WSJ: Companies favor big state schools for recruiting

[bclintonk]

<p>Wow. I wonder if some of you guys actually read the WSJ article. It did NOT say these corporate recruiters like state schools just because they’re so large. They’re not indiscriminate about where and whom they recruit. Far from it. The article says that in order to cut costs many companies are now concentrating their recruiting on a small handful of larger schools where the students “are among the most prepared and well-rounded academically” and “companies have found they fit well into their corporate cultures and over time have the best track record in their firms.” That is, it’s not just about size, it’s about size AND quality AND fit with what these firms are looking for—the combination of these being a powerful selling point, whereas sheer size along is not.</p>

<p>Nor was this article about the strength of college placement offices. I just re-read it three times; it says nothing about what college placement offices are doing. The article was based on a survey of “842 recruiters for the nation’s largest public and private companies, nonprofit organizations and federal agencies across every region of the country and spanning nearly two dozen industries” who were asked “to identify, based on their experience, the schools on our list of 100 top colleges and universities whose bachelor degree graduates were the best-trained and educated, and best able to succeed once hired. Companies could also write-in schools not on our list.”</p>

<p>So what did the article say? Corporate recruiters said they like students coming out of specific majors at specific schools because they’re exceptionally well prepared. By that criterion, the Ivys and other elite privates did not come out at the top of the heap. Stanford got a favorable mention for engineeering and Harvard for economics, but certain publics are also looked upon favorably for the quality of their graduates. Bottom line, “companies didn’t rate Ivy league grads best overall.” That’s a direct quote. It didn’t say they recruit less at the Ivies because they’re small. It said they “didn’t rate Ivy League grads best overall.” They could be wrong, of course, and there’s far more to life and professional success than working for a large corporation. But that that IS what the corporate recruiters said, based on their own experience and professional judgment.</p>

<p>

@Wall Street Journal

Some companies like certain schools so much they set up offices nearby. The University of Michigan (No. 6) “was a huge selling point” in Google Inc.'s decision to open a sales and operations office in Ann Arbor, Mich., in September 2006, said recruiting manager Kyle Ewing. The company also opened an office in Pittsburgh where it hires computer-science graduates from Carnegie Mellon University (No. 10 overall, No. 1 for computer science), for the same reason.</p>

<p>Campbell Soup Co., Aernnova Aerospace SA and Spanish tech company Barracuda Networks Inc., among others, also set up facilities near the University of Michigan, which ranks in the top 10 across six majors.

</p>

<p>Note that these companies didn’t just set up recruiting efforts at these schools; they actually located research and operations facilities near these schools specifically to take advantage of the steady stream of high quality graduates coming out of the two schools mentioned, one public, one private. I know it’s close to sacrilege on CC to conjoin the words “quality” and “public” like this, but there it is in black-and-white. </p>

<p>According to the article, some companies prefer to recruit in their own backyards because they like having “year-round access to interns” and “a greater chance that new-graduate hires reside locally, which eliminates relocation expenses,” a significant cost savings in the present economy. Again, reasoning that cuts against the grain of much of CC lore and legend, but it’s the corporate recruiters themselves saying so. Either that, or the WSJ reporters are just making it up, but it’s hard to see what motive they’d have for that.</p>

[bclintonk]

<p>One might expect ratings-obsessed CCers to have been a little more interested in the actual ratings. Here we have a completely new data set, a survey of a fairly large sample of corporate recruiters rating the schools they think produce the best graduates in 8 majors. And here’s what the corporate recruiters said:</p>

<p>ACCOUNTING

1. Brigham Young
2. Wisconsin
3. Illinois
4. Minnesota
5. Penn State
6. Michigan
7. U Maryland
8. UC Berkeley
9. UCLA
10. Ohio State</p>

<p>BUSINESS/ECONOMICS

1. Michigan
2. Ohio State
3. Rutgers
4. Harvard
5. Penn
6. UC Berkeley
7. Carnegie Mellon
8. Northwestern
9. Virginia
10. Illinois</p>

<p>COMPUTER SCIENCE

1. Carnegie Mellon
2. UC Berkeley
3. Michigan
4. Georgia Tech
5. Virginia Tech
6. MIT
7. Penn State
8. Purdue
9. Illinois
10. U Maryland</p>

<p>ENGINEERING

1. Georgia Tech
2. Purdue
3. U Maryland
4. Illinois
5. Virginia Tech
6. Michigan
7. Cornell
8. MIT
9. Penn State
10. Minnesota
11. Stanford
12. UC Berkeley</p>

