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Firm 'hides' university when recruits apply
- afarrell 11y agoThis has been proposed as a way to fight rising college costs http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/06/against-tulip-subsidies/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/06/against-tulip-subsidies...
- jostmey 11y agoThis graph says everything you need to know about higher education: http://www.businessinsider.com/inflation-update-2011-1 http://www.businessinsider.com/inflation-update-2011-1 I would suggest that academia is in a bubble, but many of the top Universities are sitting on massive endowments. They have a nearly endless supply of cash.
- nugget 11y agoTop universities are benefiting from globalization the same way that real estate owners in global cities are...there is an almost endless demand for their product. If all qualified high schoolers from around the world could participate in an auction to win a spot in Harvard or MIT's incoming class, the annual tuition would be hundreds of thousands of dollars. But this only applies to a small cluster of top schools and it drops off pretty quickly.
- phkahler 11y agoGovernment involvement in student loans is the direct cause of that.
- bdamm 11y agoAre you saying governments shouldn't create policy that allows student loans?
- dogma1138 11y agoNo they shouldn't when loans are guaranteed to cover your tuition and for the most part you are guaranteed a loan prices soar because there is no incentive to lower the costs, the uni's make more money, and banks and the government makes more money, and student are stuck with the bill. This doesn't mean that governments shouldn't fund publicly accessible higher education, it just means that they need to do it in a smarter way. Picking up the cheque (permanently or temporarily) always results in inflation, we see this in health care, we see this in housing, we see this in education.
- jeza 11y agoI agree that student loans don't do the student much justice and there must be a smarter way of funding education. In Australia our HECs loan system essentially funds research which may benefit society as a whole but hardly benefits students when course content is in some cases years out of date. As it's a loan system that graduates don't repay until their income reaches a certain threshold (essentially an extra tax), with government approval this has allowed course fees to creep upwards. I don't agree with the general comment on inflation. For instance, I'm not aware of Australia's medicare system leading to higher medical treatment costs. If anything it provides a base level of care and limits the amount that any private medical provider could provide. In any case I'm certain that private insurance companies facilitate the same kind of inflation as they don't seem too concerned about the cost of services rendered when they can simply pass that onto their customers as a higher premium (which they in turn benefit from). At least where government spending is concerned, inflation can be managed.
- deciplex 11y agoGovernments probably shouldn't subsidize a thing without implementing some sort of price control, as well.
- MichaelGG 11y agoAre they doing this just for social aspects? The article doesn't cite any hard reason why they'd do this. You'd think that with so many applicants and positions, they'd have lots of data that'd let them know if university attended is a good predictor of performance. As well as the opposite: If folks of different background really "innovate differently", then again, they should have the data to prove this. Like "while Xs only make up 5% of our workforce, 15% of all good-whatevers come from them". Or at least, they should investigate after this experiment is tried out and determine if it had real impact.
- michaelt 11y agoYou'd think that with so many applicants and positions, they'd have lots of data It's easy to gather data about whether the hires you made were good hires. It's difficult to gather data about whether the rejections you made were good rejections.
- cusackalex 11y agohuge reflection of the commoditization of education. Essentially the only thing they're checking for now is 'did you go to college?' The top 10-20 schools will continue to standout, but outside of the 'name brands' the education is perceived as all being on the same level
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y agoWho's to say the top 20 schools are really that good, though? They're on top thanks to arbitrary, 'commodity' rankings.
- chronic41 11y agoSays the work ethic, discipline, and knowledge of top 20 students. Would you rather work with someone from Stanford or the University of Hawaii?
- cottonseed 11y agoI've about to hire and I've been thinking trying to build a process that blinds to as much as possible: gender, race, age, university, previous employers. What else? If you're doing this, please get in touch, I'd like to talk about how you go about it.
- eplanit 11y agoBeing blind to gender, age, and race make perfect sense -- but not University or Employer history. I would want to know if my applicant succeeded at a challenging vs. mediocre school, and if their previous employer was at all relevant in the industry. People can often present themselves well, but their history might reflect inconsistencies.
