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Tag: companies

  • You’re Probably Not Prepared to Interview At Google or Facebook

    If you’re looking to work for Google, Microsoft, or Facebook – be prepared for a fairly grueling interview process.

    That’s the takeaway from a new study from Glassdoor. The workplace tracking company looked at average interview ratings of some top companies (a metric that Glassdoor already measures) and found that among the major tech companies, it’s hardest to interview at Google.

    Google actually finished 8th on the list of the 25 hardest interviews with a difficulty score of 3.6 out of 5. 62% of former interviewees gave the experience a positive rating, however, with only 21% giving it a negative rating. The average length of the entire interview process at Google is 37 days.

    Moving on down the list, Microsoft placed 16th with a difficulty rating of 3.4. The average length of the process there was 29 days.

    Facebook apparently has a less strenuous process – but hard enough to land it on Glassdoor’s top 25 list. Coming in #22, Facebook’s interview process lasts 30 days on average and was given an average difficulty of 3.3.

    Consulting firm McKinney & Company topped the list.

    Bottom line – the interviewing process at some of these companies is pretty brutal.

    But once you get there, you’re likely to approve of the management – at least the top dogs. Earlier this year, Glassdoor conducted another sort of study – this one into the confidence ratings of various CEOs. In other words, Glassdoor looked at how many employees approve of the job their fearless leaders (CEOs) are doing. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg topped the list with a 99% approval rating.

    Other notable CEOs from tech made the list, including Google’s Larry Page, who came in 11th with a 95% approval rating. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos took 16th with a 93% rating and Dell’s Michael Dell came in 49th with an 81% rating. Back in 2012, Apple’s Tim Cook took the crown. This year, he has slipped to #18 on the list.

  • Google Tops List of Best Companies to Work for…Again

    Google, who employs over 34,000 people in the U.S., has just been given Fortune’s top honor in their annual “100 Best Companies to Work for” list. This is the second year in a row that Google has taken the top spot, and fourth year all-time.

    Two years ago, Google came in 4th.

    “The Internet juggernaut takes the Best Companies crown for the fourth time, and not just for the 100,000 hours of subsidized massages it doled out in 2012. New this year are three wellness centers and a seven-acre sports complex, which includes a roller hockey rink; courts for basketball, bocce, and shuffle ball; and horseshoe pits,” says Fortune in their justification.

    Last year, Fortune raved about the bowling alley, free eyebrow shaping, and 25 employee cafes.

    So there are a lot of cool things to do at Google between work sessions, and that’s apparently what Fortune values when making this list.

    The rest of the top five is as follows: SAS, CHG Healthcare Services, The Boston Consulting Group, and Wegmans Food Markets.

    When it comes to just tech companies, we find some more as we move down the list. Qualcomm comes in at #11, for instance. Salesforce ranks #19 and Rackspace Hosting ranks #34. Microsoft comes in at #75 – but you wont see any of the other ‘big four’ on there. That’s right, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon are not ranked in Fortune’s top 100.

  • Google Tops Fortune’s 100 Best Companies To Work For List

    Google has jumped three spots to reclaim the title of “Best Company To Work For.” The list, published by Fortune, is in its 15th year of existence.

    In 2011, Google came in fourth place on the annual list. The company had previously been declared #1 in 2008.

    What’s so amazing about Google? Here’s what they say about the company:

    Everything was up at Google last year — revenue, profits, share price, paid search clicks, hiring — and so, too, was employee love; the search giant climbed three slots in our ranking to reclaim the top spot.

    The reason? Employees rave about their mission, the culture, and the famous perks of the Plex: bocce courts, a bowling alley, eyebrow shaping (for a fee) in the New York office. Then there’s the food: some 25 cafés companywide, all gratis.

    Wrote one Googler: “Employees are never more than 150 feet away from a well-stocked pantry.”

    And they didn’t even mention that rock climbing wall or the fact that all employees received a free Galaxy Nexus last Christmas.

    Here’s the rest of the top 10:

    1. Google
    2. Boston Consulting Group
    3. SAS Institute
    4. Wegmans Food Markets
    5. Edward Jones
    6. NetAPP
    7. Camden Property Trust
    8. Recreational Equipment (REI)
    9. CHG Healthcare Services
    10. Quicken Loans

    Boston Consulting group reclaimed the #2 spot, as last year’s #1, SAS, fell to #3 in 2012.

    Other notable internet entries on the list: Zappos.com ranked 11th, Salesforce.com ranked 27th and Adobe came in at 41. After a tumultuous 2011 (bad elephant PR, SOPA drama), GoDaddy.com still made the list at #93.

