The company’s working on a formula that can help them predict who’s most likely to resign.

The formula, which is still being tested and kept secret, uses data from performance reviews, surveys and pay and performance histories to identify employees who are likely to quit in the near future, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Presumably, they’ll take what they find and look for ways to convince those employees to stay.

Google’s had some retention issues lately, as several top employees have left the company. But is designing an equation to identify potential quitters the answer, or is it a needlessly complicated technical solution for an age-old personnel problem?

Some folks think it’s the latter. “They need to come up with ways to keep people engaged,” career consultant Valerie Frederickson was quoted as saying in the WSJ article. “If Google was doing this enough, they wouldn’t be losing all these people.”

Sounds like the general advice every company needs to follow.

To compete with Facebook, Myspace and other social networking sites, Google created a new feature: Google profiles. Similar to those sites, anyone with a Google or Gmail account can set up a profile by filling in basic personal and professional information.

Categories to fill in include location, current employer, previous jobs schools attended and a short biography.

The basic idea is to let users control (at least partially) their online identity. If people don’t like the results that come up when their name is Googled, they can now have at least some say in what searchers find. Now when a name is searched, the bottom of the page features a special section for profile results.

You can access the tool here.

Basically, you type in a phrase and Google tells you about how many people searched for that phrase in the previous month. But it also gives you the stats on similar phrases, with different wording or synonyms, so you can include all of the variations in the ad and have a better chance of showing up on a Google search.

For example, if you enter “sales jobs,” you see that phrase made the top of the list — but “sales rep jobs,” “sales representative jobs” and “jobs in sales” were pretty high, too.

It’s a good way to get an idea of which phrases to use.

That’s the problem one job seeker is dealing with right now.

Lauren Bernat is currently applying for jobs, and she’s worried about what HR managers will find if they decide to Google her name.

Why? Because there’s a popular video floating around featuring a scantily-clad woman — also named Lauren Bernat — playing a video game.

Search for candidates online?

Mistaken identity cases like this are one of the pitfalls of conducting impromptu background checks on Google, Facebook and other sites. Other problems include the fear of learning too much about an applicant’s protected status before a decision’s made.

Still, online searches can reveal some helpful information. Many companies might try to use online tools, but take what they find with a grain of salt.

What about your company? Do you search for candidates online? How do you use that information? Let us know in the comments section.

Google Calendar, the company’s free scheduling tool, offers a lot of features to integrate the service with cell phone technology.

Most importantly, you can add a cell phone number and let Google send a message reminding you of of events you have scheduled. That can by logging in, clicking on “Settings” then “Mobile Setup.” You just have to enter your phone number and mobile carrier, then wait for Google to send you a verification code.

(Note Google doesn’t charge you to get text notifications, but the regular text messaging charges from your phone company apply.)

Some other things Google Calendar lets you do via text message:

• See your next scheduled event by sending “next” to 48368
• See all of the current day’s events by sending “day” to 48368
• See all of tomorrow’s events by sending “nday” to 48368

You can also schedule a new event while you’re on the go, by sending a message with the name of the event, the date and the time. (For example, “Interview May 10 2pm.” There is no standard format – Google seems to be able to figure out you mean as long as all the info is there.)

The facts: After suspecting that an employee had been submitting falsified expense reports, a supervisor confronted him. He admitted to making mistakes but denied any wrongdoing. However, after searching for his name online, the supervisor and HR manager learned he’d been fired from other jobs for similar infractions. Because of that, and some other discipline issues in the past, the company fired him. He sued, claiming they had no right to fire him based on what they found out on the Internet.

The employer said: All the Web search results did was confirm the decision to fire him. The guy had already racked up several infractions, and the findings let the company know that disciplining him again probably wouldn’t have been worth it.

Who won: The employer.

Why: The judge ruled that the employee was fired fairly, because he broke company rules several times. The key was strong documentation – and the fact that the search wasn’t conducted until after the employee violated the rules.

The not-quite answered question is whether or not a company can fire someone based solely on something uncovered through an Internet search. It’s a murky issue, but as this case shows, a good practice is making sure job performance is always the primary reason for letting somebody go.

Cite: Mullins v. Department of Commerce