Google's furious hiring year slowed down considerably in the final quarter of 2011, the company reported today in its earnings announcement.
From September 30 through December 31 of last year, the Mountain View, Calif. company added just 1,114 new employees. For many companies that would be a significant number, but for Google it was a drop in the bucket in what was its biggest hiring year since its founding in 1998.
In all, Google added 8,067 employees in 2011, bringing total headcount to 32,467. The biggest hiring quarter this year was between July and October, when the company added 2,585 full-time employees.
Google announced at the beginning of 2011 that planned to hire more than the 6,000 it brought on in 2007, its then-biggest hiring year. The recruitment plans were part of Chief Executive Larry Page's strategy to speed up Google's product development and more aggressively pursue its mission of organizing all of the world's information.
In June, FINS went inside the Google hiring process. We learned that the company had reduced the number of interviews candidates were put through from 14 to four, began recruiting at less prestigious universities than it had in past, and reached out to job candidates who had been turned down for jobs in the past to see if there might now be positions for them.
Also today, Google was named the best company to work for by Fortune magazine. The company last held the number one spot in 2007.
Write to Joseph Walker at Joseph.Walker@dowjones.com
