sorts of personal data, their detailed work and
academic history, their contact details and work eligibility, maybe their date
of birth, address and personal interests. And it's being served up to Google
on a silver plate by this service! This is obviously a blatant attempt to
enrich their (shadow) profiles on people.

~~~
expertentipp
They failed miserably in the social networking domain, still trying their best
to collect complete detailed self-declared personal profiles.

