Project Background

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.

Key Stakeholders

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.

Constraints

• Pilot must launch in 10 weeks
• Budget is capped at $180,000
• No new headcount; only 20 engineering points are available
• Pilot scope is limited to 3 orgs, 25 hiring managers, and about 1,200 candidates per quarter
• Any process change must preserve existing compliance logging and candidate data retention rules

Complications

1. Two senior hiring managers disagree on who should own the first conversation: recruiters want standardization, while managers want direct control.
2. Historical data on early-stage candidate drop-off is incomplete because notes are stored inconsistently across Google Forms, email, and ATS records.
3. The interviewer scheduling migration will consume the same engineering team in weeks 6-8.

Your Task

1. Define the rollout plan for the new human-first intake process.
2. Recommend the MVP scope and trade-offs for the 10-week pilot.
3. Identify key risks, dependencies, and mitigation actions.
4. Specify success metrics and decision criteria for expanding beyond the pilot.
5. Explain how you would align recruiters, hiring managers, legal, and engineering on ownership and launch readiness.