James Butler has been a Business Process and Compliance Specialist at Google in London for five months. He joined the firm after a two-year stint on Deloitte’s training program for consultants.
To work for Google you need a great academic record says Butler, who graduated from UCL and then Imperial College Business School.
“Try to show that you’re as ‘Google-y’ as possible,” he adds. Being “Google-y”, he explains, is personality based. “It’s different for each person, there’s no strict definition. Anything cool that makes you interesting as a person.”
This could be sports you’re involved in, instruments you play or whether you’ve volunteered for charity.
Butler had six interviews over three months. At each stage he had no idea how many more stages he had to pass. He was tested on his knowledge of Google products and Google tools, including Adwords. He was also tested on hot topics in the industry, and Google’s direction within it.
He’s now in Google’s business process and compliance team, working with a number of business groups to make sure processes in place are efficient, ethical, and compliant with Google internal rules; working with new sales teams to roll out products in new countries, and making improvements to processes.
Butler read economics and geography at University College London. He knew he wanted a career in business, but he didn’t feel ready to start work.
After an open day at Imperial College Business School, he decided to plunge straight into the School’s graduate program, and completed the one-year MSc in Management in 2008.
Butler learned plenty in the classroom at Imperial that he could apply to a work environment. “In terms of course content it was all new for everyone… it’s designed for people who haven’t studied business.”
But it was what he learned outside the classroom that really helped him.
On the MSc Management program, all students are grouped into syndicates at the start of the year, and do all their coursework in that group for the year.
It was an important lesson in teamwork, says Butler. “There are people you get on with and people you don’t get on with, but at the end you have to submit one piece of work to get the grade.”
There is a different team leader for every piece of coursework, so everyone gets a chance to hone their leadership skills too, driving the work and assigning tasks. “It was good for building up interpersonal skills,” Butler says, “and it prepared me for Deloitte, where the environment is team-based too.”
The program also helped Butler land that all-important first job, on the graduate training scheme at Big Four consulting firm Deloitte. “The Msc definitely gives you something above everyone else… a foot in the door,” he says, particularly for the first interview. “It raises your profile and helps you get noticed.”
At Deloitte he got grounding in business processes and compliance, working with clients like Barclays, Goldman Sachs and the Home Office. But after two years he knew he wanted to work with a firm that makes “more of a difference to people’s everyday lives.”
“Everyone can associate with Google,” says Butler. “At Deloitte I would often be helping a company with a system that doesn’t really affect end users.”
His experience of project-based work is also an asset to Google, where he works on different projects with different product teams within the firm.
Butler applied to the job directly after seeing it advertised on Google’s jobs page, but 40 or 50 per cent of people who work at Google are referred.
So where are the opportunities at Google? He advises interested people to keep checking on the firm’s vacancies: “There are always going to be engineering and sales roles,” he says. The Adwords business is already large and display ads and YouTube products are growing.
Butler is also excited about Google TV, a platform for watching TV through the internet, and integrating TV and movies with related content on the web. It launched recently in partnership with major entertainment firms like Turner, NBC and HBO.
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