Even Google's feeling the heat from the war for talent.

In an article from Wall Street Journal today entitle, "Google Adjusts Hiring Process as Needs Grow," Google is reportedly making the hiring process less stringent and time-consuming.

"Everything works if you're trying to hire 500 people a year or 1,000," says [head of HR Laszlo] Bock, 33 years old. But "we're hiring much larger numbers than that, and so it forces us to go back and say...what do we need to change in the way we interface with our candidates?"

In addition to great talent becoming harder to come by, Google also realizes that time-to-hire needs to decrease in order for supply to keep up with demand. Google hires 16 people everyday and has moved up from 1,628 employees at the end of 2003 to 5,680 at the end of 2005.

One initiative Google has already undertaken is reducing the number of interviews. Mr. Bock says each candidate offered a job by Google went through 5.1 in-person interviews on average in June, down from 6.2 at the beginning of the year. (A veteran tech recruiter says five to eight interviews is probably about average for Silicon Valley.) Google is also considering requiring staff members who interview candidates to submit their assessments within a week of the interview; right now, there's no strict deadline.

Amazingly, even in light of the fast pace and incredible growth of Google, the founders still find time to review every candidate. The article states, "Even today, at least one of the co-founders reviews every job offer recommended by an internal hiring committee on a weekly basis, sometimes pushing back with questions about an individual's qualifications."

I'm beginning to believe the Google founders are actually robots. Robots that don't sleep, of course.