Tag Archives: grow with google

New career tools to help military spouses thrive

Service members aren’t alone in making great sacrifices for the good of our country. Military spouses are the backbone of their families and communities, often serving alongside service members and assuming responsibilities on the homefront. As a military spouse, I’ve experienced the challenges that this life brings. While separated from my husband for two and a half years, I took on all responsibilities for our home and managed several out-of-state moves.

The realities I’ve faced being part of a military family made it incredibly difficult to balance my husband’s military career with my own career goals and aspirations. Military spouses are resilient leaders with diverse perspectives, making them powerful assets to the workplace. To ensure that this community continues to thrive in the workplace, this Military Spouse Appreciation Day, Google is excited to share new initiatives that will empower military spouses to build meaningful careers, wherever they’re located.

According to a 2017 report from Hiring Our Heroes, 16 percent of military spouses are unemployed–a figure that’s four times higher than the national rate. And more than 55 percent are underemployed, working in roles below their abilities or education levels.

Despite this hurdle, there are spouses around the world who’ve built fulfilling careers that fit a military lifestyle. In Durham, North Carolina, the Grow with Google team met Kelly Grivner-Kelly, a military spouse whose frequent moves were holding her back in her job search. This changed when she found a job as a program manager where she can work from home–and stay on remotely after her next move.

In Fayetteville, North Carolina, the team met Krystel Spell, who started the blog Army Wife 101 and founded an influencer agency for military spouses after noticing a lack of resources available to her community. Through flexible career paths and entrepreneurial endeavours, more military spouses are pursuing their career goals, becoming breadwinners, and taking their work with them from place to place. And technology is making it easier.

Last year, Grow with Google developed tools and resources for the U.S. military community. Knowing the important role military spouses play, we want to continue using technology to address the unique challenges military spouses face as they build their careers.

Our improved experience within jobs on Google Search makes it easier to find quality remote jobs. Now, you can search for jobs that match your skill set, like “sales jobs” and filter your location to “work from home” to see a list of relevant job listings that meet your criteria. Remote work requires its own kind of expertise, so we created hands-on training that offers helpful tools and advice to set military spouses up for success in remote jobs. A new course from Google’s Applied Digital Skills program, a free online curriculum for digital skills, helps users learn about workplace collaboration tools like Docs, Calendar and Hangouts. We’ve also added two minicourses specifically for military spouses to the Primer app, a free resource for learning business and marketing skills. These minicourses share tips for transitioning to remote work, working from home and the basics of starting and growing an online business.

To ensure that military spouses across the country can benefit from these tools and resources, we’re supporting two organizations with a long history of supporting military spouses. We’ll be providing a Google.org grant to the Institute for Veteran and Military Families (IVMF) to offer IT training and career guidance to their network. The grant will enable IVMF to provide 1,500 scholarships for the Google IT Support Professional Certificate program, along with professional support and career navigation. Google’s IT Certificate program prepares beginners for entry-level jobs in IT support in about six months. We’ll also be partnering with Blue Star Families, an organization that provides support to military families, including career guidance for spouses. Blue Star Families will share our career preparation training with at least 10,000 spouses across its nationwide network of military families.

My vision is that these new resources empower military spouses to build meaningful careers, regardless of their location or balance of responsibilities. I hope these new efforts ease some of the career challenges military spouses often face as they plan for and build toward their futures. To learn more about our free tools and resources to help military spouses build flexible careers, visit grow.google/militaryspouses.

Grow with Google: ten million people trained, here’s what’s next

This year, we’re celebrating 30 years of the world wide web, at a moment when half the world's population is online. While the web creates more opportunity than ever before, it's also changing the way we work. In the next 10 to 15 years, 90 percent of all jobs will require some level of digital skills, leading to a skills gap. New jobs will be created from technology, but it’s also estimated that 14 percent could be replaced by automation and another 32 percent are set to change radically in terms of their scope and focus.  

