One of the most difficult tasks faced by all senior management in an organization is to set standards to follow when hiring staff. Knowing how to choose employees is probably the most important task in any firm as it will depend on the quality, values, knowledge and dedication of the selected staff, no matter how well the company operates.

Many recruiters base this, among other things, on the marks and quality of the university where the candidate was trained, but will this be enough? Recently Thomas Friedman, columnist for the New York Times and author of the bestselling book "The World is Flat", among others, interviewed a senior executive of Google, who said that for them, university marks and the result of the test that Google gives the applicants are important but not decisive when hiring.  Google first seeks to discover the candidate's cognitive ability and this does not refer to his or her IQ, but rather his or her ability to learn. This ability is related to the individual's ability to process information "on the fly", i.e. while being exposed to new experiences.

The second factor is called the ability of emerging leadership. This means that when confronted with a problem to solve as a team, the candidate will eventually have the ability to take on the challenge of leading. It is not necessarily looking for this condition to surface immediately, but it is looking for it to be latent.

The third factor that Google is looking for is the applicant's ability to be modest and that he or she takes on the responsibility assigned to him or her by the organization. It is undesirable for the employee to mimic the organization chart and only try to fulfill the orders received. It is sought that the employee is proactive and engages with the firm. He or she must feel proud to belong to it.

As for modesty, intellectual modesty is favored. No matter how well prepared the candidate is, if he or she is not modest, it will be difficult for him or her to learn and if he or she takes on a managerial position, it will be difficult to allow his or her subordinates to contribute ideas as he or she will tend to overshadow them. This undermines creativity and innovation.

Modesty does not mean not fighting for what you believe in but rather they are looking for people with an ego that is as big as it is small. Big for fiercely defending his or her views while being small for listening to colleagues in search of a superior solution that is the fruit of team work. The last thing recruiters in Google look for is experience. Probably due to the fact that it operates in the field of technology where obsolescence is rapid, experience is not properly valued. An employee with a high capacity to learn, says the director of Google, will most likely assimilate what to do and if he or she has initiative, will soon propose better methods to implement in the company.

A world where constant change is its trademark requires organizations to seek talent with qualities that encourage innovation, because without it, there is no way to compete effectively in a competitive environment like this.