Google Israel director: Hiring Arabs and haredim is hard

“For all the desire to recruit haredim and Arabs, it’s very difficult, because of wide culture gaps,” Google Israel director Einat Nemesh told “Globes” podcast and video editor Hila Weissberg at the “50 Most Influential Women” conference.

Nemesh, who by virtue of her position is responsible for diversity at Google Israel, said that a great deal of action had been taken in this area, but that there was a gap between what was desired and the situation on the ground. “I was very enthusiastic about the role when I took it up, but in practice we have moved the needle by nothing and a half. Even when we advertise jobs, and these candidates apply for them, when they come to interviews and you want them to talk about their successes, in Arab society it seems to them very unnatural to do that. So we are now running a program of preparation for interviews.”

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On the situation in Israel’s technology sector and the widespread layoffs and the slowdown in recruitment, Nemesh said that Google was adapting itself to the current mood. “It was Disneyland here, there was a bubble, and now there’s a correction. Even with the layoffs, we’re seeing companies cutting the fat and streamlining. Google is there, but it isn’t laying people off, but rather adapting itself. In the tech world, there are startups that have to prove that their money is worth something, and there are the big multinationals like Google that don’t have to prove that, but do have to represent the spirit of the time, and so our CEO (Sundar Pichai, H.M.) said: We want to stop for a moment, to see where the market is going, what the macro-economic direction is.”

Asked whether Google, as a big company, wasn’t atrophying somewhat, Nemesh answered, “Google is twenty years old, it’s still a young company, that went through hyper-growth. Breakthrough technological developments are taking place there, there’s restructuring every six months, technological solutions are being launched all the time, the pace is fast. On the other hand, this is a company that’s continually growing, that has become more of a matrix, more bureaucratic, and for people who more entrepreneurial it’s harder.”

The Globes Most Influential Women Conference was held in conjunction with Pelephone, Yes, and Bezeq International.

Published by Globes, Israel business news – en.globes.co.il – on July 26, 2022.

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