    Full List.

    [Lead image from Google’s London offices]

  • For Businesses, Twitter Interaction With Customers Pays Off

    For companies, there are plenty of reasons to maintain an active Twitter presence. Once you establish yourself on the network and begin to accumulate followers, you can use it for publicity purposes – to give your customers news and information on products, services and everything that’s going on with your business. You can also use Twitter to promote contests or deals in real-time.

    But Twitter isn’t one-sided, and it’s not a pulpit. And those companies that make the best use of Twitter are the ones that use it to interact with customers, more specifically, respond to customer complaints.

    But according to research from Maritz research company evolve24, not all companies are engaging in a dialogue with their customers on Twitter.

    evolve24 surveyed 1,298 U.S. consumers that were identified as active Twitter users who use the service to address complaints they have with companies and their products/services. Less that one-third (29%) said that they received a response from the company on Twitter regarding their complaint.

    49% of those surveyed said that they “expected” the company to read their tweet. And the older the respondent was, the more they expected the company to read the tweet.

    Out of those that received a response tweet from the company, a whopping 83% said that they either liked or loved hearing from them. And beyond that, nearly two-thirds said they were at least somewhat satisfied with the company’s response.

    Of those surveyed that failed to get a response to their complaint tweet, 86% said that they would have liked or loved to hear from the company. 63% said that they would not like it if the company responded to their complaint tweet with something that didn’t pertain to the complaint.

    It looks like the moral of the story here is that people respond extremely well when a company takes the time to respond to a complaint on Twitter – and not enough companies are utilizing this weapon. When people are upset about the way they have been treated by a company or dissatisfied with a product or service, they are already in a bad mood. When a company fails to respond to a complaint on Twitter it will just exacerbate the situation (especially for those who have the expectation of a response).

    And it’s amazing how satisfied the respondents were with the companies’ responses. 140 characters seem to go a long way.

    Of course, it’s not feasible for large companies to respond to every complaint directed towards them on Twitter. Take Coca Cola for instance. In the past few days, their Twitter strategy has seen them respond to dozens of positive mentions. Here’s one of the only responses to a semi-negative mention in that time frame:

    And even then, Coca Cola didn’t quite respond to the original query and they have yet to follow up on his followup.

    Here are a couple of examples of businesses responding effectively to Twitter complaints –

    If you’re a smaller business, it would appear that is in your best interest to not only maintain a Twitter presence, but actively respond to customer problems using the platform.

    And as your Twitter presence grows, and you get more and more followers, the volume of complaints will inevitably grow. But the chance to make a customer’s experience a little better with 140 characters or less will grow as well.

  • What Yahoo’s New Hires Are Responsible For

    What Yahoo’s New Hires Are Responsible For

    Yesterday, Yahoo announced some new additions to the company. They provided some Q&A with the new hires, but didn’t really get into what exactly they will be doing. We reached out to Yahoo to find out a little bit more about each new hire’s role with the company. 

    David Rice is Yahoo’s new VP of Media Products. In the past, he has worked with Yahoo’s Chief Product Officer Blake Irving. He worked for Yahoo several years ago. Now, a representative for Yahoo tells us, "David Rice will manage the strategy and execution for News, Sports, Finance, Entertainment, Lifestyles and Games product teams."

    John Matheny is Yahoo’s new SVP of Communications and Communities. Communications means Mail and Messenger. Communities means Flickr, Answers and Groups. "In this role, he will be responsible for delivering new strategic initiatives while growing and maintaining our best-in-class experiences," Yahoo tells us. 

    Bobby Figueroa comes to Yahoo from Google where he had responsibilities under the Product Management and Product Marketing team for all advertising products including AdWords, AdSense, and DoubleClick. He is Yahoo’s new VP of Consumer Advertising Experience. He is now "leading a team of engineers, product managers and user experience experts in charge of delivering the next-generation brand advertising experience in the areas of video, mobile, social and search," the company tells us.  

    Todd Papaioannou is Yahoo’s new VP of Cloud Computing. "Todd Papaioannou will be focused on cloud architecture for Yahoo!’s global cloud computing group," says Yahoo. He was previously at Teradata and Greenplum. At Teradata, he drove the whole cloud computing program, he says. 

    Finally, Bill Shaughnessy is Yahoo’s new SVP of Product Management. He is responsible for driving ongoing product strategy, product planning and product marketing across Yahoo’s global consumer and advertising products.