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

blog.interviewing.io

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

#51

Post by slackstation »

Tech companies rightly or wrongly (the article doesn't make that strong of a case against) are just outsourcing part of their recruiting to elite universities.

Figuring how much investment flows from tech companies (through the companies and the employees as alumni donators) to these elite universities, it may be a worthwhile investment.

It probably is one of the few reliable signals at scale. Sure, you can pluck out a few smart people from your local podunk uni who for various reasons really are that smart but, didn't get into an elite school but, if you need to hire 200 really smart, really capable engineers this year to feed your growth pipeline Stanford, Harvard, et al isn't that bad.

Additionally, it looks good for VCs to say that I have someone from Harvard or Stanford or etc on the team.

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

#52

Post by mixmastamyk »

pfschell wrote: post #29

This article treats "CS graduates" as interchangeable cogs, where the only variables are race, parents' income, and where they grew up. The reality is that particular tech companies have very specific needs around the kind of training someone has. CS curricula vary widely in terms of technologies and depths covered, and applicability to real world problems. A company like Apple has litte use for someone who has only…

The things you mentioned (besides possibly AI) are not CS, a common misconception. CS is data structures, algorithms, compilers, logic, etc.

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

#54

Post by leeny »

rhizome wrote: post #19
leeny wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

We have 2 pools: a practice pool and then a pool where you get guaranteed interviews with employers. If you do well in practice, you can book real interviews with any number of top companies who've come to trust in the quality of our users.

This goes for both senior engineers, and more recently, students.

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

#55

Post by Manishearth »

vthallam wrote: post #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 co…

"stringent requirements"

like "oh, one of your parents was a student here? here, you're in".

Harvard is one-third legacy[1].

> at five Ivy League schools, Dartmouth, Princeton, Yale, Penn and Brown, as well as 33 other colleges, there are more students from families in the top one percent than from the entire bottom 60 percent.

stringent requirements, sure, but certainly not the right kind.

[1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/06/harvards-incoming-class-is-o...

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

#57

Post by notyourday »

wlesieutre wrote: post #25
chk_ur_autism wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The argument is that if you're hiring a student from Stanford you can assume some baseline level of competence (only approximately true, I'd bet). If you're hiring from elsewhere, maybe you have to interview 10 people to find someone with similar knowledge/skill/misc. It's a bigger time investment in the hiring search, and gauging technical skill in a job interview is still an unsolved problem. If you find an efficie…

You are building a CRUD application. You need him or her being +7 on 0 to +100 scale. You are saying that you only start at those who are +70.

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

#58

Post by programminggeek »

Someday, people will realize that diversity on its own doesn't solve anything and that people are people. Some are capable problem solvers and some aren't. Some have great technical or leadership skills and some don't.

Hitting some kind of magic ratio won't on its own create better outcomes. If it did, you could just fire your entire company, hire based on gender and ethnicity ratios and performance would improve.

It turns out that companies aren't taking that approach...

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

#59

Post by messick »

pfschell wrote: post #29

This article treats "CS graduates" as interchangeable cogs, where the only variables are race, parents' income, and where they grew up. The reality is that particular tech companies have very specific needs around the kind of training someone has. CS curricula vary widely in terms of technologies and depths covered, and applicability to real world problems. A company like Apple has litte use for someone who has only…

lol

If you are "someone who has only ever worked on IT-focused Java development" that apparently we don't want at Apple, my email is in my profile.

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

#60

Post by dogruck »

In my experience, major companies are aware of this problem, and would love to find a solution.

Frankly, the problem is that, ultimately, they want to hire the best people. Most of the time, the best people are sourced from the top-tier schools.

On the other hand, in my experience, they pride themselves on finding great people from outside of that small circle. When they do find such a person, it's not uncommon for he or she to excel.

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