一名退役奥运选手的精彩后半场：从哈佛到谷歌

    艾米丽•休斯也许不能像她姐姐萨拉一样在奥运会上夺得冠军，但她在硅谷的事业正蒸蒸日上。

    9年前，在意大利都灵的2006年冬奥会上，艾米丽•休斯曾在数百万电视观众面前表演花样滑冰。而如今，她已是一位谷歌人，供职于该公司超高速因特网创新项目Google Fiber。

    这位25岁的前奥运选手在去年11月加入谷歌，成为一位商业分析师，而她正是凭借自己乐于竞争的个性，以及对冒险和失败的极强忍受力，获得了这份工作。

    艾米丽表示：“我认为体育项目中学到的许多技能都能应用于工作场合。”她已经从纽约州大颈镇搬到了旧金山，在谷歌总部山景城的办公室内开始了她的新事业。“在滑冰时，你每天都会摔倒，你必须爬起来。摔倒就是十分明显的失败。每次失败，我都能从中吸取教训。”

    也许你能回忆起2002年的冬奥会，艾米丽•休斯就是当时获得花样滑冰金牌的萨拉•休斯的妹妹。

    艾米丽说：“我还记得，萨拉夺冠时我才12或13岁。每天我都看她去滑冰场，我看着她训练，然后想：‘我觉得我也能做到她那样。’”

    不过艾米丽的成名之路要比她姐姐的坎坷得多。2001年，年仅12岁的艾米丽参加了美国花样滑冰锦标赛，但之后几年她都未能进入美国国家队。2006年，她成为冬奥会花样滑冰队的第一替补，在关颖珊因腹股沟伤势退出后，她递补入队，但最后只取得了第七名的成绩。

    尽管遭遇伤病，但艾米丽的野心从未减弱。她进入了哈佛大学。在大三时，她决定花一个学期时间来为2010年冬奥会训练，但最终仍未进入国家队。

    她说：“没错，当我未能入选奥运国家队时，有一种挫败感。但因为它，我又做成了许多其他事情。”比如，她有了更多时间来加入哈佛“商界女性”俱乐部等组织，并在校园中担任多个社团的领导者。

    艾米丽承认，她遭遇的挫折也迫使她反思：“更大的愿景是什么？”

    从哈佛毕业后，艾米丽先后任职于德勤咨询公司和国际奥委会，但她始终没有找到自己真正的职业兴趣。然后在去年，一名在谷歌工作的朋友跟她讲述了自己在这家互联网巨头的生活，这让她十分感兴趣。Google Fiber提供的宽带业务速度是互联网用户习惯速度的100倍。这项业务首先于2012年在密苏里州的堪萨斯城试点，如今业务范围还拓展到了德克萨斯州奥斯汀市和犹他州普洛佛市。

    艾米丽谈起这位朋友时说：“我每次和她聊天，她都热情地描述谷歌的文化和她的工作。而在那之前，我并没有认真考虑过在谷歌工作的情形。我每天都用谷歌，但从来没有想过‘噢，我或许可以去那里工作。’”

    这位朋友给她传来了Google Fiber的相关信息，然后她提交了求职申请。在通过第一轮面试后，艾米丽进行了连续六个小时的现场面试，只是在用午餐时休息了一会——这跟她曾经在紧锣密鼓的训练日里挤出午餐时间没有什么不同。

    显然，艾米丽拥有谷歌最看重的员工品质。乔纳森•罗森伯格曾经与谷歌董事长埃里克•施密特合作撰写了畅销书《谷歌如何运作》（How Google Works）。他表示：“你首先要寻找的就是激情。你想要那种不断学习的人。”谷歌的招聘网站也提到，公司寻找那些能够证明自己“在不同情况下能采用不同方式调动团队”的人。

    采用不同方式——好吧，艾米丽是这方面的专家。“在滑冰时，我经常被纠正，被告知要用不同方式来完成动作。这使得我能更好地接受建设性的反馈。”

    艾米丽只是正在谷歌工作的前奥运选手团队中的最新成员。谷歌公司已经招聘了至少10名有过奥运会经历的员工。运动员通常能引起谷歌招聘者的兴趣，因为运动背景能教会人们应对批评，提高人们的适应力。

    Emily Hughes may not have placed first at the Olympics like her big sis Sarah, but she’s quickly on the rise in Silicon Valley.

