{"id":2628,"date":"2015-04-08T10:37:20","date_gmt":"2015-04-08T18:37:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/?p=2628"},"modified":"2015-04-06T16:49:16","modified_gmt":"2015-04-07T00:49:16","slug":"the-decline-of-corporate-elitism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/?p=2628","title":{"rendered":"The Decline of Corporate Elitism"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I was a kid, I always hoped and dreamed that I would get into one of those Ivy League schools. Unfortunately, I was a disaster of a student (and a ridiculously undisciplined Asian student to boot). Yes, I had well over a 4.0 GPA, took 26 total AP classes in high school, but I really succeeded by my ability to test well. I never studied, barely did my homework and didn\u2019t read assigned texts. In short, I just happened to be really lucky. But I also didn\u2019t have the drive that it takes to get into one of the elite institutions of higher learning. Those schools, like Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford, were reserved for those voted \u201cmost likely to succeed\u201d in their high school yearbooks.<\/span><\/p>\n

Upon graduating from college (from what turned out to be an excellent, small, liberal arts college), I didn\u2019t land that highly desired job in consulting or investment banking. Those jobs primarily came from colleges more elite than my own. So I fought and clawed my way into situations where I would learn and grow, eventually creating this blog not as a public space, but as a place to record my thoughts so I\u2019d remember them in the future.<\/span><\/p>\n

I now have the pleasure of helping my clients understand how strategy can impact all manner of HR, talent and service delivery outcomes. One of the most interesting in recent years has been a focus on understanding staffing outcomes in the college recruiting area. The old conventional wisdom has always been to get the most elite candidates from the most elite colleges. After all, these are the best and the brightest, and what CEO does not tell the world that they have the best and smartest team in the world? Unfortunately, this conventional wisdom does not work out for all it\u2019s cracked up to be.<\/span><\/p>\n

My favorite case study comes from a global financial analyst firm. This organization recruited from one of the Ivy Leagues for years, but ultimately they ran some analytics and discovered that the Ivy League candidates not only didn\u2019t perform better, they often performed worse than candidates from \u201cmiddle of the pack\u201d schools. The most successful candidates (those promoted into management and eventually reaching executive ranks, those who had long tenure rates, and those who became great leaders and people managers), were often from public sector universities in \u201cPo-dunk, Middle-of-Nowhere.\u201d The analysis revealed a single striking characteristic difference: the sense of entitlement.<\/span><\/p>\n

It turned out that candidates from elite schools were indeed smarter, but they also had in their belief system that they could do better \u2013 no matter where they were. There was not only a continuous striving to get to the top faster, but a sense of discontent no matter how good their present state was. This ultimately lead to early voluntary terminations in less than 2 years, and a striving for job\/title inflation that was counter-productive to real experiential growth.<\/span><\/p>\n

On the other hand, candidates from \u201cPo-dunk\u201d were so excited for the opportunity, happy they were in New York instead of \u201cPo-dunk\u201d and genuinely appreciative that they somehow got into one of the elite financial firms, that they worked their butts off and formed long term relationships with their companies. Ultimately, sticking around and putting in some real effort ensured that many of the \u201cPo-dunk\u201d graduates made it into executive ranks, probably as quickly as the elitists did (after 6 company changes).<\/span><\/p>\n

Another customer, an engineering firm, found that not only did the school not matter (which would seem odd in engineering), but what did matter was how well this organization could form high quality relationships with Ph.D candidate advisors. A high quality relationship with a professor guiding many engineering Ph.D. candidates was a significantly better predictor of the new hire\u2019s desire to put in hard work and stick around. After all, if your Ph.D. advisor got you and many of your predecessors an opportunity at a job, and they are all experiencing success, aren\u2019t you going to do the same thing?<\/span><\/p>\n

The point being that the old conventional wisdom isn\u2019t the formula for recruiting success anymore. The pressure high school kids face these days to get set up for life by getting into the best colleges is also creating very bad precedent and expectations. Just the idea that they think they will be \u201cset up for life\u201d by getting into the right schools is turning off employers. More and more of my customers are doing deep analytics to understand where their top college candidates come from, and increasingly it\u2019s not the elite schools. If you\u2019re still following the old conventional wisdom, it might be time to revisit your strategy.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was a kid, I always hoped and dreamed that I would get into one of those Ivy League schools. Unfortunately, I was a disaster of a student (and a ridiculously undisciplined Asian student to boot). Yes, I had…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2629,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[27,8,394,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-data-metrics","category-strategies","category-hr-strategy-technology","category-talent-acquisition"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2628"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2630,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2628\/revisions\/2630"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}