About the Author
Mike West is a pioneer in the field of people analytics. He was a founding member of what we now call people analytics at Merck, PetSmart, Google, Children’s Health Dallas, Jawbone, and Pure Storage. He has a dual B.S. degree in Sociology and Psychology from Northern Arizona University and a master’s degree in Human Resources and Industrial Relations from the University of Minnesota. His expertise in Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS) has been developed on the job. All said, Mike has been doing innovate work at the intersection of people science, statistics, strategy and systems for over 10 companies, in over 7 industries, over 20 years.
Mike was one of a handful of early analytical hires on Google’s world-renowned People Operations team, credited with using data to reinvent human resources and in the process turning Google into the talent magnet that it is today. Mike’s contributions at Google included work on the first HR data reporting architecture, the first professional employee survey design, the first benefits analytics, the first employee onboarding analytics and the first work on employee attrition, which included Google’s first employee exit prediction model. Since then, Google has built one of the most impressive reputations for people analytics in the world and has gone on to win the number one spot on the Fortune 100 Best Company to Work For list more than any other company in the awards history: 8 times and counting since Google first qualified ...