That's why we launched Grow with Google: free training, products and tools designed to help people find a job, advance their career or grow their business. In 2015, I was excited (and nervous) to announce our goal of training one million Europeans by the end of 2016. At the time, we didn’t know if we could reach as many as one million people.

We’ve been blown away by the demand and and inspired by the achievements of so many of the people who took the training. Four years later, Grow with Google has reached job seekers, business owners, teachers, developers and students in more than 80 countries around the world. As of today, we've trained five million people in Europe and five million people across Africa and the Middle East, bringing us to a total of 10 million people who have participated in training across these regions alone.

Graphic 10 million

10 million people trained across Europe, the Middle East and Africa 

This training is making a difference. Since 2016, 45 percent of Digital Workshop trainees reported they’d found a job, accelerated their career or grown their business by hiring new staff or increasing revenue (from IPSOS research). In Europe, 48 percent of the people trained were women; a quarter were unemployed and 90 percent of business trainees came from small businesses. This scale of impact has led to recognition and awards from the European Commission and others.  


I’ve attended many training sessions and events in different countries over the last four years. I’ve heard from people like Segun Abodunrin from Nigeria, who went from being unemployed to founding his own agency as a result of our Digital Skills for Africa training. And we’ve seen success stories from people like Loubna, Donia and Youcef, three chefs who set up the catering company Meet my Mama with help from our French Grow with Google program Google Ateliers Numériques. They’ve now provided catering at more than 350 business events, creating work for 30 women.


So many of these stories show how anyone with internet access and the right set of skills can create a global business or start a new career. We want to do more for them. So we’ve committed to help an additional one million more people in Europe find a job, grow their business or build their career by 2020 as well as training an additional 10 million people in Africa.


To make that a reality, we need to do more to help people access training. Research tells us that people in jobs most at risk from automation do less training than those at low risk, so we’re expanding our programs and offerings to better reach those people. This includes partnering with Trade Unions in the Netherlands to reach workers in logistics and transportation, helping women build business confidence with IAmRemarkable and using AI to help people find jobs with our Recommendation Engine. We’re also continuing to build products that help people find a job, attract new customers, expand globally and harness the power of AI.


Nothing that Grow with Google aims to do in the coming years would be possible without the expertise of our many partners. We’re grateful to them all, from e-learning experts like FutureLearn and Udacity, to collaboration with many universities, governments, chambers of commerce, city authorities, unions and others. We’ll be working with our partners to develop new types of training to provide the right skills for tomorrow’s workforce. According to the latest World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report, these skills range from technology design and programming to critical thinking and emotional intelligence.


Governments, businesses, educators and communities will need to work ever more closely to equip workers for success and to create new opportunities for work to benefit society. It’s our shared responsibility to help make technology and the web work for everyone. At Google, we’ve learned so much from training ten million bright and determined people and we’re inspired by their achievements to play our part for the long term.

Why “healthy” materials are key to Google’s new buildings

As a New Yorker, I’m struck by California’s  natural beauty. When I visit Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, I walk along the sidewalk and exclaim things like, “Is that wild sage?” (My coworkers find it amusing.)The tree-lined scenery of the San Francisco Bay Area gives some much-needed refreshment to my senses, which tend to be dulled by subway cars and honking car horns.

When I’m in the Bay Area, I often wonder how two completely different worlds—one of computer chips and algorithms and another of sprawling shoreline and wildlife—can coexist peacefully in one place. When I spoke with Robin Bass, Sustainability Lead for Google’s Real Estate and Workplace Services team, for our latest She Word interview, she shed light on how Google approaches this question every day, and what we’re doing to make sure we give back to the land we build on.

How would you describe your job at a dinner party?

I usually refer to myself as a recovering architect. I’ve worked in architecture for 20 years and sustainability has always been my focus. At Google, my responsibility is to ensure that our buildings provide healthy spaces for the people in them and that we leave the spaces between the buildings better than we found them.

How did you initially become interested in sustainability?

