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

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

#111

Post by vamin »

teirce wrote: post #104

This isn't even a problem that's limited to hiring out of schools. I went to a pretty small school in flyover country, and (much as the article outlines) the hardest part about getting a job was certainly not the interviews, it was getting attention from anyone. Now I'm working at a local tech company near where I went to school, because I only had local connections from internships etc. Recently I've been looking to…

I had a slightly different issue (non-traditional major for the field I was trying to get into), but I found that it significantly improved my response rates to put my education section at the bottom, instead of the top, of my resume. It made it less likely that a recruiter would dismiss me out of hand based on my education before forming an opinion based on my skills and experience.

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

#112

Post by gonehome »

drewg123 wrote: post #37

When I was at Google, I was asked if I wanted to make a recruiting trip to my alma mater. I was excited until I found out they were talking about my grad school where I got my MS, and not UB, a large state school where I got my BS. I told them I'd be happy to take a trip to recruit at UB. I got mostly crickets back from that reply. However, I ended up getting signed up for a series where they had a panel of a few HR…

I agree - and this is even more true at state schools than the slightly more selective schools (like RPI that I went to).

State schools have people that got into MIT, but didn't go for financial reasons or family reasons. Nobody at RPI got into MIT because if they did they would have gone to MIT (maybe some rare exception exists, but this is generally true).

School admission is obviously not a perfect indicator of ability, but I suspect while the average and median may be higher (and more tightly distributed) at a school like RPI, a state school will have a lot more outliers.

Everyone is fighting for students from the super selective schools and state schools are largely ignored - students either need referrals to get interviews or jump through a ton of hacker rank like hoops.

This is even ignoring the 'diversity' angle - a lot of really great people are missed because it's hard to break in without knowing someone or having the right credentials.

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

#113

Post by thereare5lights »

drraid0 wrote: post #56

What if I don't care about "diversity" as measured by the number of "underrepresented" minorities, and instead care about the fiduciary responsibility I have to maximize value for stock holders?

gotta love people spreading fake news. there is no fiduciary responsibility to maximize value for stockholders. if there were people would be legally penalized for failing to do so. but then admitting that would destroy your narrative now wouldn't it?

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

#114

Post by smm2000 »

rsynnott wrote: post #93
drewg123 wrote: post #37

When I was at Google, I was asked if I wanted to make a recruiting trip to my alma mater. I was excited until I found out they were talking about my grad school where I got my MS, and not UB, a large state school where I got my BS. I told them I'd be happy to take a trip to recruit at UB. I got mostly crickets back from that reply. However, I ended up getting signed up for a series where they had a panel of a few HR…

The odd thing is, the university I went to, not in the US, is ranked a bit higher than UB in the international rankings, but definitely the same general area. And it gets lots of attention from Google recruiters and those from similar companies, I believe. The interviews are still fairly hard work, I hear, but they seem less fussy about universities outside the US.

Rankings do not fairly represent quality of students when compared internationally. Very very few people will go to UB if he/she was accepted to Harvard/MIT so very few top students in US ends up in UB. University of Country (ranked the same as UB internationally but the best in that country) gets almost all smart students from that country.

Quality of education itself is mostly irrelevant - difference is small and it's good enough pretty much everywhere now.

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

#115

Post by Consultant32452 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #94

I went to a non-top tier undergraduate school. I made efforts--at big companies as well as the one I founded--to recruit from my alma mater . I ended up defaulting to NYU, Harvard and Stanford. Career services at non-top tier schools are shit. Once, as a personal favor, I offered to help a company with a well-known CEO recruit from my state school. When I brought it up with a dean I knew, career services got mad. The…

>It's bad, and it matches that of the schools we recruit from.

I don't understand this. If you're matching the diversity of the market, that would seem to me that your recruiting practices are unbiased, which is good, right?

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

#117

Post by whipoodle »

gonehome wrote: post #112
drewg123 wrote: post #37

When I was at Google, I was asked if I wanted to make a recruiting trip to my alma mater. I was excited until I found out they were talking about my grad school where I got my MS, and not UB, a large state school where I got my BS. I told them I'd be happy to take a trip to recruit at UB. I got mostly crickets back from that reply. However, I ended up getting signed up for a series where they had a panel of a few HR…

I agree - and this is even more true at state schools than the slightly more selective schools (like RPI that I went to). State schools have people that got into MIT, but didn't go for financial reasons or family reasons. Nobody at RPI got into MIT because if they did they would have gone to MIT (maybe some rare exception exists, but this is generally true). School admission is obviously not a perfect indicator of ab…

I didn't even understand the whole world of prestige and specialization among colleges when I was 16 or 17 and trying to pick a school. I didn't know that some schools were where the "good" people go. I just knew I was supposed to go to college, so I visited the local Penn State campus and people said "don't come here". Then I visited another state school and people seemed to like it, so that's where I went.

I wonder if people realize how rare it is to even understand these things. If you don't have people in your family who went to college you are unlikely to be initiated into all this. If you do have a lot of people in your family who went to college, that's a serious leg up.

Now I work in a fancy startup where everyone went to Stanford, MIT, Harvard. It's a very weird feeling.

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

#118

Post by humanrebar »

drewg123 wrote: post #70
eropple wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They just don't understand that some people like me, who can get into the (mostly private) elite schools choose to go to a "long tail" school for a variety of reasons (financial, family obligations, etc). Agreed--I was accepted everywhere I applied save one and I ended up going to the University of Maine. I've never hurt for work and I paid off my student loans by the age of 25. Google sniffs around now (aside: rec…

I ended up at a no-name school because I got a terrible financial aid package at an elite school that I'd applied to early decision. So bailed and went to a state school for almost free.

Same here.

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

#119

Post by beamatronic »

maxsilver wrote: post #79
notyourday wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Good luck convincing Google (or Netflix / Amazon / Microsoft / any other major company) that anything they do is 'just a CRUD application'. Even when it's true, they'll never admit it.

It's CRUD but at web scale!
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