<p>FINANCE

1. Michigan
2. NYU
3. UC Berkeley
4. Carnegie Mellon
5. Texas A&M
6. Penn State
7. UCLA
8. Wisconsin
9. Penn
10. Chicago</p>

<p>MARKETING/ADVERTISING

1. Northwestern
2. Duke
3. UC Berkeley
4. Minnesota
5. Wisconsin
6. NYU
7. Michigan</p>

<p>LIBERAL ARTS

1. Georgetown
2. Duke
3. NYU</p>

<p>MIS

1. Purdue
2. Penn State
3. Georgia Tech</p>

[ericatbucknell]

<p>

So what did the article say? Corporate recruiters said they like students coming out of specific majors at specific schools because they’re exceptionally well prepared. By that criterion, the Ivys and other elite privates did not come out at the top of the heap.

</p>

<p>except we dont really know where the private schools included in the survey would have finished on issues like ‘preparedness’ as the methodology systematically favored large schools. </p>

<p>schools accumulated points in part based on HOW MANY of the 800+ recruiters sent surveys ranked the school in the top 10. assuming the respondents were representative, 330 of their companies recruit at penn state. its simply not reasonable to expect that many companies (among those surveyed, mind you) to actively recruit at dartmouth, a campus that apparently sends only 750 graduates into the workforce every year. subtract those entering education and other un-polled fields and that number is significantly smaller yet.</p>

<p>but, of course, it gets better. schools then accumulated points based on the number of graduates (for the companies of recruiters who ranked that school actually hired). more hires, more points. i simply cant imagine how large schools would benefit.</p>

<p>as a result, its pretty difficult to know what to make of the results. is arizona state ranked above berkeley because asu graduates are more adequately prepared to enter the workplace… or because its twice the size? </p>

<p>…and who knows what set of numbers were used to justify the ‘preparedness’ statements made in the article.</p>

[MomofWildChild]

<p>A&M above Wisconsin and Penn for finance? What ‘dem recruiters been smokin’?</p>

[vonlost]

<p>^ Maybe the recruiters know who will actually accept the employment offers. ???</p>

[gthopeful]

<p>A lot of people with ties to “elite” universities are pretty livid and are taking this survey for more than it is. This is not a ranking of top universities: it is a ranking of which schools provide the best ROI for recruiting at for large companies. Larger schools mean recruiters can access more people at a time. Non-elite schools mean the students are less likely to be planning their next job move from day 1 in order to move up to VP as fast as possible. Non-liberal-arts means employers are lazy and don’t want to do job training.</p>

<p>Before responding with how your X elite private is superior, would you actually consider a job with even most of the Fortune 1000 companies? That’s why your school isn’t on the list.</p>

[bclintonk]

<p>

@ericatbucknell

but, of course, it gets better. schools then accumulated points based on the number of graduates (for the companies of recruiters who ranked that school actually hired). more hires, more points. i simply cant imagine how large schools would benefit.</p>

<p>as a result, its pretty difficult to know what to make of the results. is arizona state ranked above berkeley because asu graduates are more adequately prepared to enter the workplace… or because its twice the size?

</p>

<p>Good point with respect to the overall rating. Because of this you see schools like ASU ranking high overall even though they weren’t ranked in the top 10 in any major. </p>

<p>But the rankings of majors are not so clearly biased by sheer size of the program or the school. There, the recruiters were simply asked to rank the “best” schools for each major; those rankings were converted to points (10 points for a #1 rating, 9 for #2, etc); and each recruiter’s ranking was then weighted by the total number of persons IN THAT MAJOR the company hired in the last year, so the “vote” of a recruiter who hired 10 engineers would count 5 times as much as the vote of a recruiter who hired only 2 engineers. Certainly it’s true that some small schools could be screened out of the ranking entirely if an insufficient number of their graduates were hired by the firms surveyed. But you do get schools like Harvard, Stanford, Chicago, and Penn showing up in the major rankings, so it’s not all just giant schools, and the rankings of majors are not a simple function of school size. The top publics like Michigan and UC Berkeley end up highly ranked in most majors.</p>

<p>I think what hurts the Ivies and other elite privates in these rankings is that most don’t have undergrad business programs, and some don’t have undergrad engineering. If they don’t even offer the majors listed here, they’re obviously not going to be ranked.</p>

[villager]

<p>In the past,there was a study about schools that sent the most students to top phD programs.Most of them were non-ivy.The elite universities defended themselves that most of their graduates go straight into high paying careers straight after undergrad.But now,that another study claims that employers hire state school graduates the most,the same elite schools change tack and claim their graduates go to law,medical and grad school.Either this two studies are wrong or elite schools are lying.</p>

[sakky]

<p>

Indeed, and a lot of hot air around supply and demand.

