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If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

blog.interviewing.io

11–20 of 496 posts

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#11
Same five schools. How about we first even just address the stunning level of group think that comes from 90+% of faculty being Liberals. Some here in particular may make excuses for that, but I can tell you that if that issue is not fixed ... if it's not even already too late ... it will crater our university system as "online" universities become better over time.

The age of kleptocratic administrative layers at Universities importing communist and muslim subversive faculty and foreigners being given preference over Americans due to "diversity" needs to come to an end before it totally brings the USA to collapse, and with it, so would also go the rest of the world. This is a lagging effects type of situation here. You have to be able to project effects into the future. If you had your pulse on matters in the past, you would see that things have progressed even worse than ever anticipated back just 15 or 20 years ago. The tea leaves do not look good at all right now.

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#12

This is a good idea in theory, but the problem in practice is that for every Emily or Anthony, there are a hundred students at 2nd and 3rd tier universities who, partly through their own failures and partly due to the unfortunate circumstances they’re in, are completely incompetent. I often find that those who are so keen on “hiring broadly” have never worked in a company that hires primarily from Podunk State - your…

I'm not sure I understand your argument here. If we cut through the clutter, you're essentially advocating that you hire people on an individual basis and shouldn't weight at all what school they come from. No?

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#13

Honestly, I think the socioeconomic status of your parents should be more heavily waited in "diversity" measures than skin color.

Totally agree, but as another commenter suggested it is difficult to measure socioeconomic status. I think the bigger issue is -- why are negative points applied to Asian applications on my affirmative action schemes, rather than negative points evenly distributed against the entire non-preferred pool? Is anyone seriously arguing that Asian applicants have it easier than caucasians?

Having grown up quite poor in NYC, I was always dismayed by not being able to take advantage of affirmative action programs...but getting selective negative points is just plain unfair.

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#14
>interviewing.io evaluates students based on their coding skills, not their resume. We are open to students regardless of their university affiliation, college major, and pretty much anything else (we ask for your class year to make sure you’re available when companies want you and that’s about it). Unlike traditional campus recruiting, we attract students organically (getting free practice with engineers from top companies is a pretty big draw) from schools big and small from across the country.

Sweet pitch and of course a genuine problem. But companies have very limited resources and they use them at elite schools which have already stringent requirements to get in. Alternatively, I now see most companies are giving a hackerrank test as a start irrespective of your school. I guess this is a starting point to avoid the bias towards top schools.

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#15
Agreed. As someone who recently graduated from a relatively good (2100 median SAT score) school that ISN'T a top five CS school, it was absolutely insulting how often I was completely ignored by companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon. I understand that the median of talent is probably worse at my school than at, say, MIT or Stanford, but the top quarter of my CS year was full of brilliant people who had an unnecessarily difficult time getting hired by top tier tech companies for no good reason.

These companies could definitely improve their hiring quality by drawing top-tier students at lesser schools instead of hiring below-median talent from target top schools.

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#16
I would bet significant amounts of money that if you looked at people based on their in-job performance blinded to background you'd find insignificant contributions from education.

Not interviewing, I would bet that people from top-tier schools interview very well, as I think Triplebyte discussed the other day. I'm talking about actual bottom-line performance in the job, which in my experience shows little correlation with school or even undergrad degree for people with any experience at all.

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#17
post #8

This is a good idea in theory, but the problem in practice is that for every Emily or Anthony, there are a hundred students at 2nd and 3rd tier universities who, partly through their own failures and partly due to the unfortunate circumstances they’re in, are completely incompetent. I often find that those who are so keen on “hiring broadly” have never worked in a company that hires primarily from Podunk State - your…

That's why we're really proud of what we do at interviewing.io. All students have to go through a series of practice interviews, so by the time they talk to companies, we know they're great, and so far, most of the students we've presented have gotten offers, independently of their backgrounds. With our model, we free up companies from having to worry about exactly what you described because we incur the vetting.

Do you also provide a service to hire vetted engineering staff when the company may not have the technical baseline to properly interview?

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#18

This is a good idea in theory, but the problem in practice is that for every Emily or Anthony, there are a hundred students at 2nd and 3rd tier universities who, partly through their own failures and partly due to the unfortunate circumstances they’re in, are completely incompetent. I often find that those who are so keen on “hiring broadly” have never worked in a company that hires primarily from Podunk State - your…

As someone that went to podunk state and was recruited by all kinds of companies (went to work at Arthur Andersen in the 90s for my first job because I wanted to learn which side I was more interested in, software/computers or finance/accounting). I found that hiring for potential and attitude goes much farther than hiring for skill in new/recent graduates.

Having worked all over the United States and even the "mecca" of San Francisco, the quality seemingly is more tied to their experience than their "talent".

When surrounded by other excellent workers/engineers and great processes, you can become great. When you work with and for mediocre, that tends to be what you know.

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#19
post #8

This is a good idea in theory, but the problem in practice is that for every Emily or Anthony, there are a hundred students at 2nd and 3rd tier universities who, partly through their own failures and partly due to the unfortunate circumstances they’re in, are completely incompetent. I often find that those who are so keen on “hiring broadly” have never worked in a company that hires primarily from Podunk State - your…

That's why we're really proud of what we do at interviewing.io. All students have to go through a series of practice interviews, so by the time they talk to companies, we know they're great, and so far, most of the students we've presented have gotten offers, independently of their backgrounds. With our model, we free up companies from having to worry about exactly what you described because we incur the vetting.

Do I understand correctly that on the candidate side the person can go through a sequence of interviews without the possibility of actually meeting a hiring company? Also that you only work with students?

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#20

Honestly, I think the socioeconomic status of your parents should be more heavily waited in "diversity" measures than skin color.

Totally agree, but as another commenter suggested it is difficult to measure socioeconomic status. I think the bigger issue is -- why are negative points applied to Asian applications on my affirmative action schemes, rather than negative points evenly distributed against the entire non-preferred pool? Is anyone seriously arguing that Asian applicants have it easier than caucasians? Having grown up quite poor in NYC,…

>>> Is anyone seriously arguing that Asian applicants have it easier than caucasians?

Statistically speaking, don't they? Isn't that the reasoning for these "penalties"?

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