The "elite" employers; what they look for

Parents Forum
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<p>Blossom-</p>

<p>I wouldn’t doubt that most of the people the consulting firms hire are top notch, had great gpa’s, etc, but I know of cases where I am pretty sure the old boy network helped someone get hired who wasn’t necessarily at the highest level. On top of everything else, given the fact that Mckimsey, Bain and the rest depend on lucrative contracts from big businesses, if a high muckety muck at a big corporation calls one of these firms up whom they do as lot of business with, and says “say, take a look at my nephew” or whatever, I would be really surprised if the kid otherwise had decent creds, they weren’t hired. My original post was more about investment banking firms, where I have a bit more knowledge since I have friends and people I have worked with in the past who work there. </p>

<p>That said, I would never say it is that common, even in investment banking the old WASP mafia has withered a great deal and their hiring is a lot more diverse and on a high level then it was back in the good ole days, for sure. My basic point agreed with yours, that hiring mostly is done from top schools with students with great resumes. I also never said that a total screwup could get hired by these places with connections, I said that in some cases someone who would technically be less qualified could get an edge on being hired by those connections over someone on paper who might be more talented, big difference. (Kind of like many years ago there was this great big ‘scandal’ that Ivy league schools were admitting football and basketball players with slighly lower GPA’s then the average student, that like instead of having a typical (then) A- GPA, they could be admitted with a B+ <em>lol</em>)</p>

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<p>Few observations based on D1´s job search experience:</p>

<p>The firm that hired D1 had a special information(recruiting) day for athletes.
D1 went to a prep school where many parents worked on Wall street. ALL of her friends from high school now have a job offer for after graduation (most in financial firms). On the other hand, not all her friends from her lower Ivy college have a job offer yet.
When she was interviewing for internships last year, most people she interviewed with liked the fact she was in a sorority, and many people who were hired either played a sport or were in the Greek life.
People she met were very loyal to their alma mater. They looked after their school´s interns, and were very proactive in trying to get their school´s interns hired at the end of summer. D1 had to do a presentation as part of criteria to get hired, her mentor (alum from her school) helped her with the presentation and gave her many pointers.</p>

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<p>musicprint, ask anyone you know who works in or leads recruiting for an “elite” employer. We do “idiot nephew” interviews all the time (a former boss of mine called them that; the candidates were of both genders so we weren’t being sexist, and it wasn’t always nephews, and to our surprise, the kids weren’t always idiots but I love the expression).</p>

<p>Snagging an interview so you can report back to important muckety muck that you were treated with courtesy and your resume was given due consideration is hardly the same thing as getting a job.</p>

<p>I cannot recall a single instance where anyone on my team has ever advocated for one of these “courtesy” interviews if the candidate did not have the goods- or was even borderline. The whiff of nepotism or an appearance of bias if a relative of an important client was hired while not being over the bar is far too damaging. And career-ending in some circumstances. It’s just not worth sucking up to the CEO of some big company by hiring a marginal candidate- who will flush out in record time- just to score brownie points.</p>

<p>You are really delusional if you think CEO’s want to hire management consulting firms who are stupid enough to hire marginal or sub-par candidates just to curry favor. </p>

<p>These consulting firms spend millions of dollars in the course of a decade refining their assessment techniques by learning from the CIA, Mossad, leading scholars of psychometric data, etc. All this to have it upended by hiring a couple of preppy good old boys? Not going to happen.</p>

<p>And your comments are highly US centric and reflect a 1970’s way of thinking. What’s the point of hiring kids who summer in Nantucket and play racket ball at the NY Athletic club when your fastest growing offices are in Mumbai and Beijing? Global companies like mine- and the global top tier consulting firms- are working hard to recruit the best and the brightest from universities around the world.</p>

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<p>Agree with what blossom said 100 percent and can vouch for similar observations. These courtesy interviews do rarely occur but essentially never end up with an offer unless the person is truly exceptional… in which case they wouldn’t have needed the referal in the first place.</p>