When I was an architecture student, it was the only direction that made sense to me. In school, the culture was to critique. If you don’t have a strong point of view about why you’re doing things it can come across as “because it’s pretty,” and that’s architecture at its worst. Instead, leading with “this is the way the sun moves across the site,” or “this is the way water moves in and out of the site” is an irrefutable argument. There’s no stronger footing than orienting your buildings for people and nature, so sustainability was my go-to design aesthetic.

Have you found strong female influences or mentors in your career?

Architecture is very male dominated—and I would even go so far as to say it’s white male dominated—but sustainability is different. I was able to find so many female mentors in the industry who shared the same alignment toward the future about the world we wanted to create. It was life-changing for me. Now I’m at a point in my career where I can buoy the next generation, and diversity and inclusion in particular is a huge priority for me. In the same way that landscapes have greater resilience when they are diverse, the community of designers and builders creating those landscapes should be inclusive and diverse as well.

This video shows the inside of one of Google's offices, Spruce Goose.

How did these sustainability elements play out in some of your recent projects at Google’s offices, like Charleston East, Bay View and Spruce Goose?

The most sustainable building is the one you don’t build, so at Spruce Goose in the Los Angeles area, using an old airplane hangar rather than building a new office is capitalizing on the carbon that has already been invested there, and anyone who walks in is struck by the magical and unusual space.

At Charleston East and Bay View in Mountain View, our team is pursuing the Living Building Challenge, which stipulates that a building should exist on its site like a flower in a field. It’s all about net positive energy, waste and water, which is radical, aspirational and really hard to accomplish. These two buildings have a common design—both roof structures are unique, which makes the interior spaces remarkable—but they have different sustainability goals because of where they’re located, even though they are just a few miles apart.

Charleston East’s goal is about healthy materials. We’re vetting every product that comes onto the site against a red list of chemicals, and we’re working toward net positive waste, which means integrating waste back into the production of new materials instead of sending it to a landfill after one use. Bay View backs up close to the San Francisco Bay, so we’re pursuing net positive water. The goal is to have no connection to a central plumbing utility or a sewer; all of the water on that site will come from a closed loop.

What is one habit that makes you successful?

I am genuinely curious about people. When I’m sitting across a table from someone who doesn’t share my worldview, I find it’s important to be really curious about who they are, what motivates them and what’s hard for them so we can find common ground. You can turn someone who is not an advocate into your biggest supporter by authentically wanting to know them.

What advice do you have for women starting out in their careers?

Explore! Don’t be afraid of trying something that you ultimately don’t like. Failure is a really great feedback mechanism, and it’s not about how many times you fail, it’s about getting back up and sharpening all the tools you’re bringing to the table because the world needs you, and it’s never needed you more.

How we’re supporting economic opportunity in Iowa

For some, Iowa may call to mind images of rolling corn fields, or the Field of Dreams. But those in the know will tell you that the Hawkeye state has a storied history of technological innovation. The first electronic digital computer was created in a lab at Iowa State and Lee de Forest, the “Father of Radio,” was born and raised in Council Bluffs. Perhaps most impressively,  sliced bread is an Iowan invention, with the first single loaf bread-slicing machine patented here in 1928.

In 2009, Iowa also became home to a Google Data Center, where I—along with hundreds of Iowans—work to connect billions of people around the world to Google. When someone logs onto Gmail, watches a YouTube video or searches for an answer to some burning question, they might not think of Iowa, but they should.

With such a strong track record of fostering creative answers to difficult questions, Iowa is the perfect place for Google to kick off a statewide $1 million Google.org Impact Challenge, where we’re inviting local nonprofits to share their most ambitious ideas to create economic opportunity in their community. Then, a panel of local advisors will select the top five to receive a $175,000 grant to bring their ideas to life. Our advisors, listed below, represent all corners of the state:

  • Dr. Dan Kinney, President, Iowa Western Community College
  • Georgia Van Gundy, Executive Director and Board Secretary, Iowa Business Council
  • Monica Chavez-Silva, Assistant Vice President for Community Enhancement, Grinnell College
  • Sherry Ristau, President, Quad Cities Community Foundation
  • Tej Dhawan, Chief Data Officer, Principal Financial Group

To cap off the competition, Google will invite Iowans to select one of the five projects they believe will have the greatest impact.

