Google Recruiting wants to redesign the front end of the Research Scientist hiring process so every candidate begins with a human conversation with either a recruiter or hiring manager before entering technical evaluation. The goal is to improve candidate experience and reduce wasted interviewer time, while preserving fairness, speed, and hiring quality for high-volume roles across Google Research and DeepMind-aligned teams.
You are the program manager leading this effort across a 12-person cross-functional team: 4 recruiters, 2 recruiting operations analysts, 2 software engineers supporting the internal applicant workflow in Google Hire-equivalent systems, 1 people analytics partner, 1 legal/privacy partner, 1 hiring committee representative, and 1 UX researcher. Leadership wants a pilot live in 10 weeks because offer acceptance rates for Research Scientist candidates dropped from 68% to 59% over the last two quarters.
Recruiting leadership wants faster screening and a better candidate experience. Hiring managers want more control over who enters the process. Legal and People Operations want consistency, documentation, and bias safeguards. Engineering wants minimal changes to internal tooling this quarter because they are already committed to a separate interviewer scheduling migration.