<p>In the cases where I’ve seen someone try to land their “idiot nephew” an interview they did so with full understanding that this was not likely to end up in a job but rather more likely would just be a good way for their acquaintence to get some experience interviewing as we could provide some constructive feedback.</p>

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<p>I could name quite a few cases of nepotism, and I do not mean giving someone´s nephew a job to make minimum wage. Another thing to point out is not everyone´s nephew is an idiot, just like not every college legacy applicant is not qualified. There are many people who would want to work at those “elite firms,” to be able to get an interview is already a huge advantage. As I posted before, all of D1´s high school friends have jobs waiting for them when they graduate. Reason? Many of them have connections to at least get them interviews. On top of that, those kids´ resume probably looked a lot better than average kids because they had internships through connections.</p>

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<p>I worked at an investment bank in the 80s-90s, use of connections was quite evident at this firm, at that time.</p>

<p>The few undergrads I knew of who got summer jobs there were kids of influential partners of the firm. In my department we had undergrad hires who were kids of: partners of the firm, important clients, competitors. There were MBA hires who were kids of partners. We also had analyst hires who were brothers or friends of current department employees, who recommended them.</p>

<p>None of these people were grossly unqualified, they looked pretty much the same on paper as all the other hires. That does not mean however that, but for those connections, those individuals would have been the ones that made it through the screeening and interview gauntlet to get those few jobs.</p>

<p>The vast majority of new hires were not connected though, as far as I knew anyway.</p>

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<p>A few of my observations:</p>

<ul>
<li>there are many idiot nephew interviews in both banking and consulting
-the “uncle” often does expect you to hire them
-if the “uncle” is powerful enough and nephew in the ballpark, there will often be a job</li>
</ul>

<p>There are many ivy/peer grads who get places in elite companies because of nepotism. Certainly much less than a few decades ago, but strong connections will always talk. We’re not talking an idiot nephew wirh a 2.0 at Arizona, but top school grads who just wouldn’t have come out on top without the thumb on the scale.</p>

<p>They will have to make it on their own once there, some will, many won’t.</p>

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<p>I just remembered, one time we- largely I, I think- turned away a kid that we were told to interview. Nothing wrong with him, but he just didn’t quite make the cut, based on what we usually got and needed. Daddy was a big fund manager or something. Afterwards, I was called in and had to justify to a partner why I didn’t want to hire him.</p>

<p>Boy, that was uncomfortable.</p>

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<p>"Musicprint, I dare you to find a single person hired by a management consulting firm (top tier- McKinsey, Bain, BCG) who was hired for “who they know” vs. the strength of their resume "</p>

<p>I was hired (after being out of school ten years) by AT Kearney, for whom I worked for several years. They fancied themselves in the same group as McKinsey, Bain, BCG, if a tad more “downscale” (their roots were in operations management more than strategy). I was certainly not hired for home I knew - not only resume, but the ability to convince them in an interview you had what they needed were important. </p>

<p>BUT - I managed to GET an interview, because I networked in. Someone I knew referred to me to someone who referred me to somebody at ATK. Its real hard to get hired just for whom you know (except maybe by your father in law) but contacts are still quite valuable.</p>

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<p>Everything being equal, connection does count.</p>

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<p>“And yet the clients who pay the mgt consultants – to whose tunes they must dance – aren’t necessarily elite grads themselves. And they are the ones with the money in the first place”</p>

<p>In my experience in consulting, consulting firms like top name schools, in part because the resumes (which go to clients as part of a proposal) are more impressive to the clients. </p>

<p>I think thats true even for clients who themselves did not attend top name schools. Either they have had the wool pulled over their eyes like everyone else, or they are using the top name school as a proxy for a whole bunch of other things - that those candidates may have had the same smarts, qualities whatever BEFORE attending the top name school doesnt really matter - even if its only using the Ivy admissions process as a filter, its of value. And probably MORE justified in such a situation than for a direct employer. If I’m hiring someone on staff, I get to interview them and see whats behind the resume. If I’m selecting a consultant from several proposals, each with a package of several resumes, in most cases the resume is all I have to go on. Now I would still say that relevant experience is much more important than schools, but I could see how especially for the junior level folks, who really dont have much relevant experience anyway, the name of the school helps.</p>

