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Elli from HireArt here. I think your comment is really interesting and important to take note of. It's a bit funny in my particular case because I actually work
by esharef 13y ago
Elli from HireArt here. I think your comment is really interesting and important to take note of. It's a bit funny in my particular case because I actually worked for University of Phoenix for a few years which is how I got the idea for HireArt.
I met a ton of students at UOP who hadn't been as lucky as I had in going to a school like Yale (FYI, I was an athletic recruit so felt really grateful to be there). Employers literally ignored their resumes and would never get back to them. I was shocked because I would talk to some of these students and thought they were talented, ambitious, hard-working, etc. The thing that makes me passionate about HireArt is trying to overcome the obsession with credentials (which are very highly correlated with socio-economics) and moving toward a more meritocratic way of hiring.
Can I say that I am totally rid of the drive towards prestige? No. I fall into that trap. It's a hard trap not to fall into given how much society values brand names. Anyway, you pointed out a tension that I actually struggle with a lot. A recent article about the "college bubble" recently called for all Ivy-League graduates to 'renounce' their degrees to stop the bubble from continuing. It's hard in practice but the point of the article is that unless the people with Ivy-League degrees stop caring so much about them, the status quo cannot change.
- wavefunction 13y agoThank you for your perspective, it's easy to get defensive but it seems like you maybe made it through whatever "prestige traps" you may have encountered along the way. college dropout here, I didn't have money and now that I've been working, it's hard to have the time...
- dlf 13y agoThank you for the insightful response to a comment that frankly felt a bit baiting. I admire how you're approaching the problem at HireArt, and am thankful that the current wave of disruption in education should hopefully keep society from feeling the full fallout of the education bubble. It will be interesting to see what the world looks like in 10 years. However, I think the bubble will persist even if all degrees were viewed as equal due to the economics around cheap financing of degrees and disincentives among universities to compete on price and incentives to compete on ancillary concerns like luxury housing, amenities, facilities, and the like. Of course, even without this warped structure of incentives, the university model is one with huge overhead, a rigid and inflexible structure, slow to adapt to change (though they are trying), and not nearly as well positioned to take advantage of economies of scale as the likes of Udacity, Coursera, or even UOP. This entire topic fascinates me, and I don't think we've even begun to unravel all of the causes and implications of what these changes mean for society and the future of education. Exciting times!
- guelo 13y ago> The way HireArt works, explained Sharef (who was my daughter’s college roommate) Congratulations on the free advertisement in the most respected newspaper in the world.
- precisioncoder 13y agoDebatable. It would be better to say the most respected newspaper in the USA. The US has a tendency to refer to their best as the best in the world. I found it really interesting when I was watching "How I met your mother" how often they would refer to NY as "The greatest city in the greatest country in the world".
- barry-cotter 13y agoOh come on. The US is the global hegemon and the New York Times is by an overwhelming margin the most respected newspaper in the country. I know the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times exist and I have occasionally read stuff from the WSJ and the Washington Post but the New York Times has a global brand in the same way Le Monde has for the Francophone world or Der Spiegel does where German is spoken. The only comparable publications are in adjacent niches, not the same one; the Economist, and, and ...
- kokey 13y agoThis is largely subjective. The largest circulated newspapers in the world are Japanese, the largest English is The Times of India, and the largest US are the WSJ and USA Today. For online publications by readership, the Daily Mail from the UK often beats the NYT, depending on who is counting. With regards to being respected, it depends on where you are from, but from where I am standing the British press often attracts more respect in the English speaking world than any US publications.
- mikecane 13y ago>>>The largest circulated newspapers in the world are Japanese, the largest English is The Times of India, and the largest US are the WSJ and USA Today. Influence > popularity.
- reledi 13y ago> Employers literally ignored their resumes and would never get back to them. I was shocked because I would talk to some of these students and thought they were talented, ambitious, hard-working, etc. The thing that makes me passionate about HireArt is trying to overcome the obsession with credentials Your team is impressive, lots of credentials - even the hire via HireArt went to an Ivy League school. Have you thought about hiring any UoP students that impressed you?
- esharef 13y agoYes, absolutely. We would love to hire someone from UOP.
- mattraibert 13y agoThe real Hacker News in this article is how you've hacked the NYTimes to promote HireArt. I'd love to hear more about how you did it.