Google clicks with job-seekers

Growing firm eyes more office space

When your company's name is so well-known that it's used as a verb, it's hardly a surprise to see the payroll growing.

Google Boston -- which leases an 18,000-square-foot space on the seventh floor of One Broadway in Kendall Square in Cambridge -- is expanding.

The number of employees in Google's Cambridge office has doubled in the last four months -- and the company is still hiring, said the firm's engineering and site director, Steve Vinter. Company officials wouldn't specify the number of current employees, except to say it was more than 50.

"If you would have come in here four months ago, it would have seemed half-filled," Vinter said. "Right now it's starting to be a little tight, whereas before it wasn't."

Vinter laughed when asked if there are lines for the bathroom, but said that video conferencing rooms have become hard to book between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. He also said he noticed a line in the cafeteria for the first time this month.

It was "long enough to make good conversation," he said.

The Cambridge office of Google Inc., based in Mountain View, Calif., is one of 20 in the United States and 40 in the world. This office houses an advertising department, which sells customized search services to large businesses, and an engineering department, which works with other Google offices to develop search applications for digital books and cellphones.

Despite the apparent shortage of office space, Google Boston is not slowing down on hiring.

On July 25, the company held its largest recruitment event in Boston to date, according to Google spokeswoman Sunny Gettinger. The Google Boston Open House, which was advertised on Facebook and held at the Institute of Contemporary Art, attracted approximately 100 prospective employees to an evening of appetizers, drinks, networking, and a talk by YouTube's chief marketing officer, Suzie Reider.

Eleven types of positions are listed on the jobs website for Google Boston, and Java engineering and technical writing positions were added in the last two weeks, Vinter said. Google is looking to hire a number of employees in each of the positions.

"We don't have classic hiring targets. We are expanding and we are looking for great people across the board," Gettinger said. "We're going to hire as many great people as we can find."

Google is also looking for additional office space to accommodate new employees, including both temporary space and more permanent locations, according to Vinter.

"We are definitely making arrangements all the time," he said.

Officials would not say when or where the company will lease additional space.

Google's Kendall Square office is just around the corner from an outpost of the Microsoft Corp., which signed an agreement to lease four floors at One Memorial Drive in June.

Vintner said he welcomes Microsoft to the neighborhood, noting, "It's really healthy for industry leaders in high-tech areas to be concentrated in the same area because it encourages really qualified people to stay in the area."

Even with Microsoft nearby, qualified applicants in the Boston area are not hard to find, he said, because of proximity to schools that focus on computer science and engineering.

"The biggest advantage is that there's a great pool of talented people here," he said.

Jim Klocke, executive vice president of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, is happy about Google and Microsoft expanding their presence in Cambridge.

"That's the kind of job growth we like to see," Klocke said. "Because these are great jobs, they pay well, they support spinoff jobs. . . . They are the kind of jobs that help expand our reputation for innovation."

Source:www.boston.com