I recently read Jeff Selingo’s “Dream Schools” book, and one of the things I remembered was that he said companies generally hire those who graduated from nearby universities. That isn’t wrong. After all, I know the space industry hires a lot of people from the University of Alabama because a lot of the industry is located in Huntsville. But it isn’t a hard and fast rule because a lot of people in the Bay Area, New York, or the DC area are transplants who went to college from the other side of the country.
The only experience I have is with tech companies that visit the campuses of “top schools,” fly students across country and pay for hotels in senior year. I have no idea which other industries do this or where. It makes sense to me that students who do local internships during the school year might have an advantage with local companies. But summer internships have students from all over. So I would guess it is a mixed bag.
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Definitely a mixed bag.
My electrical engineer husband hired the candidates they felt could do the job best. No one cared where they went to college.
As an educator, we didn’t care about where the candidate went to college at all.
As an anecdote…both of my kids are living and working a couple thousand miles away from where they went to college.
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It depends on the firm and the industry. Google, for example, visits over a hundred campuses and has both the resources and expertise to hire graduates from across the country. The same is true for large financial and consulting firms (though not necessarily the “visit hundreds of campuses” part).
Most firms, however, tend to hire the majority of their new graduates locally because they’re more familiar with nearby schools and can better gauge the quality of their students. They also often lack the resources to recruit nationally or pay for relocation. That said, if they receive strong resumes from candidates in other regions, and those candidates are willing to cover their relocation costs - I think most firms would likely be open to hiring them.
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I think pretty much all employers are looking for applicants who they think will train well and then do a good job.
For career positions, they may also be considering things like how likely it is someone will actually stay with them for an extended period. Of course not all positions are really expected to lead to a longer career, but college graduates are often specifically looking for positions that might be designed as the possible first step in a longer career with the firm.
For practical reasons, these considerations may sometimes lead to what looks like a preference for graduates of local colleges. But I think in many cases if you as an individual can satisfy them you would train well and do a good job, and are likely to stick around for longer (when applying for career positions), then that “preference” may be a non-issue for you as an individual.
One datapoint: at my Boston-based, mid-sized company (1500 employees), we hire mainly out of the Boston area colleges, UMass, Providence College, etc. We also tend to get candidates that have a Boston connection that went elsewhere, so the person who grew up in the Boston area and went to Wisconsin for undergrad might find us, and we’d interview them knowing that we don’t have to relo them. That said, if particularly good candidates have strong credentials (great work experience and a degree from a well-known, extremely highly regarded college) and reach out to us, they may get called for an interview as well.
IME, at the elite level recruiting can be national, but the vast majority of companies (especially the ones that I’ve worked at) tend to recruit locally.
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Isn’t this affected by much of the applicant pool wanting to stay local? One of my sons only applied for jobs that were in the metro area of where he grew up, for example.
In our experience, it depends on the industry, the size of the company, and the strength of the college program. When my D was looking at schools, my H (who does a lot of hiring in her field) told her to consider the region where she wanted to live. Turned out not to matter for her at all and the company that hired her has sent her all over the country for her rotations.
The one bonus for a company hiring locally is not having to pay for any relocation or worry that the new hire is going to hate the area and leave. The bonus to the employee is already being established and having a community if they stay in the area.
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Company dependent with an assist from the student.
My son interviewed with 19 places. Went to Bama. I think one was in-state. His 5 offers - all over the country. He’s west coast. He ‘applied’ to these jobs - and that’s how they found him. The internet vs on campus recruiting, makes this very common.
My daughter went to school at Charleston. Many, in any major, don’t want to leave the city so they work in hospitality or retail after school. It’s a choice they make. My daughter, however, is in Denver. I work with a C of C grad who lives in Seattle but I think out of college Detroit.
My likely future SIL went to U of Denver for finance. Works at a small firm. The founders aren’t DU grads but last year they hired two from DU as they’ve expanded. This year another. No other hires. So it depends.
I’d likely think large company - where you go matters less. Small company - might be easier to be found locally.
But look at the zillion of colleges in small areas or not near jobs. These kids get jobs.
But I imagine where kids get jobs have more to do with where they apply vs where a school is located. If you go to Indiana and want to return home to work in Chicago and only apply for jobs in Chicago, then that’s likely where you will start your career.
I think it depends on the industry and possibly their familiarity with the school.
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Or convenience. Any in-person recruiting or interviewing activities are more convenient for both the employer and job applicant when they are local to each other.
Very true, but some industries do all virtual.
It depends on the specific company, rather than a universal rule, but a large portion of companies do favor recent grads from colleges that are not far away. Reasons include lower recruiting costs, grads being more likely to favor living in area and more likely to accept offers, being more familiar with the college, networking and past history/connections with college including a good number of existing employees being alumni, more likely to have internships/coops, more likely to have special connections with college including things like professors who previously worked at or founded company, etc.