We kicked the Challenge off this morning in Des Moines at the first stop of a three-city Grow with Google Iowa Tour, where we’re teaming up with local libraries and partner organizations across the state to offer free trainings so that Iowans have the opportunity to learn digital skills to grow their careers or businesses. Tomorrow and the following day, we’ll visit libraries in Council Bluffs and Davenport as part of a larger commitment to support economic opportunity in America and bring in-person digital skills workshops to libraries to all 50 states.

Iowa nonprofit organizations can find more information on the Google.org Impact Challenge and submit their applications by visiting g.co/iowachallenge. The deadline for submissions is May 17th at 11:59 p.m. CT. We’re expecting to name the five winners in the fall of 2019. Considering the sliced bread precedent, the bar is being set pretty high.

With Goodwill, we’re helping more Americans learn digital skills

In October 2017, I returned to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania—the first city I saw when I came to America over 25 years ago—to announce Grow with Google, a new effort to create more opportunity for everyone. At the heart of this goal was our five-year commitment to provide $1 billion in Google.org grants and 1 million Googler volunteer hours to organizations all over the world. Goodwill Industries International was one of the first groups to join us in this effort, and just over a year later, I’m proud to share that our work together has already helped a quarter of a million Americans learn new digital skills, and 27,000 Americans find a job.

This impact was made possible by the Goodwill Digital Career Accelerator (GDCA), a program to equip 1.2 million Americans with the digital skills needed to succeed in today’s job market and prepare for the changing workforce. GDCA was launched with the support of a $10 million Google.org grant made to Goodwill Industries International, the largest grant we’ve ever made to a single organization.

Goodwill has a track record of helping place people in jobs that provide good wages and pathways to future careers, and the impact we’ve seen through this program is no different. One example is Simone in Astoria, New York, who was hired as a remote receptionist after taking a weeklong customer service and call-center training that taught her basic computer skills. Other job seekers have found positions in fields like IT support, aircraft manufacturing, and information and communications technology.

In the case of Chelsea, these trainings led her to a job at Google. After moving home to Nashville from Atlanta, she struggled to find housing for her family. While working at Goodwill of Middle Tennessee, she was encouraged to enroll in the Google IT Support Professional Certificate program. With nearly one year of training under her belt, she’s now working at our data center in Clarksville, TN, and has moved with her daughters into a house nearby. Chelsea is one of 66,000 people enrolled the Google IT Support Professional Certificate, and 84 percent of whom say it helped them to advance their job search or career.

Goodwill’s programs also give people the digital skills they need to launch and grow a business. Femeka in Fort Worth, Texas, started her own gift basket business, but was struggling to reach new customers. She saw a flier for the Goodwill program at a local women’s shelter and completed courses in basic computing, internet navigation, productivity tools and G Suite in just a few weeks. Femeka used these new skills she learned to create order forms for her gift baskets and build a website to attract new customers.

  • NY-Simone-Goodwill.jpg

    Simone was hired as a remote receptionist after completing a customer service and call-center training through Goodwill NYNJ.

  • Google_Chelsea_Goodwill.jpg

    Chelsea completed Google’s IT Support Professional Certificate in three months, landing a job at Google’s data center in Clarksville, TN

  • TX-Fameka-Goodwill.jpg

    After enrolling in Goodwill Fort Worth’s Digital Skills program, Femeka learned the skills to build a website for her gift basket business.

  • Goodwill IT Training Lab RV.jpg

    The Goodwill Digital Career Accelerator enabled Goodwill of Wichita to transform an RV into a mobile training lab.

Goodwill’s model is effective because it’s not a cookie cutter approach to job training. There’s something for everyone to learn that can benefit their careers, whether it’s getting basics skills like word-processing or email, or more specific skills to get a better job in the same field. Local Goodwill organizations are also empowered to build programs that fit their communities best. In Wichita, Kansas, a lack of transit options led the local Goodwill to bring classes to 35 rural communities around the state in an RV!

