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.