My son has referred some resumes into the company where he is joining in the fall. There are two kinds of referrals as he told me. 1) John is a family friend. He is a bright kid. Please see if you have any interest. 2) I have been in class with Bill in 4 classes. He is the smartest guy I have met in the past 4 years. You guys are stupid to pass him up last year’s summer. Case 1 – some 25% of those got called for a first interview. The firm is not doing my kid a favor. The family friend could have gone through their website with similar odds. Case 2, the kid gets a call in 15 minutes. I know the referral process at large tech firms works similarly – FB, Google etc. There are two referral streams. People don’t put bucket 1 people into bucket 2, for reputational reasons. You need to know which version of the referral you are getting, incidentally.
As a more serious matter, we should not send the wrong message to kids that the process is rigged. Because it is not. It discourages them from trying seriously. Tons of kids in my son’s friend group worked hard and got very good jobs without some parental connections. That is the general state of affairs. And kids should try hard thinking that this is indeed the normal state of affairs, and not some rigged game.
Of course, some of that is just luck. Those who enter the job market during a recession tend to have reduced pay levels for a decade or more afterward, probably because they are more likely spend more of their initial time in the work force unemployed or working in jobs that do not help their career development.
That’s just it, I think. Even if a kid is going into a field that is well outside their parents’ professional circles – if the parents are well-educated themselves, they are likelier to be more savvy about the processes of finding internships, networking, and likely to be more knowledgeable about grad school admissions and so forth. They’re in a position to coach their kids through efforts to find opportunities. Perhaps they’re more able to support a kid financially through a low-paying (or unpaid) internship or volunteer opportunity. And of course parents use their own knowledge and experience to better position their kids to succeed – what parent wouldn’t? But access to this knowledge is not equal. Even if a parent is not getting a kid an interview or job, the children of these parents do have a leg up.
Obviously, unqualified kids aren’t generally going to get internships and job offers, but I’ve seen connections open up doors.
Plus, connections provide information that may not otherwise be easily available. For example, I see that kids from families with no connections to Wall Street firms are often unaware how early the internship application process starts.
So something as seemingly simple as knowing when to apply makes a huge difference.
What do you reckon is the percentage of kids who have doors opened for them that eventually get hired vs kids that came in unreferred.
Clearly parents being connected to the industry (or just being educated) is helpful from an informational point of view. I agree.
Also, kids become informed at college through friend networks, about the calendar, expectations etc, independent of parental networking. This is the reason to go to a “prestigious” college – tying it back to the prompt.
I agree on the 2 streams. Personally, when I got hit up to “pass along a resume” whether for my company or others where “I knew someone”, I’d do my own assessment of the resume and my knowledge of the kid. If the resume was weak, I’d decline to pass the resume up the chain. If the resume was in the ballpark but not extraordinary, I’d pass it on with no real comment, similar to your example 1. On rare occasions when the resume and the kid were stellar, I’d make a real effort to give the kid a boost. In all decisions, I had to take the view that my credibility was on the line.
I am not trying to discourage anyone. Ultimately for most jobs, the employer is trying to find the best candidate(s). But it would be disingenuous not to recognize that the path is smoother and better defined and laid out for some not based on what they have done but based on who their parents, friends and mentors are.
Let me ask you the same question I asked DadOfJerseyGirl above. What do you think are the relative percentages of referred vs unreferred kids amongst those that eventually get hired? At large or public firms.
It’s smaller of course. I’m not suggesting you need the connections to get these opportunities. Or that unqualified kids can get the job. The point I was agreeing with is that connections can open up some doors. Especially for kids at non-target schools.
I believe their chances are not improved through a referral. They were going to get the job or not based on their accomplishments and how they interviewed. However there are qualified candidates who never even got chance to get their foot in the door because of a lack of knowledge or an assist in getting that foot in. So take a kid who does great at a non feeder school in the sticks and doesn’t have the connections to the consulting world. That kid may never consider MBB/big time consulting because he/she has no clue what that is. Or if they do know about it and they submit their resume by mail or go through an job website, their resume could easily get lost or get short thrift. Another kid with similar qualifications but with connections is first going to know about that path and two, their parent may have enough juice to at least get someone in the hiring chain to not just toss the resume.
With regards to engineering: I’d put the prestige important at about medium for the first job out of college and very low after that.
As a manager at one of the top aerospace companies, I’d get a list of the top 10 engineering schools each year with the instructions to give those graduates preference. There was no follow up to see if I indeed did that. However, HR filtered the resumes and the college applicants did appear to be more heavily weighted towards that list. That said, we did hire from many colleges outside the top 10. We also did most of our onsite recruiting at those top 10 schools but also did attend many open, off campus job fairs. Most of the hiring we did was college grads.
For the hiring of experienced engineers, it was your track record and your references that mattered. Where you went to college didn’t mean much, if anything.
As far as one’s work performance, it was all over the map. Some top 10 grads were below average engineers, some at the top of their profession. The same could be said for the grads outside the top 10.
Thanks. So McKinsey has a digital screen right now for undergrads. Are you saying that can be skipped if you know someone? I am honestly curious. Not a rhetorical question.
Just like Amazon has an online assessment as a first screen for everyone.
Yes, 100%. This is what I meant. Connections can open doors for bright kids at non target schools; and they also let kids discover career paths they may never have thought about.
But ultimately, the kid has to qualify on his or here own merit to seal the deal.
Don’t know about McKinsey specifically. I wouldn’t be surprised for compliance purposes if every applicant has to follow the same process, but what happens in terms of evals, don’t know.
For some, the increase in odds may be infinite, since they may not have known that the job existed (and therefore would not have known to apply for it) if it were not for the referral.
Clearly the discussion started with Darcy suggesting the opposite where the referrals happen for kids who are intimately connected into the industry. Not the variety of referrals that have been suggested later in the thread by DadOfJerseyGirl and BKSquared – i.e., the uninformed bright kid at a non target that is discovered, and subsequently referred.
My son’s very first internship as a first year came 30 minutes after sending an email namedropping my uncle. He owned a company doing the same thing, slightly differently. He was well known in the field, so the last name got him in the door.
His second internship came through a patient of mine. He worked at that firm for two summers.
Now that he’s been out for 4 years, his work and job connections are public on LinkedIn. Companies seek him. I consider that a referral too, albeit indirect.
Long story short, referrals and network are very important. He was coached on that through his university from his very first quarter on.
That’s all good. My question is simple. What percentage of a large or public firm’s new grad hiring comes through parental network referrals. The kid’s own network is fair game. I am curious about the data, or a guess about that big picture number, as opposed to anecdote.