The Goodwill Digital Career Accelerator operates at 93 Goodwill organizations across 34 states, with plans to expand to 126 in the coming months. Meanwhile, 200 Google employees have volunteered their time and expertise to conduct trainings, and seven Google.org Fellows are embedded full-time at Goodwill locations across the country.

Our strong collaboration with Goodwill has contributed to the progress we’ve made toward the goal of $1 billion and 1 million hours we set in Pittsburgh. Overall, Googlers have already served 280,000 volunteer hours and we’ve made over $300 million in grants. I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished together, but there’s a lot more to work to make sure everyone has access to opportunities, no matter where they live. We’ll continue to update you on the lessons we’re learning and the impact we’re seeing in the months and years to come.

Grow with Google comes to NYC

I was raised by a single mom who worked multiple jobs, and despite being generally exhausted, she stressed the importance of hard work and perseverance. Following her example, as a kid not only did I work hard in school, I dove into after-school activities. From there, I received a full scholarship to a prestigious secondary school, and went on to a career here at Google. Today, my passion for creating opportunities for others is rooted in the opportunities afforded to me. That’s why I'm proud to be involved with Grow with Google, our program to help individuals and small businesses gain the skills that can set them up for success, today and in the future.

From Albuquerque to Bozeman to Cleveland, Grow with Google has criss-crossed America, supporting diverse people looking to use digital skills to find jobs, advance their careers and grow their businesses. Today, we’re bringing the tour to New York City for five months with the opening of the Grow with Google NYC Learning Center—right on the ground floor of our Chelsea office, in the heart of Manhattan.

Open to everyone, the Grow with Google NYC Learning Center will offer free hands-on workshops in partnership with community organizations, one-on-one coaching and community events. The 11,000 square foot space will have three classrooms, offering multiple classes per day and will be open six days a week.

Learning Center classes will cover a range of topics all focused on digital skills. So whether you're a business owner who wants to reach new customers, an educator interested in bringing digital tools into your classroom, or looking to learn new skills to grow your career—there’s a class for you. Several hours a week, we'll have Googler experts on hand to answer specific questions through one-to-one coaching. We’re also partnering with other local community organizations dedicated to digital skills building and training, including Goodwill, Per Scholas, Hudson Guild and many others.

We're proud to set up the Learning Center in New York City, home to our largest office outside of California. We started in the city nearly 20 years ago with a few Googlers working out of a Starbucks on 86th Street; today, we’re home to over 7,000 employees across three buildings. Recently, we announced that we’ll invest over $1 billion to establish a new campus here, Google Hudson Square. As we plan to grow our own presence in New York, it’s our responsibility to support the neighborhoods and communities we call home.

Since 2011, Google has contributed more than $150 million in grants and employee-matched giving to New York nonprofit institutions. We’ve partnered with the New York City Public Library System to provide free Wi-Fi hotspots to public school students and families without home internet access. To help create economic opportunities citywide, we’ve funded programs like MotherCoders NYC, provided space to organizations like Black Girls Code and hosted Cornell Tech while its permanent campus on Roosevelt Island was under construction. And just last month, we opened a new lab for CodeNext for Black and Latinx high school students to learn coding and gain the skills and inspiration they need for long and rewarding careers in computer science-related fields.

The Grow with Google NYC Learning Center is the next chapter in our commitment to helping create economic opportunity and, in doing so, strengthening our ties to our neighborhood and the five boroughs. To learn more and sign up for free classes at the Learning Center, visit g.co/GrowNYC. My hope is that New Yorkers will be able to access opportunities here like the ones I was lucky to have growing up.

A library’s next chapter: digital skills with help from Google

Editor's note: It's National Library Week, and to recognize the impact of libraries of local communities, we'll hear from Robyn Jonston of the Memphis Public Libraries. To share how libraries have affected your life, use the #MyLibraryStory hashtag.

