For all those parents with modest incomes and no trust fund who scrimped, saved, clipped coupons, and bought the cheap cuts of beef so they could send their kids to an Ivy League school — congratulations, you did the right thing.
At least if one of the goals was to advance your child’s chances of landing a good job. A survey from job search firm Indeed found that, overwhelmingly, a choice college pedigree gives a job candidate a huge advantage over those with degrees from less renowned institutions.
Indeed commissioned a survey in which 500 senior level and executive managers were asked whether they believe the college or university a candidate graduates from plays a role in hiring. Nearly half of the respondents say they believe it does. 29 percent say if they had their druthers, they would hire only candidates from top institutions.
Only 4 percent say they didn’t consider the applicant’s alma mater as long as the candidate met the educational requirements to do the job.
Digging deeper, the survey shows that 37 percent of hiring personnel from a school with an elevated reputation prefer to hire those from the same or similar schools. Only 6 percent of managers who did not go to a top school say they prefer to hire someone from a similar institution.
Those managers also more strongly back experience over education as key to a candidate’s value: 41 percent of managers who did not graduate from a top college prefer experience over a degree, versus just 11 percent of managers who say they went to a top school.
Yet despite this clear bias on the part of many hiring managers to salivate over a degree from a top school, when asked about their experience with top performers, it turns out the degree wasn’t so important.
Just 35 percent of those surveyed say their top performers generally come from top schools. The consensus on the ingredients for a successful workers were, by ranking: working well with others (72 percent), being a strategic thinker (71 percent), and being self-directed (66 percent).
“It’s a worrisome trend that a manager’s personal experience and background has such an influence on hiring decisions,” says Paul D’Arcy, senior vice president for marketing at Indeed. “The fact that managers don’t feel that top performers [necessarily] come from top schools shows that we need to pay more attention to hiring practices. It is often an unconscious bias that leads managers to hire people with similar backgrounds, but that means many talented and qualified candidates are being overlooked.”
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Dan Cook
Dan Cook is a journalist and communications consultant based in Portland, OR. During his journalism career he has been a reporter and editor for a variety of media companies, including American Lawyer Media, BusinessWeek, Newhouse Newspapers, Knight-Ridder, Time Inc., and Reuters. He specializes in health care and insurance related coverage for BenefitsPRO.