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<p>Okay, here’s a question from a parent of a college freshman in one of those super-elite schools. Given a graduate with a bachelor’s degree from one of those schools, what criteria are more important?</p>

<ol>
<li> GPA?</li>
<li> Major?</li>
<li> Rigor of curriculum?</li>
<li> Extracurricular activities?</li>
<li> Networking and social connections?</li>
<li> Employment experience and internships during college?</li>
</ol>

<p>The reason I ask is that my D asked me the other day “How much does my GPA matter?”. For now my advice to her has been to just focus on taking the classes that she will learn from the most and do her best in them, but to not worry about her grades. Am I giving her bad advice? Should she choose classes strategically to boost her GPA, for example, by taking courses that are easy and/or avoiding professors who are known to grade harshly?</p>

<p>BTW, she will probably end up majoring in English or some field in the Humanities, and she is definitely not pre-med, and would prefer not to think of herself as pre-law. She does want to be employable at some point in the future, though. And I think that is a good idea :)</p>

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<p>She should have high enough GPA to not disqualify her.
Internship
Social skills
Relevant courses (if going into banking, as an English major she should take some econ or finance courses, as an example)
Leadership ECs, or ECs that hiring managers could relate to.
Networking with classmates (for the future)</p>

<p>They are different than your list. Unless she is going into academic or she is absolutely interested in a particular course, I don´t think it´s a good idea to take hard courses to bring down GPA. If she is going to use her BA to get a job, she would likely not to use what she has learned in class for her job.</p>

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<p>Vicarious-- it depends. I hate interviewing candidates who are so risk averse that they haven’t taken anything outside their comfort zone so they can “protect” their GPA. But a string of C- grades is going to lower the GPA to the point where my company won’t interview the kid anyway. So it’s a balancing act. If I’m interviewing a new grad who majored in English for a role requiring some analytical and quantitative skills, I like to see a B+ or B in stats or macro. Doesn’t need to be an A, but needs to demonstrate mastery of the material, concerted effort, etc. I even like hearing the story behind the B when it involves “this was the hardest course I’ve ever taken and here’s why I learned so much”.</p>

<p>But your advice to find interesting courses and learn a ton is spot on. We debate endlessly in my company about our GPA requirements and why they’re meaningful. To the best of my ability, I can summarize it thus: We hire people who work hard- very hard. We advance people in our organization who sometimes get stuck working on something they don’t understand, and who have to figure it out, even if it doesn’t come naturally to them. So when we’re hiring a 22 year old who doesn’t have an extensive resume, we use the GPA to help us decide if this is a person who likes to work hard (evidenced by good grades); who can figure things out even if they don’t come naturally (evidenced by some B’s in courses outside their comfort zone); and who aren’t so risk averse that they’re using college as a way to rack up easy A’s vs. challenging themselves.</p>

<p>It’s not perfect; but I would rather see an engineer with a B in Renaissance Art and an English major with a B in organic chemistry than someone with a string of A’s but nothing outside their zone.</p>

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<p>

</p>

<p>Yes. I get it. I do consulting myself (though in a niche field). It doesn’t escape my notice, however, that it is often the non-elite grads who worked hard to come up with the business ideas and business that spun off enough money that enabled them to hire a mgt consulting firm in the first place. The mgt consulting firm is only “valuable” insofar as other people have money to hire them for problem-solving. I mean, what’s more impressive than being a Harvard grad? Having earned the money to pay a bunch of Harvard grads to help you.</p>

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<p>“however, that it is often the non-elite grads who worked hard to come up with the business ideas and business that spun off enough money that enabled them to hire a mgt consulting firm in the first place”</p>