</p>

<p>Hot air, you say? As I said, when a waitress right out of high school can make $30-35k, when guys who dropped out of high school can make $10 an hour as novice computer techs, I actually suspect we have a strong market failure when liberal arts grads are making only $35k a year to start. </p>

<p>One must keep in mind that labor markets do not follow simple rules of supply and demand, as most economists would agree. If they did, then unemployment rates in every profession would always tend to reach zero, as wages would fall to the market-clearing price, and only cyclical forces would explain non-zero unemployment rates. </p>

<p>Instead, what you have are, say, some college graduates making 6 figures right out of college as investment bankers while plenty of other college graduates try to obtain investment banking jobs but not getting any offers. That labor market won’t equilibrate because the banks won’t allow it to equilibrate. To do so, the banks would hire more people for lower pay. Instead, some people receive high pay, and most others receive nothing at all because they’re not even hired at all - a point far from the market equilibrium.</p>

[IvyPBear]

<p>@villager-students at Ivies tend to take high paying jobs in high finance and consulting right after college or go to medical, law, and business schools. Where’s the inconsistency?</p>

[villager]

<p>The question is where do they predominate?If they cant dominate the list of most company hires,and do not dominate the list of those going to graduate schools,what gives?</p>

[barrons]

<p>If any Ivy school would actually publish detailed current placement info it would go a long way toward proving things one way or another. Right now all you get is unsubstantiated claims and anecdotes. That’s an area many state schools have been far more informative for years.</p>

[sakky]

<p>

and "companies have found they fit well into their corporate cultures

</p>

<p>And personally, I think that’s the key issue: I strongly suspect that ‘fitting well into the corporate culture’ is simply a code phrase for ‘will take a mediocre job for mediocre pay without complaint’. </p>

<p>

Corporate recruiters said they like students coming out of specific majors at specific schools because they’re exceptionally well prepared. By that criterion, the Ivys and other elite privates did not come out at the top of the heap. Stanford got a favorable mention for engineeering and Harvard for economics, but certain publics are also looked upon favorably for the quality of their graduates. Bottom line, “companies didn’t rate Ivy league grads best overall.” That’s a direct quote. It didn’t say they recruit less at the Ivies because they’re small. It said they “didn’t rate Ivy League grads best overall.” They could be wrong, of course, and there’s far more to life and professional success than working for a large corporation. But that that IS what the corporate recruiters said, based on their own experience and professional judgment.

</p>

<p>Recruiters may say that those graduates are exceptionally well prepared… but for what exactly? Answer: Well prepared to work for large corporations, which is precisely what the article was discussing. But that’s the crux of the article - how many top graduates really want to work for large corporations? While there are surely some such jobs that are attractive, let’s face it - many (probably most) corporate jobs available to new college graduates aren’t really that beneficial. For example, many top tech students that I know are far more interested in starting their own companies rather than working for an established one. Put another way - can you really imagine somebody like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Page, or Mark Zuckerburg working as regular employees for large corporations? These men can grow large companies under them but they would fit horrendously within the culture of an established company. Heck, I suspect that Microsoft ironically wouldn’t even hire Bill Gates if he was an entry-level applicant today. </p>

<p>That also raises a point I discussed before but bears repeating: recruiters are not your friends. Given the choice, they would stick you with the worst possible jobs for the least pay. Highly satisfied recruiters is actually a bad sign for a school, because it indicates that students are willing to take whatever jobs the recruiters provide, however undesirable those jobs may be. Recruiters love that! {What you actually want are ‘moderately-satisfied’ recruiters, especially those who feel that your students are ‘too demanding’ or ‘too difficult to hire’. }</p>

<p>Like I said before, most corporate jobs are not that great, a fact that most top students have sadly discovered. That is why those students tend to prefer other careers. Consider the sad words of Nicholas Pearce:</p>

<p>*Even at M.I.T., the U.S.'s premier engineering school, the traditional career path has lost its appeal for some students. Says junior Nicholas Pearce, a chemical-engineering major from Chicago: “It’s marketed as–I don’t want to say dead end but sort of ‘O.K., here’s your role, here’s your lab, here’s what you’re going to be working on.’ Even if it’s a really cool product, you’re locked into it.” Like Gao, Pearce is leaning toward consulting. “If you’re an M.I.T. grad and you’re going to get paid $50,000 to work in a cubicle all day–as opposed to $60,000 in a team setting, plus a bonus, plus this, plus that–it seems like a no-brainer.” *</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1156575-6,00.html#ixzz0zdYyH4eU[/url]”>http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1156575-6,00.html#ixzz0zdYyH4eU&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

[sakky]

<p>

In the past,there was a study about schools that sent the most students to top phD programs.Most of them were non-ivy.The elite universities defended themselves that most of their graduates go straight into high paying careers straight after undergrad.But now,that another study claims that employers hire state school graduates the most,the same elite schools change tack and claim their graduates go to law,medical and grad school.Either this two studies are wrong or elite schools are lying.

