Next steps to expand the recruitment

pipeline in Mexico
Status: (Draft)
Authors: acastilla, aearturo, antoniomdz, heduenas, hugoduar, lhchavez, nievesr, rafadiaz,
rhorna, umendez
Last Updated: 2019-09-03

Objectives
Explain why it is critical that we take action into diversifying our recruitment process in Mexico
and why it will be in the best interest of Google.
Determine the concrete next steps to take in order to expand our recruiting efforts in Mexico.

Why this is important and a must

Main points (please read below for more context):
● Next Billion Users (NBU) in Mexico ⇒ if we want to effectively deliver technological
solutions to the NBU in Mexico, we need to have a more diverse community of Googlers
from Mexico
● ICPC Mexico and Central America Finals ⇒ we are not recruiting from the top ranked
schools at ICPC (!?)
● Expanding recruitment in Mexico is a must to prevent lack of diversity and blind spots ⇒
even though our hiring pipeline tries to be fair, objective and unbiased, the input of
candidates we inject into the pipeline is already not diverse enough
● Facebook and Microsoft are already taking actions ⇒ we are far behind in the race of
diverse talent in Mexico
●
●
●
●

Next Billion Users (NBU) in Mexico

tl;dr: if we want to effectively deliver technological solutions to the NBU in Mexico, we
need to have a more diverse community of Googlers from Mexico
Google wants to deliver technological solutions to the Next Billion Users (NBU). One of the main
countries to focus on reaching out to this ​NBU is Mexico​. However the lack of representation
from Googlers familiar with this community could hinder how effectively we can communicate
with this wave of new users.

On top of this lack of representation among the community of Googlers, if we take into
consideration the fact that Mexico has a lot of diversity, we face yet another big problem: the
community of Googlers that are familiar with Mexico does not correctly represent Mexico as a
whole.

One of the main contributors to the current state of the diversity in Googlers from Mexico is the
fact that we focus our recruitment from communities with a privileged background.

Video created by Google Mexico for NBU

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9IT895Mo0uIUUk0UF9nNHBpdGc/view
Mexico stats:
● Total population 120M, 10th largest country in the world
● 84.2M working age population
● 37M US inhabitants with MX origin, 4 out of 5 are born or naturalized Americans
● 78M internet users, 62% of the population
● 81.3M Mobile phone users, 47% on smartphones
● 5th country with most facebook users
● 3rd in YouTube Watch time
● 5th for Google play music
● 2nd country with most Waze users in LatAm
● 2nd top market for Spotify
● 4th top market for Netflix
● 176 Natural Protected areas
● 35M tourist
● 9th most visited country in the world
● Over 56 ethnicities
● 12 trade agreements with 46 countries
● Exports more manufactured products than the rest of LatAm combined
● 49% of YT Watch tiem is global content
● 15th World economy
● 11th in Purchasing power parity
● Each year 110,000 Engineers and technologists join its working population
● 5.8M SMBs, generating 52% of GDP
● USH are twice as likely to become entrepreneurs
● Average age 27
● 51.3% in social network
● 53.7% WhatsApp share messaging apps
 ● 39% of social users have Instagram
● Mexico, is the gateway to SPLatAm(18 countries, 385M inhabitants, 220M Internet
Users)

ICPC Mexico and Central America Finals

tl;dr: we are not recruiting from the top ranked schools at ICPC (!?)

Using the latest results from the ICPC Mexico and Central America Finals we have created
some insights.

Does participating in the ICPC translate into being a good software engineer?
Not necessarily.

However there are already many examples of students that after having participated at the
ICPC during college, later become really good software engineers at Google, Microsoft,
Facebook, Amazon, etc.

Here is the ​list of Googlers employees​ that have represented Mexico at the World Finals.

The Mexico and Central America region has greatly increased its level in the past years, now in
order to get to the ICPC Regional Finals you have to demonstrate your team is very proficient at
coding, team working, and that you are very knowledgeable about algorithms, data structures,
problem solvings, complexity analysis, among other critical skills that we look in candidates.

