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Inside Google's marketing-style approach to recruiting

Google's decision to view work as a product it's trying to sell has completely shifted how it approaches recruitment interviews, its strategic advisor for people experience says.

Ahead of his appearance at this year's Australasian Talent Conference, Dart Lindsley has told a briefing that during his eight years at Google, he has conducted research by interviewing candidates using marketing-style questions about "product work" – reflecting that Google has reframed its business model to view employees as "customers" and work as "a product that we're selling".

This is fundamental to how Google runs its companies, Lindsley says – all are now "multisided businesses", meaning they have two customers: a traditional customer and employees – "and we need to structure ourselves and change our business models to [reflect] that".

"The roles of managers change fundamentally when employees are customers," Lindsley adds...