One can see this effect by reviewing the employers that are most likely to hire grads from the college or most likely to attend career fairs at the college. At public colleges, nearby in-state employers are often tremendously overrepresented. For example, looking up stats for my nearest Cal State. Among employed recent grads…
45% of grads are working at an employer located within a few miles from college
68% of grads are working at an employer located within the county
96% of grads are working at an employer located within the state
Of course not all colleges show this pattern to the same extent. For example, highly selective private colleges often have a large portion of out of state employers attending career fairs, and a good portion of hires out of state. At the other extreme, Brown’s post grad outcomes shows the following.
7% of grads work in state
44% of grads work in NYC
62% of grads work in NYC or Boston
90+% of grads work in NYC, Boston, or city located outside of northeast USA
A similar type of pattern occurs if you look at which colleges have the largest number of alumni working at specific companies. As an example, I live and work in the San Diego area. The largest private employer in San Diego is Qualcomm. According to LinkedIn, the colleges with the largest number of alumni working at Qualcomm SD are as follows. If I search for managers, engineers, interns, or any other keyword in job title, the list is similar. Regardless of position, there are a huge number of alumni from the San Diego schools UCSD and SDSU working at the largest SD private employer – Qualcomm SD.
Colleges with Most Qualcomm SD Alumni on LinkedIn
- UC San Diego – 949
- San Diego State – 838
- USC – 358
- Arizona State – 230
- UCLA – 193
However, the connections and benefits go further than just having hundreds of alumni working at the company and a large number of potential alumni contacts . UCSD and Qualcomm are located practically within walking distance of one another; Qualcomm was founded by a former UCSD professor (the UCSD school of engineering is named after him); UCSD also has professors with unique connections at Qualcomm, such as consulting and past employment, has special opportunities for UCSD students to get Qualcomm mentors; UCSD classes I have taken emphasize Qualcomm-tech and Qualcomm way of doing things; etc. I’m sure persons involve in Qualcomm hiring are also aware of things like UCSD/SDSU grads being more likely to be enthusiastic about living in the SD area and taking a job if offered than out of region Ivy+ kids, generally having a lower recruiting cost due to less travel + large number of potential hires, etc. If you want to work at Qualcomm or in the SD area in general, attending UCSD is likely to be advantageous to that goal, I’d expect much more so than for typical Ivy+ colleges, particularly ones that don’t have strong engineering programs.
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Two comments:
– Answer is dependent on company and how aggressively a student seeks out opportunities.
– Didn’t you graduate UCLA in 2023? At this point you should be past any concerns about where you attended college dictating job options. FWIW I know UCLA grads who have secured jobs in many parts of the country– it is a a name that travels well.
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It IS wrong if he doesn’t qualify this blanket statement w/r/t industry, function, geography, competitive environment, specificity of a particular role or special skills, etc.
I’ve worked in corporate recruiting for decades (mostly large, multi-nationals) and Selingo is reflecting a particular bias with his statement unless he qualifies it BIG TIME. There are “generic” type entry level roles which a college graduate (or not) from a wide range of institutions and experiences could competently fill. And then there are those where your typical grad would fail miserably because the skillset required to even perform adequately is so complicated. And the success metrics for the company and the role go so far beyond what your “typical college grad who majored in business” could handle.
Do you think all those BYU graduates end up employed because Salt Lake City is such a huge hiring magnet? Some stay local- and some get recruited all over the place because by the time a BYU student is a senior, he or she has done a mission overseas, has likely lived in a variety of places and situations, and is fluent– frequently in a “strategic” (i.e. hard to fill) language.
Do you think all those University of Tulsa grads who major in Cyber end up in Oklahoma? They do not. They end up in DC, Boston, El Segundo, Batavia IL, or at any one of many federal research and security centers around the country- some locations you’ve heard of (Argonne, Los Alamos) and some you haven’t heard of.
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From other posts, the OP graduated UCLA in 2023.
? OP- what is the purpose of this thread?
When hiring, there’s definitely a plus associated with people who are local or have family ties to the area. It implies longevity and stability.
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For SOME companies, in SOME locations, for SOME roles.
Your kid is an engineering student and is interviewing at Raytheon. Raytheon has about 600 facilities in 44 states in the US. Does your kid state “I am only interested in locations close to my home town and I will not move to another facility- not now or ever– because since I am “local” that means stability and longevity?”
The type of engineering that your kid does may be clustered in a facility 1,000 miles from your kid’s college. The recruiters that show up on your kid’s campus from a “local” company may be hiring for another division entirely– the “local” operation may not have any open roles for this recruiting cycle.
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It is not really fair to compare teeny tiny RI to behemoth CA, when talking about how many grads stay in-state… 
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