Analyzing ICPC results

Methodology
- Focused in the last 10 years
- Focused only on teams that reached the top 30 in the rankings
- Focused only on teams from universities that have reached the top 10 in the rankings
- 215 teams were considered, from 23 different universities

Observations
In the following two tables you can see that ITESM - Monterrey, the only school that we visit
regularly is not the top school in the competition by far. This might be caused by the fact that
this school sends teams to compete regularly, which could hurt their average score, however
other universities like IPN - ESCOM and Universidad de Guanajuato - DCNE send as many
teams as ITESM, but with a better average performance.
Universities to follow
- IPN - ESCOM. The university that ​has won the 1st absolute place the most times​.
This school has the ​largest community of programmers in Mexico​, which is reflected
in the fact that it is the university that has the ​most teams qualifying to the Final Stage
in the last 5 years.
- Universidad de Guanajuato - DCNE. Despite not having a large alumni base, the quality
of the teams from this university is reflected in the fact that it is at the top of the rankings.
- UNAM - CU. The university has won the 1st absolute place, and is constantly at the top.
The Faculty of Sciences focuses on Mathematics, Computer Science, Physics, Actuary,
and Biology. The skill of the professors and the flow of students make the profile of
graduates very high.

Top universities by average team place (lower is better, last 10 years, and at least 4
participating teams)
University Average Team Place Number of Teams

Universidad de Guanajuato - DCNE 8.95 19

IPN - ESCOM 9.96 24
UNAM - CU 10.42 12
Instituto Tecnológico del Sur de Guanajuato 12.00 7
ITAM 12.15 13
Universidad Central Marta Abreu de las
Villas 12.40 5
UP - Bonaterra 13.00 12
Universidad Autónoma de Aguascalientes 13.13 8
Universidad de las Ciencias Informáticas 13.17 6
Universidad Tecnológica de la Mixteca 14.92 13
Universidad de Guanajuato - DICIS 15.00 7
Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de
Puebla 15.17 6
UANL 15.44 9
ITESM - Monterrey 15.63 27

Top universities by average team place (lower is better, last 5 years, and at least 3 participating
teams)
University Average Team Place Number of Teams

ITAM 8.75 8
UANL 9.25 4
Instituto Tecnológico del Sur de Guanajuato 9.40 5
Universidad de Guanajuato - DCNE 9.83 12
IPN - ESCOM 10.14 14
UNAM - CU 10.89 9
Universidad Autónoma de Aguascalientes 13.25 4
ITESM - Monterrey 14.23 13

Links
● Universities from Mexico at the ICPC
● 2009 ICPC Mexico and Central America Finals
● 2010 ICPC Mexico and Central America Finals
● 2011 ICPC Mexico and Central America Finals
● 2012 ICPC Mexico and Central America Finals
● 2013 ICPC Mexico and Central America Finals
● 2014 ICPC Mexico and Central America Finals
● 2015 ICPC Mexico and Central America Finals
● 2016 ICPC Mexico and Central America Finals
● 2017 ICPC Mexico and Central America Finals
● 2018 ICPC Mexico and Central America Finals

Expanding recruitment in Mexico is a must to prevent lack of diversity

and blind spots
tl;dr: even though our hiring pipeline tries to be fair, objective and unbiased, the input of
candidates we inject into the pipeline is already not diverse enough

Mexicans that get to the end-line and get an education, become software engineers and work at
Google, are mostly, privileged, light skin, men from the top metro areas.

Why does this happen?

tl;dr: lack of opportunity and discrimination based on gender, ethnicity, location prevent
diverse talent from reaching the end-line, on top of that our search space for talent is
very narrow

See ​9 datos de la discriminación en México​.

Mexico has a population of 130M and is the ​10th country with most people in the world​,
however because of different conditions (gender, ethnicity, location, poverty) the amount of
Mexicans that have a shot of becoming software engineers, or even Googlers, is extremely low.

