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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

#201

Post by s73ver_ »

dominotw wrote: post #87
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 for a variety of reasons why stop here though, couldn't you just extend this argument to people who go community colleges or online schools or even people don't go any school ?

Yeah, you kinda could. A lot of those things select for people with money.

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

#202

Post by PeterisP »

Manishearth wrote: post #55
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/…

Having one-third legacy isn't really that strong evidence of a bias - legacy can be easily explained by (a) the fact that people who can choose between the top schools are likely to prefer Harvard for legacy reasons; and (b) the fact that academic success in general (and thus the ability to perform well in any school) is highly hereditary - all three of nature+nurture+socioeconomic status are strong influencers, and all are highly hereditary; so we should expect that a much higher proportion (compared to average) children of Harvard graduates have the innate qualities that would allow to choose among top schools even if there was no legacy bias.

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

#203

Post by fareesh »

As an outsider in another country, my impression seems to be that the quest for diversity seems to have turned into something of a religion in several cultures. In principle, as a solution to the problem I am principally all in favor of anonymous, faceless, no alma mater preference etc. interviews and application processes, and/or whatever other measures are suggested to remove the possibility of bias or unconscious bias or anything else that is theorized/proven to exist and affect outcomes.

I am also all in favor of organizations taking steps to address the various negative experiences that are somewhat typically encountered in various demographics, e.g. harassment, etc. as well as affirmative action as a way to attempt to correct this. Based on the fervor with which it is pursued (which is admirable in many ways), I seem to be convinced that if these measures have a negligible effect on outcomes, the crusade for diversity will still continue, as if to suggest that equality of outcome is a worthy goal, as opposed to equality of opportunity. The latter is definitely an unjust status quo worthy of fighting, but the former seems to completely throw away the notion of free will.

It's almost akin to a scientist who so adamantly wants to prove their theory that they will do anything to ensure the result is consistent with the hypothesis.

Then again I could be wrong and people will actually stop pushing for it after these practices are instituted.

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

#204

Post by demonshalo »

fareesh wrote: post #203

As an outsider in another country, my impression seems to be that the quest for diversity seems to have turned into something of a religion in several cultures. In principle, as a solution to the problem I am principally all in favor of anonymous, faceless, no alma mater preference etc. interviews and application processes, and/or whatever other measures are suggested to remove the possibility of bias or unconscious…

> It's almost akin to a scientist who so adamantly wants to prove their theory that they will do anything to ensure the result is consistent with the hypothesis.

This. With the only exception being that it is not a science and there is 0 supporting evidence for the myth of diversity.

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

#205

Post by gonehome »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #147
gonehome wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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). One exception at least. One of my fraternity brothers at RPI came to beautiful Troy, NY when he had the option of MIT. There really are good reasons for such a choice. The schools that are so famous for their top-end research are achieving that research success by having those eli…

> The schools that are so famous for their top-end research are achieving that research success by having those elite professors doing research, and that comes at the expense of teaching.

There's no guarantee that the less selective schools are any better at teaching. From what I've seen CMU and Stanford both had smaller class sizes and better teachers than RPI, but that was just from quick touring.

There are some schools with a strong focus on teaching (Harvey Mudd), but that seems to be unusual. I think in most cases if you get into a super selective school you should go if you can.

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

#206

Post by s73ver_ »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #115
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?

Well, for one, 3 schools do not the market make. For two, it means they're not making any effort to reach out to those in disadvantaged populations. It's a large problem that a lot of companies have.

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

#207

Post by stuxnet79 »

whipoodle wrote: post #117
gonehome wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Things ended up working for me overall but I can relate to this post so much ...

The assumption that it's 'obvious' that knowledge of how the system works is widespread is just wrong. It's only recently that I clued in to how the industry works, if I had all this knowledge handy years ago, if somebody told me, I don't know what position I would be in right now.

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

#208

Post by s73ver_ »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #173
gumby wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are matching the diversity of the schools' recruiting efforts. So yes, you could say they are (perhaps) unbiased vs their input, but their input has problems. In other words, their selection of schools to recruit from means they are outsourcing the distribution of your their candidate pool, and the GP poster is not happy with that aspect of the result. If it doesn't match your society or customer base, and you t…

I'm not disagreeing that the situation is bad. I just don't see how adding bias to your recruitment is a solution to the problem. If we had a bunch of women who couldn't get engineering jobs I'd understand, but we seem to have the opposite situation where everyone is competing for a limited resource. If you're proportionate to the pool, you're probably doing well.

Who said anything about bias? Looking in places that you don't traditionally look isn't bias.

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

#209

Post by Bartweiss »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #176
Consultant32452 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not disagreeing that the situation is bad. I just don't see how adding bias to your recruitment is a solution to the problem. If we had a bunch of women who couldn't get engineering jobs I'd understand, but we seem to have the opposite situation where everyone is competing for a limited resource. If you're proportionate to the pool, you're probably doing well.

> I just don't see how adding bias to your recruitment is a solution to the problem The goal isn't to add bias. It's to seek out the source of a bias we think might exist and then remove it. For example, if we find 5% of top-tier schools' CS grads are women while 20% of mid-tier schools' CS grads are, and find similar quality in both pools (keep in mind, when you interview graduates you get to select for quality), th…

> we find 5% of top-tier schools' CS grads are women while 20% of mid-tier schools' CS grads are

I agree with the sentiment, but isn't the situation exactly the opposite of that? Top-tier schools work to balance gender distributions, and many of them succeed well above industry averages. Other schools spend less effort, and get predictably thinner results.

Compare, say, RPI and MIT. (I know RPI is uncommonly skewed, but I wanted to compare tech schools to one another. Otherwise specific stats are swamped by the ratio of tech to non-tech majors.)

- RPI, overall: 32% female

- MIT, overall: 46% female

- RPI, computer science: 16% female

- MIT, computer science, 32% female

As I understood the stats, a company that pulls students at the same rate as their candidate schools will see worse gender diversity as they broaden their pool. (Among CS programs at 4 year US colleges; outside that I don't know.)

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

#210

Post by s73ver_ »

crispyambulance wrote: post #42
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…

> How could companies reach the great students at unknown schools systematically? Maybe it's better that these great students at "unknown schools" DON'T get hired by google/facebook/amazon/microsoft ? Maybe their talents are best directed at small-ish companies where they can contribute, grow, and do interesting stuff outside of monstrously large companies with cut-throat competition? Having ALL the "top" candidates…

I think it would be better for those candidates to make that decision themselves.
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