</p>

<p>Actually, you have an assumption that is false. The employers in question in this article are large corporations. But, as evidenced by the sad words of Nicholas Pearce in my previous post, those aren’t the highest-paying employers - far from it in fact. The highest paying employers straight out of undergrad tend to be consulting and financial services firms, only some of which (a handful of Ibanks) are large corporations. Other high-paying firms are small tech firms such as Facebook with less than 1500 employees. {Heck, just one minor subgroup of IBM has more employees than all of Facebook.}</p>

<p>What I find disturbing is that, even at MIT, arguably the best technical school in the world, nearly half of all graduates before the recession who entered the workforce will choose consulting or finance (and even now during the recession, nearly 1/3 still do). The rationale is trivial - consulting and finance firms offer higher pay and better opportunities, or at least are perceived to do so. But that simply begs the question - why don’t regular companies improve their pay and opportunities?</p>

[Pizzagirl]

<p>

According to the article, some companies prefer to recruit in their own backyards because they like having “year-round access to interns” and “a greater chance that new-graduate hires reside locally, which eliminates relocation expenses,” a significant cost savings in the present economy. Again, reasoning that cuts against the grain of much of CC lore and legend, but it’s the corporate recruiters themselves saying so.

</p>

<p>That certainly cuts against the grain of most of CC which seems to think that the only employers in the world are in the northeast. They’re, like, totally oblivious to the presence of actual paying jobs elsewhere. They must think that everyone else barters for their supper, or something.</p>

[MomofWildChild]

<p>You young people are, sadly, not understanding the reality of today’s job market- EVEN for Ivy (and the like) grads. You better get used to cubicles and paperwork, because you are NOT Bill Gates or Steve Jobs! And if you think an associate position at Big Law is a walk in the park, think again. You better get over your distaste for corporate America or you are going to be selling jeans at the Gap (if you are lucky).</p>

[Brooklynborndad]

<p>“The doctors are beholden to their patients and the ins cos, the lawyers are beholden to their clients and their desires and timetables, the young bankers are beholden to their bosses and their clients’ demands, and so forth. It’s just sort of laughable to think that these handful of professions (as lucrative as they may be) really “give more space.””</p>

<p>being beholden to a client isnt like being beholden to a hierarchy. It really isnt. When I was in college I was told by no less a person than John Kenneth Galbraith to pursue academia or law or consulting and avoid getting into a corp or govt bureaucracy, if I wanted my independence (no I didnt know him well, it was at a luncheon) I ignored his advice. He was right. </p>

<p>Like I said, I am not sure about Inv Banking (as opposed to comm banking)</p>

[Pizzagirl]

<p>In the list that bclintonk copied above: It’s of note that of the top 20 schools, only 8 show up:</p>

<p>These 4 are listed twice.
Penn (2)
Northwestern (2)
MIT (2)
Duke (2) </p>

<p>These 4 are listed once.
Harvard
Cornell
Stanford
Chicago</p>

[Pizzagirl]

<p>Well, BBD, all I can say is that I was a director in a Fortune 50 company, and now I do consulting for Fortune 50 companies, and guess what – either way, you gotta do a lot of grunt work :-)</p>

[Pizzagirl]

<p>

You young people are, sadly, not understanding the reality of today’s job market- EVEN for Ivy (and the like) grads. You better get used to cubicles and paperwork, because you are NOT Bill Gates or Steve Jobs! And if you think an associate position at Big Law is a walk in the park, think again. You better get over your distaste for corporate America or you are going to be selling jeans at the Gap (if you are lucky).

</p>

<p>No kidding. It’s an absolute joke to hear some of these young people think that if they land the magical job at the i-bank or the law firm, they won’t deal with paperwork, busywork, grunt work, demanding clients, deadlines that cut into personal time, or “loss of their personal autonomy.” The lack of sophistication on here about the real world is astonishing.</p>