If we talk about gender gap, Mexico ranks 66th out of 144 countries according to the ​World’s
Economic Forum Gender Gap Index​. On top of this, the environment in STEM careers is very
hostile towards women (not only in Mexico).
Also based on ​a study​ from INEGI (the government institute in Mexico in charge of conducting
social statistics and the census) your ethnicity and the tone of your skin highly affect your
chances of getting an education and creating social mobility.

Based on ​location​, 77% of Mexicans do not live in the top 3 metro areas, if we expand this
analysis a little: 67% of Mexicans do not live in the top 10 metro areas. However, Google and
other tech companies only focus on private schools from top metro areas.

Based on the ​Mexican poverty line​, 42% of Mexicans live in poverty, which hinders their
chances of affording an education.

Can we improve this?

tl;dr: Yes! Data shows talent is everywhere and it comes from different backgrounds, we
need to expand our search space for talent

If we take a look at the statistics from the Mexican Olympiad in Informatics the panorama is not
that skewed in the early stages of the children's educational formation.

Based on conversations with Andrea Santillana, a director of omegaUp and Director of the
Mexican Olympiad in Informatics for Elementary and Middle School Students, the percentage of
women from Elementary and Middle School participating in the competition is higher than in the
High School edition. In the same way the percentage of women participating in High School
edition is higher than the percentage of women participating in the International Collegiate
Programming Contest during college. This is evidence that the continuous lack of opportunities
contributes to the decrease in engagement from non-male students.

As for location, the State Rankings of the Mexican Olympiad in Informatics, show that the top 3
metro areas are not at the top of the rankings. There is a lot of potential outside of the metro
areas that is completely overlooked.

Also, based on the School Rankings of the Mexican Olympiad in Informatics, overall the
participation of students from public schools is way better than the participation of students from
private schools, and it is not surprising given the social demographics of Mexico.

Facebook and Microsoft are already taking actions

tl;dr: we are far behind in the race of diverse talent in Mexico

Facebook
- rafadiaz@: I don’t have direct experience with Facebook recruiting, this is all I know
 - Filiberto Fuentes from IPN - ESCOM is one of the best programmers from the
past generations from Mexico (pillar of the Club de Algoritmia, ICPC World
Finalist, volunteer in multiple orgs aimed to increase the participation of folks
from diverse backgrounds into the tech industry), he did an internship at
Facebook, and multiple internships at Microsoft, now he is a full time employee at
Microsoft. During his internship at Facebook, he started a win-win relationship
with the Facebook staffing team. He would share info about candidates and help
organize on-site events, and Facebook will provide swag, and support for the
ongoing activities of the Club de Algoritmia.
- Something really interesting is that the first attempts for candidates from the IPN -
ESCOM did not go so well, so Filiberto felt bad and thought he would disappoint
the recruiting team.
- On the contrary, the Facebook recruiting team doubled down efforts and
continued going, they started to give workshops, material to train, the few
students from the Club de Algoritmia who landed internships would return to
share their experiences and make mock interviews. Facebook turned a
100-student strong programming club into a machine producing good candidates
just with validation and sincere support.
- The relationship is very strong now, the students greatly value the support from
Facebook as it has been very hard for them to get resources to train from their
schools to host their internal courses and competitions as part of the Club de
Algoritmia.

Microsoft
Elizabeth Arredondo, who leads Microsoft College Recruiting in LATAM, has worked into
diversifying the recruiting process in Mexico with great results.

The efforts from Microsoft were significant, sincere, and gave a lot of validation to the students.

Content
- Conferences are about cool technologies from Microsoft
- rafadiaz@: I gave conferences about HoloLens back when he was in Microsoft,
and I can tell that Elizabeth Arredondo looked for Mexicans working at Microsoft
willing to share cool technologies or stories with students
- Talks about the recruiting process
- Workshops about CV
- Mock interviews
- Reviewing CVs in person

