????艾米麗?休斯也許不能像她姐姐薩拉一樣在奧運會上奪得冠軍，但她在硅谷的事業正蒸蒸日上。

????9年前，在意大利都靈的2006年冬奧會上，艾米麗?休斯曾在數百萬電視觀眾面前表演花樣滑冰。而如今，她已是一位谷歌人，供職于該公司超高速因特網創新項目Google Fiber。

????這位25歲的前奧運選手在去年11月加入谷歌，成為一位商業分析師，而她正是憑借自己樂于競爭的個性，以及對冒險和失敗的極強忍受力，獲得了這份工作。

????艾米麗表示：“我認為體育項目中學到的許多技能都能應用于工作場合。”她已經從紐約州大頸鎮搬到了舊金山，在谷歌總部山景城的辦公室內開始了她的新事業。“在滑冰時，你每天都會摔倒，你必須爬起來。摔倒就是十分明顯的失敗。每次失敗，我都能從中吸取教訓。”

????也許你能回憶起2002年的冬奧會，艾米麗?休斯就是當時獲得花樣滑冰金牌的薩拉?休斯的妹妹。

????艾米麗說：“我還記得，薩拉奪冠時我才12或13歲。每天我都看她去滑冰場，我看著她訓練，然后想：‘我覺得我也能做到她那樣。’”

????不過艾米麗的成名之路要比她姐姐的坎坷得多。2001年，年僅12歲的艾米麗參加了美國花樣滑冰錦標賽，但之后幾年她都未能進入美國國家隊。2006年，她成為冬奧會花樣滑冰隊的第一替補，在關穎珊因腹股溝傷勢退出后，她遞補入隊，但最后只取得了第七名的成績。

????盡管遭遇傷病，但艾米麗的野心從未減弱。她進入了哈佛大學。在大三時，她決定花一個學期時間來為2010年冬奧會訓練，但最終仍未進入國家隊。

????她說：“沒錯，當我未能入選奧運國家隊時，有一種挫敗感。但因為它，我又做成了許多其他事情。”比如，她有了更多時間來加入哈佛“商界女性”俱樂部等組織，并在校園中擔任多個社團的領導者。

????艾米麗承認，她遭遇的挫折也迫使她反思：“更大的愿景是什么？”

????從哈佛畢業后，艾米麗先后任職于德勤咨詢公司和國際奧委會，但她始終沒有找到自己真正的職業興趣。然后在去年，一名在谷歌工作的朋友跟她講述了自己在這家互聯網巨頭的生活，這讓她十分感興趣。Google Fiber提供的寬帶業務速度是互聯網用戶習慣速度的100倍。這項業務首先于2012年在密蘇里州的堪薩斯城試點，如今業務范圍還拓展到了德克薩斯州奧斯汀市和猶他州普洛佛市。

????艾米麗談起這位朋友時說：“我每次和她聊天，她都熱情地描述谷歌的文化和她的工作。而在那之前，我并沒有認真考慮過在谷歌工作的情形。我每天都用谷歌，但從來沒有想過‘噢，我或許可以去那里工作。’”

????這位朋友給她傳來了Google Fiber的相關信息，然后她提交了求職申請。在通過第一輪面試后，艾米麗進行了連續六個小時的現場面試，只是在用午餐時休息了一會——這跟她曾經在緊鑼密鼓的訓練日里擠出午餐時間沒有什么不同。

????顯然，艾米麗擁有谷歌最看重的員工品質。喬納森?羅森伯格曾經與谷歌董事長埃里克?施密特合作撰寫了暢銷書《谷歌如何運作》（How Google Works）。他表示：“你首先要尋找的就是激情。你想要那種不斷學習的人。”谷歌的招聘網站也提到，公司尋找那些能夠證明自己“在不同情況下能采用不同方式調動團隊”的人。

????采用不同方式——好吧，艾米麗是這方面的專家。“在滑冰時，我經常被糾正，被告知要用不同方式來完成動作。這使得我能更好地接受建設性的反饋。”

????艾米麗只是正在谷歌工作的前奧運選手團隊中的最新成員。谷歌公司已經招聘了至少10名有過奧運會經歷的員工。運動員通常能引起谷歌招聘者的興趣，因為運動背景能教會人們應對批評，提高人們的適應力。

????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.