    Nine years ago, Emily Hughes was at the 2006 Olympic games in Turin, Italy, skating before millions of TV viewers. Today, Hughes is in the trenches at Google GOOG -0.73% working on Google Fiber, the company’s ambitious ultra-high-speed Internet initiative.

    This 25-year-old former Olympian joined Google as a business analyst in November, and it was her love of competition – and an extraordinary tolerance for risk-taking and failure – that helped her land the job.

    “I think in sports in general, there’s a lot of transferable skills that you can bring to the workplace,” says Hughes, who moved from Great Neck, N.Y., to San Francisco to begin her new gig at Google’s Mountain View offices. “In skating, every day, you fall and you have to get up. And falling is a pretty obvious failure. I’ve definitely learned from everything I’ve failed at.”

    As you may recall from the 2002 Winter Olympics, Emily Hughes is the younger sister of Sarah Hughes, the world champion skater who copped the Gold in 2002.

    “I remember, I was 12 or 13 when Sarah won,” Emily says. “Every day, I saw her go to the rink, I saw her train and I thought, ‘I think I could do that too.’”

    But the road to fame was a lot harder for Emily than it was for her older sister. In 2001, at age 12, she competed in the U.S. Figure Skating Championship, but then a couple of years later, Emily failed to make the U.S. team. In 2006, she was the first alternate to the Winter Olympics, and after Michelle Kwan withdrew due to a groin injury, she was named to the team. But she finished seventh overall.

    Amidst injuries and illnesses, her ambition never waned. Hughes went on to Harvard, and in her junior year, she decided to take a semester off to train for the 2010 Olympics. She failed to qualify.

    “When I didn’t make the Olympic team, yes, that was a failure in a sense, but there were so many other things that I’ve accomplished because of it,” she says. For example, she had more time to join organizations such as Harvard’s “Women in Business” club and take on leadership positions on campus.

    Her setbacks, she admits, also forced her to think to herself: “What is the bigger picture?”

    After Harvard, Hughes worked at Deloitte Consulting and the International Olympic Committee, but she never found her true calling. Then last year, a friend who worked at Google told her about life at the Internet giant, and Hughes was intrigued. Google Fiber delivers broadband service at 100 times what Internet users are accustomed to. The service first launched in Kansas City, Mo., in 2012 and now operates in Austin, Texas, and Provo, Utah, as well.

    “Every time I talked to her, she just raved about Google’s culture and her work,” Emily says, referring to her friend. “Before that, I hadn’t really thought about working at Google. I used Google every day, but it wasn’t something that I ever thought, ‘Oh I could go work there.’”

    Her friend passed on some information about Google Fiber, and she applied. Clearing a first-round interview, Hughes went through six hours of on-site back-to-back interviews, with only a lunch break– not unlike the times she used to scramble to find time for lunch in a jam-packed training day.

    Certainly, Hughes possesses the most critical quality that Google seeks in its employees. “The No. 1 thing that you look for is passion,” says Jonathan Rosenberg, who wrote the best-selling How Google Works with Google chairman Eric Schmidt. “You want the kind of person who is constantly learning.” Google’s career website notes that the company looks for people who can show they’ve “flexed different muscles in different situations in order to mobilize a team.”

    Flexing different muscles — well, Hughes is a pro at that. “With skating, constantly being corrected and told how to do something differently has helped me take constructive feedback better,” she says.

    Hughes is simply the latest in a lineup of former Olympians working at Google. The company claims to employ at least 10. Athletes, in general, appeal to the Googlers who do the hiring because a sports background teaches you to handle criticism and adapt.