Validation
- Microsoft does a great effort into actually going to the schools, this is very important
because this gives the opportunity to students who: 1) work after graduating 2) do not
have the confidence they are good even though they have very impressive skills (this is
 very common in public education because of socio-economic background and
systematic lack of validation) 3) do not feel welcome in other schools, areas of the city
- A lot of employees from diverse environment are involved, they use a ​Facebook group​ in
order to have an open communication channel with about ~5k students
- Microsoft makes a great effort to send engineers to the most prestigious events
organized at universities in Mexico. This is important because the student chapters who
organize these events value the support
- rafadiaz@: when I participated in HackMTY 2016 as a mentor representing
Microsoft I hung out with the students who organized the competition and helped
even with the set up. Students expressed that Facebook and Google had sent
funds for the competition, but they did not send any engineers. The students did
not like that. Which was perfect for Microsoft, in fact, the funny part was that
Microsoft was the one who invested the least amount of money, but we had a
very good presence, we gave workshops, we conducted mocks, we grew the
relationship with the students, we reviewed CVs. Result: most of the students
from that chapter are now working at Microsoft
- rafadiaz@: when I participated in the ICPC Finals 2016 as a conferencist
representing Microsoft, our main goal was to target the top teams in the
competition, as well as show everyone how cool was Microsoft as a place to
work. I gave a conference about HoloLens to all the participants before the
competition, and we reviewed CVs, conducted mock interviews, and talked with a
lot of students. Result: a lot of students from that ICPC are now at Microsoft, in
fact, this weekend I met with a student from the Universidad Autónoma de Mérida
who I mock interviewed and told me and a friend we were the reason she was
here now working at Microsoft
- lhchavez@: I was actively recruiting for Microsoft in 2011-2013. We tried to hit as
many schools as possible in two weeks, one around the Guadalajara / Monterrey
areas, and another around Mexico City / the rest of central Mexico. Microsoft had
the strategy of visiting schools early during the school cycle and had aggressively
short interview cycles, including flying a cohort of SWE + managers to conduct
the "onsite" interview in Puerto Vallarta, Jal or CDMX, to avoid students from
needing to request a visa, and giving interview results + offers the same day (!!!!).
This nudged many students to seal the deal before any other company could
conduct their normal interview cycle.

Results
- The amount of new hires and interns Microsoft recruits from diverse universities has
improved dramatically, in 2016 as far as I know they got 12 hires/interns from IPN -
ESCOM.
- The relationship has grown over time.
- The candidates they get are the best from these schools, they include medalist at the
OMI (including students who represented Mexico at the IOI), top ranked students at the
ICPC Regional Finals (including students who represented Mexico in the World Finals).
 - rafadiaz@: personally I noticed how the change in the mix of Mexicans coming to work
at Microsoft improved my work experience as it was easier to share life experiences with
people who had a similar background than the background I have (e.g. I got to know a
friend who also worked at Burger King when they were kids, I connected with friends
who also liked the same music I like, I started to see people who lived in neighborhoods
similar to the ones I grew up in Mexico City, even a new hire from IPN she lived a few
blocks away from where I lived, etc.).

Activities
- See ​Friends of Microsoft College Recruiting in Mexico​ for more updated data
- Most recent trip
- 9/9-11: Trip to Mexico City
- IPN - ESCOM
- ITESM - CEM
- UNAM - CU
- ITAM
- ITESM - CEM
- 9/9: Trip to Puebla
- ITESM - Puebla
- 9/10: Trip to Querétaro
- ITESM - Querétaro
- 9/12: Trip to Guanajuato
- Universidad de Guanajuato - DCNE
- Upcoming trip
- 9/19: Aguascalientes
- UP - Bonaterra
- 9/23: Cuernavaca
- ITESM - Cuernavaca
- 9/23-26: Guadalajara
- ITESO
- ITESM - Guadalajara
- CINVESTAV

Concrete stories of students we are at risk of missing out

Risks of not taking (enough) action

tl;df: if we do not make a constant effort, we are at risk of not having significant results

Diversity gap will only increase

Google tries to have an unbiased recruiting process, however the problem might not be with the
process, but with the demographics of the schools we visit.
If we don’t take concrete actions to create a diverse pool of candidates the result will be that our
candidates and our hires will not correctly represent Mexico as a whole.

