Talent Makers

Expert Insights: Gerardo Alvarez

Please give us a little background about what you do.

I work at Alphabet, the parent company of Google. I previously was part of a team called Mergers and Acquisitions—Technical Integrations. It focused on a variety of aspects of integrating acquired companies into Alphabet. I've also worked with most of the Alphabet companies on business system implementations, including HR and finance systems.

Could you describe the types of companies you work on at Alphabet?

Not counting Google, they range from companies that have started with just a handful of employees up to medium-sized businesses at the time that they became independent companies. They also range from being new to hiring, to having established practices around it. No matter the size, most of them have been in a pretty explosive growth phase.

How do you go about implementing a structured hiring approach within a new organization?

First, a structured approach definitely helps, because it creates consistency. When it's time to analyze data and find insights, you can actually find the data you need. If instead you have an ad hoc approach, where people just jump in and start doing things instead of thinking what should be in place, then it will be very difficult to gain insights. They end up spending their time cleaning up after themselves.

You need stakeholder agreement and systems discipline in order to implement structured hiring. Those companies that I've worked with that know what they ...