I don't buy it. It's a barrier to entry, but is it one that correlates with better candidates? I find it hard to believe that there's a compelling correlation b

I don't buy it. It's a barrier to entry, but is it one that correlates with better candidates? I find it hard to believe that there's a compelling correlation between people willing to pay to apply and people Google wants to hire. If you're looking for a barrier to entry, makes more sense to look for one with likely correlations (has worked at companies whose employees tend to be a fit at Google, has authored a popular open source library, etc..) But even then, these are all ways to cut costs and shrink the hiring funnel.. which seems like the exact opposite of what Google is trying to do. They're clearly pretty comfortable with the amount of money they spend per hire in recruiting, and I don't see any evidence they want to tighten-up the candidate pool at the risk of missing out on good hires. [Edit]: On second thought, Google adopting this strategy does seem like a helpful solution to Facebook's hiring problem :)