And since Providence is closer to Boston, Hartford, New Haven, Springfield, Worcester than going from one major metro in CA to another- the Rhode Island data is messy indeed.
Foxboro MA is faster to get to from Providence RI than it is to get from one side of LA to the other…
Like all things, it depends. There are companies that go out of their way to solicit applicants from all over, there are companies that have preferred feeder schools, which may or may not be local, and there are companies who focus on hiring in their own backyard. It depends on the complexity of needs, the resources for recruiting, and the size of the incoming “class”. Smaller companies often don’t hire as many employees every year or have the resources to cast a wide net so are the most likely to have a hiring protocol that focuses on local schools.
With that said, almost every company will consider an applicant with the right experience and skills, but it may take a bit more ingenuity and effort to get that consideration if you aren’t in their usual pipeline.
I have worked at companies where alums of a certain school made sure their school was on their “list” to receive recruiting visits.. (In one case, it was a state flagship in a state where the company had no presence.) At another company, it was common for folks to reach out to professors they knew to find out if anyone doing post-doc work was involved with something we were looking for. None of this was based on geography, but relationships mattered.
In any case, I suspect it is rarely a preference for local grads but HR executing the easiest plan which has brought in employees who have worked out well.
Not necessarily “top” universities…..Google flew my regional North Georgia College student to Mountainview 4 days after BS in CS and put him up in a hotel for 2 nights during the one on one interviews…..of course that was after about 6 months of online testing and zoom interviews.
In-state wasn’t the only comparison listed. For example, half the employed CSU grads were employed at companies located within a few miles from the college. The vast majority of CSU grads were located within the county. The overwhelming portion of companies attending career fairs and other campus events were local . This leads to there being a strong local alumni network. Many kids attending CSU prefer to stay local, which often contributes to why they initially chose to attend a CSU instead of an out of area college.
Brown differs in all of these measures.
I have worked for small companies in the general area as the CSU throughout my career. To my knowledge, none of the companies I have worked for have recruited or attended campus events at any college located more than a 3 hour drive in the past 20 years. As such, it’s not surprising that we don’t have many (any?) employees who attended Brown or colleges in that general northeast region.
And this tells you what exactly? To me (someone who hires for a living) it tells you something about California and tech…. in a specific sector no doubt. And tells you NOTHING about everything else (banking, insurance, consumer products, transportation, infrastructure/heavy industry, luxury retailing, oil and gas, etc.).
@threeofthree I was careful to say “in my experience” and that I had no idea what happened elsewhere. Nice to hear about opportunities being available to your son, especially since they seem to be dwindling more recently compared to when my kids graduated.
Google is or was known to recruit widely at dozens or hundreds of universities, so it is not like their recruiting is or was limited to “elite” universities. Not too surprising given that it is a large company with large recruiting needs and large recruiting resources.
But the scenario may be different for a small company who finds one or a few local universities more than sufficient to provide all of the candidates it could need.
Most of the referenced grads did not work in tech, but I agree that different employers, industries, and colleges will display different patterns from each other. As stated in my initial reply it depends on many factors, rather than being a universal rule.