Tech giant Google has been working with the NBA on a program known as #NBACareerCrossover for three years now, and to celebrate that program’s third anniversary, a number of current NBA players paid Google a visit at its Mountain View headquarters. The program is focused on helping professional basketball players figure out where to go next in their careers, and this year was Google’s turn to present, showing players what a job in the world of technology would be like. Three current players, one former NBA player, and one former WNBA player, all spent a day at Google, getting to see how everything works firsthand and sample the company’s latest technical and cultural developments.
The day at Google began with a focus on how to get into Google, with the company’s People Operations team giving a talk and helping the players through a resume workshop. The first few hours of the tour focused on how NBA players can translate their prior careers and schooling into qualifications for getting into Google. From there, the players were taken all over the Googleplex to check out projects and products from all across Alphabet, got a chance to eat lunch in the company cafe, and even went for rides in Waymo’s self-driving cars, presumably down Fury Road and nearby streets. The point of the day was to show players what life at Google was like and how to get there, and the mission was apparently largely accomplished. The players met and spoke to Googlers from all sorts of backgrounds, including professional sports, about day to day life as a Google employee and how their past exploits have served them at the company.
Alphabet is one of the world’s largest tech companies, with its massive internal Google unit taking care of most of the core business that actually makes the company money. That being the case, the company has a vested interest in the results of many of its community efforts, such as pushing hard for STEM in schools, talent growth, and career direction efforts like this one. The company will always need a good supply of fresh, innovative talent, and this effort is one of the ways it gets what it needs and plants seeds so it can reap future talent.
