A piece in Monday's New York Times looks at some of the unique ways that Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) is looking to attract talent, starting with candidates as young as college freshmen. What are some of their strategies? Puzzles, Legos, video games, cocktail parties, pizza parties, treasure hunts, and programming contests. These are intended to be low-pressure opportunities for job seekers to get to know Google's corporate culture.

Google's recruiting strategy appears to be working, as the company recently surpassed McKinsey as the most desirable employer of MBA's.

What's so great here is that Google appears to be succeeding in maintaining its own slightly off-kilter corporate culture in spite of rapid growth. And it's that culture that, in part, has allowed Google to prosper. As companies like Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) have learned, rapid growth can turn a company with a strong, independent culture into a bureaucracy reminiscent of Teldar Paper, for all of you fans of the movie Wall Street.

Google's emphasis on its people should help it avoid that fate, and stockholders will be huge beneficiaries if it can.