I think you misunderstand, @blossom. It isnt a matter of hiring connected but incapable people. It is that the pool of capable people is large enouugh, and the slots few enough, that filtering of the capable pool often depends upon contacts. In a recent year, over 400 Stanford undergrads applied to McKinsey. The sheer number of talented applicants leads to inequities in hiring.
Exactly. Since you brought up sports, the guy in my start group who was a scratch golfer was a good example. He wasn’t dumb at all, but more like someone who would have gotten in the mid-high 1400s on his SATs and his golf ability made up for those few points. I’m guessing even that has changed, though, since even my last few years luckily the importance of golfing with clients was becoming less of a factor.
The difference between the Harvard claim and a commercial enterprise is that there is nowhere to hide at a consulting firm. There is no back door; there is no gut major; there is no “Gentleman’s C”. The top firms have an up or out culture- you can’t hang around as a charming but incompetent Associate, and if you can’t get promoted to Engagement Manager, the clock starts to tick pretty early and loudly on your departure…up or out, it’s performance based, not “who do you know”. No big firm is letting a new associate anywhere near a potential client, regardless of whether “Uncle Chip” would welcome the call or not.
The colleges don’t “want to remain feeders for these types of firms.” You have it backwards. The colleges could care less about being feeders. It’s the employers who love the fact that the “hard to get into” colleges do a lot of the heavy lifting on their recruiting for them.
Makes sense. Also makes sense why top firms are now branching out to recruit at colleges other than the traditional feeders.
[Consulting firms want smart, but friendly sociable people who they won’t mind working long hours with or present to a client. They mainly recruit at top schools and ask for SAT scores to exude prestige.
[/quote]
That’s been my impression too. A young woman told me she was amused when her boss at a consulting company would always slip in that she went to Princeton during pitches with potential clients. He apparently did so with all the young employees to help “sell them.” She’s now at another consulting company - one of the biggies - and says that with her being out of school more than a decade it doesn’t come up at all. Her work accomplishments, yes. But when she was just starting out, her elite school was being used as a selling point.
But that’s just a shorthand way of saying “our employees are extremely smart”. She wasn’t hired because she went to Princeton but because she was extremely smart.
In her later career it is more impressive (in terms of demonstrating intelligence) to have succeeded in the job at MBB than to have attended Princeton because MBB are not hiring and promoting people because they are ALDC.
“But that’s just a shorthand way of saying “our employees are extremely smart”. She wasn’t hired because she went to Princeton but because she was extremely smart”
@Twoin18 Maybe. But she was a recruited athlete and did not graduate with honors. She was smart ENOUGH for Princeton. But it was Princeton. Which her boss made a point of emphasizing. My cynical little heart thinks it had more to do with the latter. Which is OK. Since many people - you included - automatically assume she’s “smart” because she went to Princeton.
One of my kids’ first jobs out of college was in consulting, and told me that the interviews with all the firms were fairly similar. First and foremost it seemed that by having graduated with honors in a hard science from top college, the “intellectual horsepower” hurdle had already been cleared, and that the next test was whether they had the verbal and social skills to interact to professional expectations. I never got any indication that potential connections were considered.
Both my kids are with their third companies after college, and tell me that the one factor every interviewer seems to latch onto the most is that they were captains of their NCAA athletic teams. They both feel that this factor shouldn’t count for much, but does.
I think that is enormously important (rightly or wrongly).
To answer the original question, neither of my kids were asked about standardized test scores in the job search process, with one exception. A few years out of college, one kid had still had their AP Scholar awards on their resume, which led to a fairly in depth discussion about which AP’s, what scores, etc. Apparently the interviewer was very interested and the answers (all solids, eighteen 5’s and one 4) made an impact; the interview went very well.