- jlg23 11y agoPicture, name, address and family situation. The term for that process is "anonymized application" in German speaking countries. In Switzerland they made good experiences with that (German article: http://www.3sat.de/page/?source=/nano/gesellschaft/149883/index.html http://www.3sat.de/page/?source=/nano/gesellschaft/149883/in...). In my opinion, the best way to ensure that you are "blinded" properly: Find someone from a minority who is conscious of the obstacles people from minorities face. Tell that person "I'm a racist, misogynist, idiot full of prejudices. Make sure I can only hire based on qualification." Have that person screen all applications and black out all revealing information. This could be a perfect short-term gig for a 2nd year student in a relevant field (relevant to the social aspects of the hiring process, not the positions you hire for). PS: Explicitly listing the things you do not want in an application in the job post will probably help out weed people who cannot even follow simple instructions ;)
- sokoloff 11y agoWhy wouldn't such a person that you hired ONLY pass along resumes of minorities (or edit and sabotage the resumes of the majority candidates)? After all, you've hand-picked them to be someone conscious of the struggles AND told them that you're racist, misogynistic, prejudiced, and an idiot...
- supernova87a 11y agoInteresting sentiment and maybe well intentioned. But regardless of whether you like it or not, the university provides a strong filtering mechanism on the quality of your applicants. It is highly correlated with successful application. So they may try this, but quickly back off at having got rid of a very highly correlated screening input.
- miander 11y agoThis is the premise they are betting against. "Quality" is not a one-dimensional value, and a team full of Ivy League graduates are going to have similar biases and weaknesses that could hard a team. I think that's what the focus is shifting towards.
- 6d0debc071 11y ago> It is highly correlated with successful application. Almost axiomatically so if you make it a hiring criteria. The real question is whether it's correlated with good KPIs, (and the secondary question of whether your KPIs express your business needs.)
- supernova87a 11y agoIt can be, so you have to guard against it. But what is for certain is that anyone attempting to follow this example will be flooded by applications of lower qualification in general -- making it difficult for any small sized company to deal with. Just imagine if you had to conduct the search for applicants with a 10x larger pool of candidates. The sheer work involved is sure to cause problems of their own nature. Balance that against how much you really need to find diversity.
- wpietri 11y agoI don't think it's a particularly big problem. Honestly, I'd be happy to have a 10x larger pool of applicants, as that means I'd get sooner to the ones I want to hire. I think the trick is to structure the hiring process so that you can quickly weed out the people you don't want. Currently the trick I'm trying: I have candidates write 1-2 sentences in response to one of five hopefully interesting questions: http://www.codeforamerica.org/jobs/chime/ http://www.codeforamerica.org/jobs/chime/ So far there's been a very good correlation between "can write a useful short answer" and "is worth talking to". Whereas there hasn't been a good correlation with "prestige level of school".
- roymurdock 11y ago10 days ago EY drops the 2:1 degree requirement [1] for UK applicants...now Deloitte feels the need to one up them by removing college branding from the consideration altogether. Next up is PWC rejecting any applicant with a college degree and poaching them right out of high school instead :) [1] https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/ernst-and-young-drops-degree-classification-threshold-graduate-recruitment https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/ernst-and-young-dr...
- knight17 11y agoPwC, and other Big 4 and even small accounting firms in the UK already have a school leavers program. You join the firms out of school, they will ask you to register with ICAEW/ACCA and study to become a chartered accountant (CPA in the US), the firm will provide you with books, exam fees and tuition fees while you earn on the job. After three years while your peers finishing up at university you will have a solid work history with great qualifications with no debt. You can even get a degree if you join ACCA for just ₤200 for submitting a thesis and no additional exams. While in the US, to become a CPA, you would need masters level education in most cases to even appear for the CPA exams. UK and almost all commonwealth countries have programs and institutes that offer professional qualification opportunities with even more prestige than the average university route. Accountancy is one of the few fields where one can get-qualified-on-job in the Anglosphere (US, Canada excluded). ICAEW : http://careers.icaew.com/school-students-leavers http://careers.icaew.com/school-students-leavers ACCA : http://www.accaglobal.com/uk/en/qualifications/accountancy-career/ukschoolleaver.html http://www.accaglobal.com/uk/en/qualifications/accountancy-c... ACCA + B.Sc (Hons.) :http://www.accaglobal.com/gb/en/help/oxford-brookes.html http://www.accaglobal.com/gb/en/help/oxford-brookes.html
- nl 11y agoNote that this is the BBC, and applies to Deloitte UK. It is unclear if it applies to Deloitte worldwide. The university system in the UK is completely different to in the US, so hypotheses around it being to do with the cost of university or student loans need substantial adjustments to make sense in the UK context.
