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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

#181

Post by moftz »

jroseattle wrote: post #123

When we find a candidate we're interested in pursuing, we ask our recruiting operation to do two things prior to sending us the candidate's resume. 1) Remove the candidate's name/address. Replace with local-to-office = yes|no. Leave phone for screening call. 2) Replace the candidate's education credentials with yes|no on post-HS attendance, and the focus of study. No other information necessary. It's made a huge diff…

Is GPA included? I bombed my first two years at school due to being totally unprepared. I took a semester off and came back to actually do well but the damage was done. I was consistently looked over at nearly every career fair interview. I never put my GPA on my resume and the moment the question would come up, I already knew they weren't going to hire me despite anything else on my resume or what we discussed in the interview. The only time I would actually get offer letters is when no one asked my GPA. I know that internships are competitive and I would only want to be judged on merit but being judged solely on one number was the most frustrating thing during school.

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

#182

Post by stevenwoo »

felipemnoa wrote: post #141
strictnein wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what UB is (I'm assuming it's a university). BS = Bachelor of Science MS = Master's of Science HR = Human Resources

I believe UB stands for University at Buffalo [1] or more precisely State University of New York at Buffalo. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_at_Buffalo

as someone who grew up in Texas, I was wondering WTF UB meant and how so many people seemed to know what it was. RPI I knew because I they sent me literature while I was in high school 30 years ago.

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

#183

Post by Bartweiss »

jldugger wrote: post #73
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…

> 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 Can you really expect any different from a company founded from within the halls of Stanford, and then staffed primarily from there? On the other hand, I bet if you sat down and ran the numbers, recruiting from state schools isn't productive. For better or worse, school selec…

> Cherry picking your one Anthony per school is likely harder than showing up to Stanford where they picked cherries 4 years ago.

An interesting idea: pulling from state schools isn't a problem because they're short on talent, it's a problem because recruiters and interviewers are bad at identifying talent.

Colleges get a transcript, SATs, and essays to make a decision on, then do four years of further sorting. That's far from perfect, but given the track record of job interviews (stunningly poor), picking the best state candidates may not just be time-consuming but basically impossible.

If you simply can't tell who's good, then outsourcing that decision becomes an obvious choice.

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

#184

Post by wolco »

moftz wrote: post #132
southphillyman wrote: post #105

Isn't this one of the primary reasons why those particular schools are "elite". Because of the alumni base and "connections" you can make at these schools? It sucks but I feel like most students enter college knowing how this system works and therefore try their darnest to get into one of those elite schools. I went to a school that had career fairs with 50 kids standing in every line waiting for their resumes to be…

I went to a major state research university for engineering. During career fairs, the big companies would always have huge lines for hours and the unknown, smaller companies would be doing their best to grab every uninterested kid walking past. The big companies were usually a waste of time to talk to (and waste of time waiting to talk to). They would sort resumes by GPA and pitch the bottom 90%. Then you would still…

If you want to one day start a startup you should stay away from big companies, the skills and experience you get at the right startup can make the difference.

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

#185

Post by zulrah »

If you care about diversity stop interviewing on these stupid algorithmic questions! Getting a job literally depends on buying the cracking the coding interview book and solving these stupid problems. I know some of my course mates who worked on very interesting projects but couldn't get a job because they couldn't white board a tree balancing problem :D

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

#186

Post by mseebach »

naturalgradient wrote: post #10

I was an undergraduate at a no-name university for various personal reasons. A Google, Microsoft and other big tech co offices were nearby. Throughout my undergrad, not a single event, talk or recruiting opportunity emerged. I understand this: the top people are the same everywhere but it does not economically make sense to do events to potentially hire 1-2 people. I am now at a world famous grad school and there are…

> but it does not economically make sense to do events to potentially hire 1-2 people

Google and Microsoft makes about $200k/year profit per employee, Facebook 4x that. The problem, I suspect, is that you probably don't net anywhere near 1-2 hires per couple of events at these schools.

https://www.recode.net/2017/8/4/16090758/facebook-google-pro...

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

#187

Post by Bartweiss »

mseebach wrote: post #174
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…

> In my circle of friends, there were 3-4 other people that Google would have been lucky to have Don't they have a referral bonus scheme pretty much exactly for this?

Interesting point - referral schemes are almost always cheaper than using professional recruiters, but they're particularly well-tailored to picking up candidates who are hard to find by resume alone. They'll miss a lot of clusters who never get that first Googler in the door, but past that point they're a highly efficient fix.

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

#188

Post by TallGuyShort »

skybrian wrote: post #136
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…

A Google interviewer definitely shouldn't be doing that. Sounds like you got a bad one.

I've had a different one contact me repeatedly every 6 months like clockwork for the last 5 years. Of the ~10 I've had one that listened to WHY I wasn't immediately interested and factored that into his future communications. The rest of them came off exactly as the parent comment to yours described.

edit: to clarify what happens, every 6 months it's a new recruiter, and they always ping me multiple times until I respond and tell them what I've told all of them, and they usually (with 1 exception so far) keep pinging the same way.

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

#189

Post by Muuuchem »

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.

Got paid to go to state school lets get it
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