<p>At ATK the clients I worked for were all fairly large, mostly old industrial corps. There were no founders around, that I can recall. When I switched to smaller economic consulting firms, the clients were mainly govt agencies. </p>

<p>As for entrepreneurs, there are many founded by non-elite grads (or occasionally by non grads) There are also a few founded by elite grads. For example <a href=“Google”>Google;

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<p>Vicarious, It also depends on what your kid wants to do. There is not a “one size fits all” answer to the question. If someone wants to get hired by a NGO, they are going to build a different resume than if they want to get a job in IB.</p>

<p>Oldfort’s D is DEFINITELY not interested in NGOs from that list :)! That’s fine. I’m not picking on her kid, just saying that the answer does depend on what sort of job you want to get on graduation day.</p>

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<p>A lot of large firms (IB, consulting, other financial services for example, but with other industries too, e.g. Mars, Nestle) operate graduate recruitment. This involves several different screening rounds as well as entry criteria.</p>

<p>Although I work for the UK office of a consulting firm in London, I thought I would share with you how it works:-</p>

<p>1) Entry criteria: A levels of AAB (HS GPA 3.7/3.8)
University degree classified at 2.1 or above (GPA 3.5)
Doesn’t matter what subject, but academic subjects are preferred as they demonstrate rigor of critical thinking and analysis (chemistry, history, economics, politics, maths) and engineering. Business or management, not so much, it’s seen as ‘easy’ or lightweight (I find this really interesting compared to a lot of the discussions on CC about major choice and job prospects)</p>

<p>2) Numerical, verbal and logical reasoning tests with pre-determined pass grades </p>

<p>3) Phone interview with outsourced recruitment center asking standard questions. Takes any personal element out of it. </p>

<p>4) First round interview with middle manager grade. Competency based: 'describe a time you worked in a team", “describe a time you overcame a substantial challenge” - this is where ECs and work experience come into play. Oh and we always ask what they think they will be doing as a consultant - just to stop anyone who thinks they’ll be telling Large Multinational PLC what their strategy should be…</p>

<p>Unfortunately, from my interviews, we get a lot of very academic types at this stage, often from Asia or India who have NO ECs or other experiences and who often struggle to express themselves in English. A few might go to our really techy IT groups if that’s their background, but most don’t progress beyond here.</p>

<p>5) Assessment center: partner interview, 2nd interview and (unseen until the day) case study presentation (with senior manager level), group exercise (always throws up some amusing incidents!) and written exercise</p>

<p>Not sure where any nepotism would come into it as so many people have a say on the person during the process, that it’s not down to one person. And also, we look at EVERY graduate who applies, as long as they get through stages 1 and 2.</p>

<p>It is a similar process for experienced hires (inc MBAs) except 1 and 2 don’t count. Connections here help with getting your CV seen by the recuitment center for round 3. And also there is a lot of one’s reputation riding on not hiring a dud…</p>

<p>My consulting firm, whilst we do do ‘strategy’ mainly does operational and technology consulting. You are working at a client site 80% of the time, often having to build relationships with middle management and team leads at the client (your boss will do the schmoozing of the client exec). We simply cannot hire arrogant, prep-stars who think they are above getting to know what Doris in Middle Office Operations does and the problems her team face in processing derivative trades (oh, and accepting that she knows a darn sight more than you)…All the graduates we hire are incredibly intelligent, hardworking people from various backgrounds*, lots of women and ethnic minorities, some internationals (with work permit), who are fairly unassuming, friendly but determined, open and good at building relationships.</p>

<ul>
<li>of course university in the UK is MUCH cheaper and all schools cost the same. If you get into Oxford it will cost you the same as the University of Luton, so socio economic background isn’t as large a factor as it might be regarding the Ivies and ‘elite’ professions…</li>
</ul>

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<p>

</p>

<p>Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.</p>

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<p>What´s NGOs?</p>