My daughter will not interview any candidate that only has a foreign degree. She does see lots of candidates with foreign undergraduate degrees with a graduate degree from a US college, and will interview those.
Is it because kids these days spend too much time on ECs, and not enough time deeply learning material?
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Even from a well regarded university like Toronto, UBC, Oxford, Cambridge, an IIT, NTU, etc.?
Entering the US as a graduate student does seem to be a relatively common way for highly educated people to enter the US, probably because PhD study is funded, and getting a work visa sponsorship in the US is less difficult with a graduate degree than with a bachelorās degree.
This varies quite a bit by field. In tech and math-heavy fields, the majority of grad degree completers in US are often international students. The numbers are especially high for female students. An example graph is below. In 2019, the majority of both engineering MS and PhD recipients in US were international. In my EE grad class at Stanford, Iād expect >70% of on-campus students were international (off-campus SCPD professional employees were often domestic).
I am an engineer. Most of the engineers I work with, including company CEO, were born outside of the US. Some currently live outside of US. None I am aware of from this group completed degrees in US, although I have worked with persons who did undergrad outside of US and grad in US, in the past. I expect going to the US for grad school typically has more to do with obtaining a visa than it does with employer requirements for interview/hiring.
Tech hiring in US typically involves tech interviews, with numerical problem solving, coding challenges, Q&A, etc. The interviews evaluate the applicantsā technical skills, rather than assuming that grads from college A are qualified and college B are not. This makes it less critical that the applicant attended a domestic college.
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Wow! This is crazy! I am shocked that no one bothered to check this before publication!
That sounds like a policy that if articulated will get her company sued.
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If a company can be sued for this then why wouldnāt a company also be sued for only considering applicants from certain schools for specific positions?
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Well it sounds like a policy that could be shown to have a disparate impact on different races. What would you say about a company policy that specifically excluded considering applicants with degrees from HBCUs?
Just this week weāve seen the Justice Department file suit over similar issues, even though a hiring exam is facially race and gender neutral.
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It might but it might not as the point isnāt exclusion due to race but rather the origin of the degree and the same discrimination charge could be leveled against companies who only choose to hire from specific universities, most of which do not seem to HBCUās. This hiring practice could lead to disparate impact on different races too.
For that matter, my understanding is that Supreme Court clerks also tend to come from select universities which too could have a disparate impact on the race of candidates being hired so again why would only this particular situation be grounds for a suit and not the others?
Read about the Justice Department suits against hiring exams that I linked above. Thatās based on the disparate impact, not the objective.
Can you point me to a company that specifically says it will only hire from certain universities in its employment criteria/job adverts, no matter what? Some have ātargetsā and ānon-targetsā but it would be very unwise for a company to specify that it will refuse any consideration whatsoever for applicants from the latter schools.
āTend to comeā from a few schools is not at all the same as refusing to consider certain applicants.
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The article that you linked to isnāt relevant in my view since itās about hiring exams not leading to equal outcomes. Whether a degree has to be given the same weight regardless of school is a separate matter.
For instance, there are many medical doctors from foreign countries who are not automatically given a medical license in America as their degree is not recognized in this country.
As far as companies stating outright that they would never consider a student that isnāt from a target school, of course they would likely never say so but not sure if thatās really due to legal issues or because there are always some exceptions to these rules. Same likely with companies who donāt necessarily trust that the education of a degree holder from a foreign country is equivalent. If a candidate were to impress them, I expect that company would hire them but are they required to interview everyone who applies for a given job? No and theyāre not required to explain why they turned a candidate away.
These are semantics - I donāt think either situation would be absolutes as I said but tend to come is certainly a weaker position than much of what happens in practice. Same with refusing to consider - I expect there would be consideration to those with degrees from vetted or more renowned institutions.
These are semantics, but badly worded āsemanticsā are what get you sued, especially when they involve bright line criteria. Thatās why lawyers write and/or review company policy handbooks on hiring. And why I said it would be a bad idea for @kiddieās daughter to write down that her āpolicyā is not to interview anyone with a foreign degree. Itās always good to think about how your email would look if it was taken out of context in a newspaper or cited in a court case.
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Is it possible you misunderstood?
Getting a legal work permit for a foreign national with a US graduate degree is generally faster and easier than someone with just a bachelorās from an overseas university. And the more educated- the easier. Someone with a doctorate (and perhaps a publication or two) could be eligible for an O-visa as well- so two potential bites of the apple. If the preference for a US grad degree is driven by the practicalities of getting the visasā¦ I get it. Or perhaps some security clearance issues???
But to exclude someone with a degree from the Technion, Monash, UCL, McGill, Fudan, or any one of another 20 universities overseas with stellar reputations (in some cases, a more rigorous education than their nearest US counterpart) doesnāt meet the smell test in my experience (admittedly, Iām only one person) nor that of colleagues at a wide range of companies in the US.
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Is this only for entry level jobs and/or those needing visa sponsorship?
What if itās a mid level position and itās a candidate who does not need sponsorship, has 10 years of relevant experience in the U.S., but has a foreign degree?
True. Several longitudinal studies point out the gaps between students graduating into recessions/tight labor markets and those graduating into the ābountifulā years.
BUT- nobody can control their age/cohort. You start college with full expectations that your job-hunting experience will be just like your older siblings- and then discover that the much touted āPetroleum engineering equals golden ticketā is actually much more limiting than a straight up ME degree. The labor markets do what they do- what individuals can control is how they respond.
āUnemployment or underemployment tends to be stigmatizing when one is seeking a job, even if the reason is beyond the applicantās control.ā
I have not found this to be the case. That petroleum engineering grad who takes a job teaching chemistry at a private HS is building professional skills for those two years (i.e. waiting out the dip in the oil and gas markets). They are different skills, but they are additive to someoneās profile and not stigmatizing. And showing up-- eventually- into the career path they originally intended with a full suite of āsoft skillsā-- communication, managing differences, conflict resolution, leadership-- is the way to frame the detour.
And there isnāt a hiring leader or corporate recruiter on the planet who has not dealt with a downturn, whether it meant they were laid off, not hired, etc. We all get it. Some people respond with flexibility-- get a job, start āearning and learningā. Some people will sit on momās couch doom scrolling and posting tik-tokās for a year in the hopes of trying again next cycle. And if the goal is a job in social media- that could be the right move. But for any other professional career- any job is better than no job. Taking online classes in SOMETHING- foreign language fluency, especially one of the State Dept. Strategic languages, coding in a high demand language, graphic designā¦ getting a certificate in something useful- all of these are better than sitting around waiting out the economy. And not stigmatizing.
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But plenty of others have found it to be the case, including those looking for jobs that are not cyclical niches like your petroleum engineering example.
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Iām not sure the experiences- however sad- of a middle aged, unemployed forklift driver (the example in the first article you post) is directly relevant to a 22 year old with a degree in political science. But Iāll have more reactions once Iāve read the next article you referencedā¦
Her company does not do visa sponsorship, so she cannot hire those candidates who require that. She is generally hiring tech people in lower level positions. She will get hundreds of resumes for entry level positions (so no job experience to speak of). This is her unofficial way of weeding the pack (not a company policy).
Regarding automatically rejecting job applicants with degrees from universities outside the USā¦
Presumably, this means that a US citizen who graduated from a university outside the US (as is sometimes discussed here on these forums) would be weeded out by her criteria, even though such US citizen would not need a visa to work in the US.
Of course, there are also international students attending and graduating from US universities who would need visa sponsorship to work in the US.
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Wow, I am getting slammed here - to fully express her criteria - candidate with no education or job ever in the US. Everything on the resume happened in other countries.