Posted on 05/29/2013 9:13:41 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Tom Friedman's latest column in The New York Times argues that employers don't care if you went to Yale:
Since jobs are evolving so quickly, with so many new tools, a bachelor’s degree is no longer considered an adequate proxy by employers for your ability to do a particular job — and, therefore, be hired. So, more employers are designing their own tests to measure applicants’ skills. And they increasingly don’t care how those skills were acquired: home schooling, an online university, a massive open online course, or Yale. They just want to know one thing: Can you add value?
Instead, Friedman argues, employers are turning to meritocratic recruiting methods, like the recruiting startup created by his daughter's former roommate at ...Yale.
People are taking issue with the column for a few reasons, including how it serves as a "PR piece for a company run by his daughter's Yale buddies" according to one commenter at Hacker News.
No one is more upset, however, than one Yale student who argues at Hacker News that Yale students really are better than everyone else. Here's why:
Have people considered that "credentials and connections" are actually a valuable signaling mechanism? Connections (in the broadest sense of the word) indicate that a candidate is able to form strong personal relationships.
People are not robots, and this ability goes a long way in the workforce. If you are hiring someone, you know you're going to spend the majority of your waking time with that person for the foreseeable future. So any kind of signal that this will prove a positive use of your time is a valuable one.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
To this sophomore I say, ‘celebrate diversity’! Let's have people from all walks of life and from many different educational backgrounds add their input to the fabric of life. We don't need a homogeneous group of like-educated people running things.
Both side address a known truth; it is not whether you can do the job, it is whether you can get the job.
Just maybe by going to Yale you can get that job.
You’ve got my vote for post of the day.
I throw all ivy league resumes in the trash.
Likely in the same circles as the Yalies, too.
My sister worked for a consulting firm years ago that I won’t name (McKinsey & Co.) and everyone hated the July hires. Policy at that time was to hire ONLY Ivy League graduates. She said they were all dumb as a bag of hammers, practical as tits on a mule and arrogant elitist snobs.
BUT they all played a mean game of squash.
No mention that many corporations now have a blanket prohibition against hiring any Ivy League graduates at all.
The reasons for this is that Ivy Leaguers are seen as being disloyal to their employer, interested only in self promotion, bringing in classmates, advancing as high as they can, then jumping ship to another employer. And they don’t care if their short term decisions end up costing their employer millions of dollars to fix after they are gone.
Other employers see them as “ethically handicapped”, so should never be entrusted with anything of value.
Friedman plumping his daughter’s friend’s startup without disclosure or mention of firms already in the space.
Bhwawawawawawawawawa!
Science Nobels still mean a lot.
Literary and Peace prizes, not so much.
Funny how you see yourself is usually far different from the way others see you.
yale and other similar types have to say that for self validation for their struggle to get there or to be a legacy admission there.
Otherwise they wasted their lives.
Fact is most will be hired to be mined for connections then simply dumped for the next “connection” graduates.
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