If we do not invest in relationships we will constantly have poor results

Facebook and Microsoft have created strong relationships with the schools and with the
candidates. They go every year, they give value to their visits, they have created a continuous
flow of students who go to work for them as FTEs or as interns.

Most of the top candidates already have a strong relationship with Facebook or Microsoft. They
have already signed returning offers, they have already created a support group.

rafadiaz@: Very specific example: Juan (ITAM), Carlos (ITAM), Angel (IPN - ESCOM), Erick
(TecNM - Queretaro) did an internship at Facebook this year in Seattle. When I talked to them
they told me they already signed up for another internship at Facebook next year in NYC.
Because of the social relationships that they have created, the odds of Google hiring one of
them are lower than normal.

Concrete Actions
After talking to Fabricio (fturcios@) and Ricardo (rhorna@) we decided we can support Google
as follows:
- DIY independent efforts
- rafadiaz@ is going on October 8th to ITSUR in Guanajuato
- heduenas@ is planning a trip to CIMAT in Guanajuato (he mentions that if we go
to ICPC Finals, we can actually save this trip, as he is interested in reaching out
to the top schools from CIMAT)
- nievesr@ and acastilla@ are planning a trip to Mexico City universities
- umendez@ and antoniomdz@ are planning a trip to Universidad Tecnologica de
la Mixteca in Oaxaca
- carlosil@ and ivanalejandro@ are planning a trip to Sonora
- Event in Google Mexico in October 25 (we help reaching out to students from
universities and Ricardo helps with logistics)
- Support Fabricio in creating a team for the ICPC Finals (Fabricio leads this effort,
Rodrigo Nieves has a ​list of Googlers​ who are perfect candidates to attend)

Event at Google Mexico on October 25th

TODO: Ricardo can help with logistics, swag, contacts, recruiters.

Scope
Schools from Mexico City.
We will promote this event during our DIY visits before the event.

Key Attendees

Use UPx DIY program for other schools

TODO: sent out document to ​mexup-leads@google.com​, ​fturcios​@ could be already a member
of this.
TODO: relationships with Universidad Tecnologica Autonoma de la Mixteca, ITSUR, and other
schools not covered by the previous effort might be started by Googlers independently using the
UPx DIY program (we have green light)

Target Dates: October 24 and 25. Align with internship dates ​go/internpostingdates

Do It Yourself campus outreach

Pre-event:
● Contact universities
○ Confirm date(s) for your event(s)
○ Ask for their help reserving a room with A/V capabilities for you to hold your event
in.
● Add event to ​DIY tracker
● Build flyers and share with universities
https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1ap5l5aoZGZigE6fxtdUYpYm-0a10oX-oy3GDFHHfr
cg/edit
● Publish on ​go/getmeconnected
● Read ​related resources
●
● Arrange trip logistics
○ Travel from office to city
○ Local travel, day to day
○ Hotel
○ Food

Event:
Presentation 1:30 hours and 0:30 for Q&A
Presentation
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1dWg_WWOSAfmDYCBUPjwVauwSMXyf44_QtlTmy3M
j8-E/edit#slide=id.g3cfecafc89_0_746
Content:
● Building for Everyone
● Building Your Skills
● Resume tips
 ● Tech interview prep
● How to apply
● Tip: focus on Growth mindset, even if they are not successful in the first try they can
learn, work on improving and apply again.
Gather contact information:
● Remind to register to the link in the flyer
● Take note of students who stand out:
○ Name
○ Make sure they register

Post event:
● How to track impact of the event?
○ Number of applications
○ Number of Phone interviews
○ Number of Internship offers
○ Number of Internships
○ Number of conversions to a full time
● How to keep in touch with universities?
○ Give presentation cards ​go/doodle-bizcard
○ Someone on the university's outreach team?

Industry recruiting event

TODO: Rodrigo suggested going to Guadalajara + Mexico city to focus on L4+ candidates

Invite potential hiring candidates(already passed phone interview).