Local libraries are essential community hubs and one of the few places that are free and open to anyone. An important part of a library’s mission is providing free access to information and opportunities, a goal we have in common with Google. Our Memphis Public Libraries and libraries across the U.S. are partnering with Grow with Google to make digital skills even more accessible to more people. Technology has changed the way people live, and in response, libraries have changed the way we fulfill our mission. We’ve taken the lead in helping people learn the skills they need to be successful in finding jobs.

At the Memphis Public Library, it’s so important to us to help people learn skills and find jobs that we’ve taken our efforts outside of the library’s walls. In 2018, we launched JobLINC, a 38-foot bus with 10 computer stations for job seekers and a station for employers to come on board and recruit. The bus travels throughout the city, reaching people who don’t have access to technology or transportation. With help from librarians, people can work on their resumes, search for jobs and practice interviewing. We serve more than 6,000 people in Memphis on this bus each year.

The program helps us reach people like Wanda Gray, who worked as a letter carrier for 20 years before being laid off. She didn’t have access to technology or a smartphone, so she turned to JobLINC to build her digital skills, get help with her resume and learn about interviewing for jobs. Now, Wanda has a new job as a receptionist.

We’re not alone in this important work at the Memphis Public Library. 90 percent of libraries help members of their communities learn basic digital skills. And thousands of librarians across the country are dedicated to making free resources and training available to everyone. In the U.S., Grow with Google hosts in-person workshops that help people learn new skills, like creating resumes and growing their businesses online. Together, we’re helping people grow their skills and businesses, find new jobs and get ahead.

For National Library Week, we asked Googlers to tell us how their local library provided the tools that set them on their life’s course.

I’m humbled to share my library story and the stories of Googlers whose lives were impacted by their local libraries. Show your support for librarians during National Library Week by sharing a story about what your local library means to you, using the #MyLibraryMyStory hashtag.

Free digital skills programs make learning a lifelong journey

Janitor, seamstress, housekeeper, gardener: These were some of the jobs my parents held after we immigrated to the United States. Growing up in a lower-income neighborhood, I never knew anyone who worked with computers professionally. That changed when my brother signed up for a computer course, providing him the digital skills that would lead to a four-year university and ultimately a career as an engineer.

These days, whether someone is a janitor or a housekeeper or an engineer, they can benefit from—and deserve access to—basic digital skills. In today’s job market, it is critical to know how to navigate job search websites, write a resume, craft a professional email, develop a budget, and so much more.

That’s why, as part of our Grow with Google initiative to drive economic opportunity for all, Google’s Applied Digital Skills is partnering with the Coalition on Adult Basic Education (COABE) to train educators in all 50 states on essential digital skills for the evolving workforce. In the two years since launching Applied Digital Skills, a core part of the Grow with Google program, over a half-million students, including many adult learners, have used the curriculum to help them achieve their personal and professional goals.

Tamara Rood-Spenker, an adult education instructor who teaches down the road from our Google office in Mountain View, California, told me recently that Applied Digital Skills lessons expose her students to new job skills, like using formulas to analyze data in spreadsheets, showing them how technology can make many tasks simpler in their day-to-day lives.

Educators will now be better positioned to help adult learners prepare for and find jobs, build their businesses and even work toward earning their high school equivalency credentials. COABE represents over 55,000 adult educators in the United States who support underserved adults to master the skills they need to build their careers.

Together with COABE, Google will hold 200 hours of in-person professional development sessions for adult educators. We will also build new support guides and training materials, hold webinars and feature best practices in digital skills training. And we will also provide new, free Applied Digital Skills lessons on digital skills that adult educators can utilize in their classrooms.

I know firsthand that learning never ends. As an immigrant to the United States from a working class family, a former community college instructor, and now a Googler leading outreach for computer science and digital skills training, I know education is an ongoing process. We’re excited to be a part of that process with the teachers who make learning a reality, organizations like COABE who support educators and the Americans who wake up every day ready to take their next step.