- cgtyoder 11y agoCan you say more about the differences? I don't know what they would be at all - I thought they were very similar.
- rahimnathwani 11y ago1) Many degrees are 3 years rather than 4. 2) Tuition fees for UK/EU students are capped at 9k GBP (13.6k USD) per year.
- gsnedders 11y ago...in England and Wales. This doesn't hold for Scotland/Northern Ireland.
- nl 11y agoAlso, student loans are pretty different[1]. For example, the only company allowed to give them is a non-profit, and they get cancelled if they have been outstanding for a (fairly long) period of time[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_loans_in_the_United_Kingdom#Repayment_and_interest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_loans_in_the_United_Ki...
- irl_zebra 11y agoSchool: * Extracurriculars: Staff Writer for the Harvard Crimson; Summer Internship with Professor David Malan CS50
- chrischen 11y agoHarvard Crimson will be come the new Harvard.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- arethuza 11y agoIn the UK I can imagine non-Oxbridge Universities having "Oxford Clubs" for people who applied but didn't get into Oxford... (and Cambridge clubs as well - membership would presumably be mutually exclusive). NB even 20 years ago there were clubs that solely seemed to exist so that the members could rotate the top job between them so they could all have "President of the XYZ Club" on their CVs.
- bloat 11y agoOK, so maybe it won't work for graduate CVs. For anyone else, surely you just list your university and your degree. Edit: Ah. Just noticed the article is talking about graduates.
- Qwertious 11y agoSchool: * Extracurriculars: Staff Writer for the * [Newspaper]; Summer Internship with * Professor
- kqr2 11y agoI wonder if a form of Gresham's Law (bad money drives out good) [1] may come into play. Basically if all university diplomas are effectively considered equal, then candidates from top tier schools will instead apply to places where they perceive their diploma carries more weight. In other words, if we think of a diploma as a form of currency, candidates will prefer to spend it at a place where it is valued more highly. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham's_law
- tpeo 11y agoNot Gresham's Law per se, as it is specific of money. But what you're describing is essentially a form of adverse selection (see Akerlof's "Market for Lemons"). If employers lower their wage offers below the reservation wage of graduates from prestigious schools, then they would leave the "undifferentiated" job market. But there might be more to it. Graduates from better schools might still accept job offers if they could hope to get a raise once their true value is discovered.
- wpietri 11y agoI cannot think of a happier outcome than companies who value fancy credentials over effectiveness ending up with the employees who would be upset that they're being evaluated on how they actually perform rather than the prestige of their degree. Then I'd never have to work with anybody like that again.
- beachstartup 11y agoaka proxies, something the elite are very good at
- emmab 11y agoWhy is half the article in quotes?
- dang 11y agoIt must be quoting from some source that isn't linked. If anyone can find it, we might change the URL to it. HN generally prefers original sources.
- masterzora 11y agoThe article appears to be based on this press release: http://www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/pages/press-releases/articles/largest-british-business-to-adopt-contextualised-recruitment.html http://www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/pages/press-releases/articles...
- dang 11y agoSomehow I can't bring myself to switch to that corpspeak. If people disagree we can do it though.
- grumio 11y agoFor that matter, why is "hides" quoted in the title? I thought it was sarcastic or something.
- c3534l 11y agoThis is interesting as an accounting student. The big 4 audit firms which hire the bulk or entry-level accountants have traditionally played favorites with schools. This comes as quite a surprise to me because they haven't really shown any effort otherwise about not picking favorite schools. Although this is across the pond, so maybe it'll be different in the US.
- harryc2011 11y agoThey seem to focus their campus recruitment events (http://www.deloitte.co.uk/aem/student-events-calendar.cfm http://www.deloitte.co.uk/aem/student-events-calendar.cfm) heavily towards the Russell Group universities (Oxbridge, London, Durham etc.) If they want a more diverse talent pool, why don't they hold more events further afield?