Talk about work at google and benefits
Happy hour/Small event so candidates could talk with Googlers
Do on-site interviews to candidates invited

Training ICPC Mexicans group by Googlers

Make a small event of 1 week or a couple of days.
Invite the best teams on the ACM icpc contest in Mexico.
Get together some Googlers (​List of World finalist in Mexico​) that had participated at the ACM
icpc, specially members of teams that went to the World Finals.
Identify subset of potential candidates for an internship.

Important Considerations
[todo]
We are at risk of having poor results on our first trips. Mainly because other companies have
already created strong relationships with the schools and with the
Initial poor results could send the incorrect signal that this is not worth it. However, it’s important
to continue providing validation and building a relationship.
[empathy & validation] b. Be empathetic during this process, understand the challenges that
students from public schools face because of their context
[representation during our recruiting process]

Concrete Schools
Refer to ​Wish list of universities to outreach
Groups
● Guanajuato
○ Universities:
■ Universidad de Guanajuato: Main students of this university will go to the
ACM ICPC on November 8th and 9th
■ Instituto Tecnológico del Sur de Guanajuato: ​rafadiaz​ will visit school on
October 8th
● Mexico City
○ Possible Googlers: ​nievesr​,​rafadiaz​,​acastilla​,antoniomdz,aearturo,umendez
○ Universities:
■ Instituto Politécnico Nacional(there are plans to visit it by ​fturcios​)
■ Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
■ Universidad Autónoma de Metropolitana
■ Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México
● Oaxaca
○ Possible Googlers: ​umendez​, ​antoniomdz
○ Universities:
■ Universidad Tecnológica de la Mixteca
● Sonora
○ Possible Googlers: ​carlosil​,​ivanalejandro
○ Universities:
■ Universidad de Sonora

Beyond Recruiting
● omegaUp 501(c)(3) ​https://g-give.googleplex.com/org/62638
○ About
■ omegaUp​ is aimed to build the pipeline for software engineering in Latin
America. ​omegaup.com​ is the official platform for the Olimpiada Mexicana
de Informática, the Olimpiada Peruana de Informática, the Competencia
 Iberoamericana de Informática y Computación, Coding Rush del ITAM,
Coding Cup del ITSUR, Olimpiada Regional de Informática de
Guanajuato, etc.
■ omegaUp serves ~10k students each year, and data shows that these
students are from very diverse backgrounds, which could be a great path
to promoting diversity candidates
■ Three fellow Googlers are part of the board of directors: ​lhchavez​@ (the
CTO), ​rafadiaz​@, and ​pmag​@. Other Googlers are volunteers and
donors. E.g. heduenas, alanmorales, aearturo, acondor, acondor
■ Three board members are part of the board of the Comité Olímpico
Mexicano de Informática as well. Since omegaUp is the official platform
for the OMI, the relationship is very close.
○ Donate
○ Share go/give link, info and results with HOLA Global and local chapters
○ Organize events at Google
■ rafadiaz@ organized a visit from the students from the rural community of
Temoac (the best programmers in the State of Morelos in Mexico) to
Google Mexico, this event could be a series, which will greatly improve
validation, sense of belonging, to the best High School programmers in
Mexico
● Olimpiada Mexicana de Informática​ (OMI) ​www.olimpiadadeinformatica.org.mx
○ A lot of Googlers are former participants, and even represented Mexico at the
International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI)
○ Visit (some Googlers are going either way, we might as well make it official and
easier for them!)
○ Swag
○ Sponsor OMI, directly
○ Donate to omegaUp, the official platform of the competition
● Olimpiada Peruana de Informática​ (OPI) h ​ ttps://www.facebook.com/InformaticaPe
○ Visit (acondor@ was involved in the creation of this competition, also rhorna@
might be interested or could know folks who are interested)
○ Swag
○ Sponsor OPI, directly
○ Donate to omegaUp, the official platform of the competition
● Olimpiada Mexicana de Matemáticas​ (OMM) ​www.ommenlinea.org
○ A lot of Googlers are former participants, and even represented Mexico at the
International Mathematics Olympiad (IMO)
○ Visit
○ Swag
○ Sponsor OMM, directly