As others have pointed out, A is often key preference, rather than LDC. For example, in the study at http://www.thinedgeconsulting.com/assets/pdfs/Ivies%20extracurriculars%20and%20exclusion%20Elite%20employers’%20use%20of%20educational%20credentials.pdf , the author interviews 120 persons at “top tier firms” about hiring decisions – 40 in consulting, 40 in IB, and 40 in law. Many made explicit comments about a preference for athletes, often relating to a better cultural fit. Some example quotes are below:
*“Grade discounts were particularly strong for varsity athletes. Floors were typically lowered from 3.5 to 3.0 for varsity athletes”
“We look for someone who’s got a personality, has something to bring to the table. You know, for lack of a better term, someone you can shoot the s**t with… Typically…they were in sports”
“former college athletes typically prized participation in varsity sports above all other types of involvement”*
Connections also can be very influential, but connections to the firm typically mean more than hook connections to a college.
@sherpa - As someone who eschews sports that is a very cool accomplishment that is very impressive as it shows both athletic ability and leadership skills. You all must be very proud!
Having been in charge of recruiting for one of the world’s largest consulting firms at some the country’s leading universities, I can tell you “ ask for SAT scores to exude prestige” is simply false, as is much of the other info here. (I can’t even figure out how asking for high school test scores would “exude prestige”)
We didn’t ask for or look at SAT scores and I couldn’t care less who someone’s parents were. Connections could guarantee you contact/an interview, but you’re on your own at that point.
Strong school performance and the ability to operate in the roles, as evidenced through multiple behavior-based interviewing, drove hiring decisions. So yes, we want smart, but evidenced through college performance, not high school SAT, and the ability to work in team-based, client facing roles, as determined by how you say you have dealt with related situations in the recent past.
@RichInPitt Your company may not ask for test scores but MBB does, and I believe those are the consulting firms that we’ve been discussing.
Some top firms do use standardized test scores as one of the metrics in selecting candidates, but the scores are relatively minor components in overall evaluations of the candidates. No one will get a top job because of his/her test scores.
^Yes. They may take SAT scores into consideration and can “advertise” that they have a SAT average score of X. Or they may not.
It’s holistic, folks.
I know CC doesn’t like holistic, because they think it implies some back room/smoke filled decision making, but getting hired at MBB or at one of the global investment banks is a holistic decision-making process.
Some firms ask for SAT scores (or GMAT or LSAT or GRE if taken) and some don’t. Some really care about GPA and others don’t. But no one element gets you in, no one element gets you kicked out of contention.
All of these companies invest millions of dollars in training. They want to put those dollars to use with employees/firm members who will benefit the most from that training. No- if you are an MBA from Wharton, you won’t be attending the “mini MBA” program that your colleague who just finished their Fulbright will be attending. But there will be training suitable for your own background and the competencies you bring with you.
Are SAT’s determinative? No. But in my experience hiring for over 30 years at some big, global firms (some cared about SAT’s, some did not) it is a leveler for the kids graduating from small colleges who weren’t on the recruiting schedule. It is a leveler for the kid who ends up at the local, non-flagship state U due to costs. It is a leveler for the kid who goes to a religious college which doesn’t usually send a lot of grads off to corporate America. It is a leveler for the kid from U Montana and allows him or her to get their resume considered along with the hundreds of resumes from Dartmouth and Princeton.
High scores don’t get you hired. But they are one more datapoint for the companies who ask about them.
As Rich has accurately noted, these firms also spend big bucks training their interviewers in behavioral interview techniques, and how to conduct a case interview. Why do these places hire this way? Until there are better tools- these are the ones which tens of thousands of interviews across the last decade, around the world, have been shown to have the “best” results, i.e. capturing the best profiles for that individual company, and minimizing the number of hiring mistakes (and every company has some of those). It is hard to identify a sociopath, for example. But if you’ve ever worked with one, you know it when you see it. And in parts of the world (France, for example) it is extremely hard to get rid of one!
I’ve said this before- so pardon the boring speech- I don’t understand why folks on CC are happy to get exercised about stuff like this. Want to help your kid launch? Then learn how the various hiring techniques are used and deployed. Learn how getting hired by the CIA is fundamentally different from getting hired by the SEC or the Justice Department, which is fundamentally different from getting hired by Bank of America in a client facing role. Or how it’s different from getting hired by Procter & Gamble for their sales training program, or how it’s different from Northwestern Mutual’s training program. These are all fine options for a young person about to launch.
But whining about how irrelevant SAT scores are to someone’s future performance? So don’t apply there. Problem solved.