Free digital skills programs make learning a lifelong journey

Janitor, seamstress, housekeeper, gardener: These were some of the jobs my parents held after we immigrated to the United States. Growing up in a lower-income neighborhood, I never knew anyone who worked with computers professionally. That changed when my brother signed up for a computer course, providing him the digital skills that would lead to a four-year university and ultimately a career as an engineer.

These days, whether someone is a janitor or a housekeeper or an engineer, they can benefit from—and deserve access to—basic digital skills. In today’s job market, it is critical to know how to navigate job search websites, write a resume, craft a professional email, develop a budget, and so much more.

That’s why, as part of our Grow with Google initiative to drive economic opportunity for all, Google’s Applied Digital Skills is partnering with the Coalition on Adult Basic Education (COABE) to train educators in all 50 states on essential digital skills for the evolving workforce. In the two years since launching Applied Digital Skills, a core part of the Grow with Google program, over a half-million students, including many adult learners, have used the curriculum to help them achieve their personal and professional goals.

Tamara Rood-Spenker, an adult education instructor who teaches down the road from our Google office in Mountain View, California, told me recently that Applied Digital Skills lessons expose her students to new job skills, like using formulas to analyze data in spreadsheets, showing them how technology can make many tasks simpler in their day-to-day lives.

Educators will now be better positioned to help adult learners prepare for and find jobs, build their businesses and even work toward earning their high school equivalency credentials. COABE represents over 55,000 adult educators in the United States who support underserved adults to master the skills they need to build their careers.

Together with COABE, Google will hold 200 hours of in-person professional development sessions for adult educators. We will also build new support guides and training materials, hold webinars and feature best practices in digital skills training. And we will also provide new, free Applied Digital Skills lessons on digital skills that adult educators can utilize in their classrooms.

I know firsthand that learning never ends. As an immigrant to the United States from a working class family, a former community college instructor, and now a Googler leading outreach for computer science and digital skills training, I know education is an ongoing process. We’re excited to be a part of that process with the teachers who make learning a reality, organizations like COABE who support educators and the Americans who wake up every day ready to take their next step.

Working with the USO to help veterans find jobs

As a military spouse, I’ve seen the skills military personnel develop during their time in service to our country firsthand.  In my current role as a recruiter, I also see how those same skills can be a major asset to employers. That’s why we’re committed to bringing more veteran talent to Google as we strive to build for everyone. As part of those efforts, I’m proud to work on a recruiting team dedicated to increasing veteran representation at Google.


In addition to a committed veteran recruiting team, we're focused on bringing more veterans to the company through a veteran referral program. Our new recruits will join a vibrant community of veteran, military spouse and civilian ally Googlers—called VetNet—who are proud to provide others with resources and support, both at Google and beyond.


VetNet’s mission is to unify and serve members of the military community, sharing the best of what they’ve learned in their time at Google through job search mentorship, entrepreneurship training and workshops, like the one held today at the USO San Antonio Downtown. As part of our ongoing support of the USO, VetNet volunteers showed transitioning service members how to search for civilian jobs that call for their military skills through our job search experience for veterans, or make a veteran-led business stand out on Google Search and Maps. And to help them prepare for the civilian job hunt, volunteers offered one-on-one coaching on resume writing and job interviewing.
Two attendees at today's workshop at the USO San Antonio Downtown.

Sean O'Keefe, former Staff Sergeant in the U.S. Army and Google VetNet member, works with a USO client during today’s workshop at the USO San Antonio Downtown.

Veterans’ service in the military has trained them to learn new concepts on the fly, adapt quickly to new challenges and lead diverse teams—skills we look for in new teammates. We’re also creating ways to help veterans transition at every level of their job search. Through Grow with Google, our initiative to help create economic opportunity for Americans, we’ve made it a priority to help service members by like those we met today in San Antonio.


Placing more veterans in roles at Google is a mission that’s close to my heart and is just one of the ways we’re deepening our commitment to creating economic opportunity for more veterans, transitioning service members and their families. To find your next job at Google, visit our careers page and input your military occupational code to learn more about roles that call for skills you developed during your time in service.