<p>As some of the above hiring stories show, the biases of the people doing the hiring are (1) critically important, and (2) not easy to stereotype. I make decisions based on my quirks that result in different hiring outcomes than the manager who sits right next to me in his hiring decisions for similar positions in the same firm. When hiring interns or permanent employees we share resumes with each other and often have different reactions to the same resume. A school loved by one may be considered pretentious and snobby by the other.</p>
<p>When working for a NYC firm, I got resumes in batches of 30, 50, or 100--my choice. All were totally qualified (vetted by HR). When you have an infinite number of people to chose from, you must make arbitrary decisions based on personal biases about schools, degrees, and look of the resume just to whittle down the list. These biases are not necessarily firm wide, in my experience. Everybody's favorite list of schools is different (not to mention favorite list of other attributes). </p>
<p>In short, I care about where the education was received, as do my fellow managers. We will rarely hire from a school we don't "know" regardless of other attributes of the applicant. On the other hand, I would be hard pressed to come up with a single firm wide list of schools that are "the ticket" to getting hired as that is more manager specific.</p>