Google designed an algorithm to solve its staffing problems. The algorithm is designed to help the organization identify employees most likely to quit. The Wall Street Journal put it this way:

The Internet search giant recently began crunching data from employee reviews and promotion and pay histories in a mathematical formula Google says can identify which of its 20,000 employees are most likely to quit.

Yeah. The folks who brought us the best and cool search engine, will now calculate and determine whom they might risk to loose. One of the boffins at Google, Lazlo Bock, believes the algorithm can get "in people's heads" and determine they will leave before they will know it. Though I can't comment on using an algortithm to predict who will quit, I am sceptical about the algorithm mentality already ruling the other side of keeping talent; I mean the one that brings talent in, or recruits new DNA into Big Brother.

I worked with Google recruiters in the past, they courted us by times to help them finding country managers for operations in emerging markets with fast growing economies;  but also with poor information infrastructure and legislation, and in some cases, markets that function in politically and culturally closed societies.

The power Google holds to search information on the web, and also on its own corporate networks, is immense. It permeates all aspects of its business, including talent acquisition. To my experience, the power of Google Corp. and its associated status leads by times to an attitude that is self defeating because the company looses a sense of realism most commonly closely linked to the admirable trait of humbleness.

It therefore fails to recognize talent outside predefined criteria of its search algorithms; criteria it confidently ascribes the power of dogma. While such criteria are quite valid in the First World, they are practically inapplicable to the type of emerging markets described above. The type of these c"hiseled in stone" commandments, such as Ivy League education, top university scores, and previous employment, can lead to the wrong candidates being hired, and the right ones not to be considered.

The internal recruitment managers Google apply similar algorithms to find candidates all over the globe, and of course, by times get stuck because the right professionals simply do not show up on their screens. This for various reasons, the most common one because the majority of professionals have degrees not from the "right" universities, do not have the "right" work experience, or not the "right" seniority.

For instance, the son of a poor factory worker in an ex-communist country who build the most successful portal in that country is not considered a candidate because he got his MBA from a UK University considered to be not "as good" as Europe's top universities. Hey, he has a local engineering degree, saved all he could get to receive a graduate education in the UK, to return and create upon his return the most valuable internet property and business in his country. The algorithm mentality completely missed a relevant candidate.

Furthermore, there is no algorithm providing a way to distinguish between false and correct information. I remember an "ideal" candidate to be whisked away to London to undergo the last interviews for a country management position in a North Africa. Only during the final due diligence of the candidate's education and career history it became clear he faked generously parts of his CV, prompting a colleague to swallow his "I told you so".

There is no algorithm that can capture the cultural finesse required to separate the wheat from the chaff. This issue won't be much of a deal breaker in the US or Western Europe, just don't extend it over-zealously to all markets and countries. A dose of some good, old common-sense modesty is sometimes the best antidote to algorithmitis.

As for an algorithm to identify people before they resign, must somehow be able, as the Google boffin Bock claims, know the thoughts of employees before they do. Next year we might get a full-blown psychoanalytic algorithm as result.

It's a brave new world, Dave.