How important would a Russell Group uni be to your employer?

[paygride]

I work for a well known global company, employs about 2000 in UK. I was speaking to someone from our People team about how important it is for a candidate to have attended a Russell Group unti and she said it wasn't something that was especially relevant when they were looking at CVs and a few young people have joined our team recently and only one of them attended a RG uni (she did go to Cambridge). I spoke to DH about this and he works for another global company (totally different sector) and he said it's not something he looks for when he's been recruiting either. What they both said is they were bothing looking for 'something extra' (well my People officer actually described it as a 'sprinkling of fairy dust'.)

By contrast I worked for a Consultancy firm in the city and they pretty much only recruited people from Oxbridge, much smaller firm and pretty much all their business was UK based, huhe salaries and huge bonuses (which defintely isn't across the board where I work but lots very senior of people on high salaries).

DS is going to be applying to Unis and is fixed on the idea of a RG uni even though some non RG unis (Lancaster & Leicester) seem to be offering much more interesting courses in his chosen field but he will only apply to the RG unis.

Interested to know what others think. .

My experience is RG, and especially Oxbridge, is valued in the City (whether finance, professional services, law etc.) much more than other universities. Firms recruit directly from the university etc. so if you’re educated in this country and want to work in the City, it is a benefit.

Now, it doesn’t apply to the Civil Service as much but a disproportionate number of graduates going through Fast Stream come from RG, and lord knows the privileged backgrounds of SCS. Despite the blind recruitment, RG dominates.

Similar issues with a Cambridge grad we employed - did very well at interview but once she started the role - lazy, unapproachable, made some really inappropriate remarks about vulnerable clients, disparaging towards staff who were in junior roles , some of who were from quite deprived and challenging backgrounds and who were in no all honesty picking up her slack at work. Also very flirtatious with senior male colleagues who were very uncomfortable with her. ( and she was actively nasty to their partners)She was deeply unpleasant to work with both as a colleague and to the clients.
She then left - having announced to the office that she doesn’t need to work as her parents are wealthy and she had started dating a banker..
Truly nasty piece of work

I work in the NHS and recruitment, I have no interest in where someone went to Uni! I’m interested in where they have worked but more importantly their supporting statement which needs to be outstanding compared to other applicants. A poor supporting statement and I won’t short list you. I get on average 150 applicants for every post I recruit into!

@paygride It really will depend what he’s aiming for! Look at CS stats. Law in London will be equally skewed. If he wants to be a teacher no one will care but he won’t be earning £100,000 at 25 will he? In some jobs, although they don’t look at the university, they still take more RG and they are a minority of universities. Around 1/6. It’s delusional to think others are equal with elite RG plus a few others. There’s cross over at bottom tier RG. You have to be discerning and understand differences.

As for the character assassination of Cambridge grads - I think they were just a square peg in a deep round hole. Recruitment should have picked that up but it didn’t so it’s poor. It’s expensive to make mistakes. Obviously marrying a banker was a better deal than your job which, presumably, wasn’t paying banker salaries.

Didn’t go to RG because they are foreign?! Ever heard of MIT or Harvard? So nowhere else has elite research driven universities that foreigners can go to? Really?

It’s also not prejudice to look at recruitment stats that show, even with uni blind recruitment, candidates from the elite universities do better. They just do.

Depends on field. My company targets certain unis at grad pick up stage, I don’t think any of them are RG. RG unis do not have the specialisms we need.

I work for a big bank. They couldn’t care less. For graduate scheme I think you need minimum of X ucas points at a level and to pass all the online tests. By the time you get to interview stage I have a quick read of cv but I don’t really note what uni it is and other colleagues don’t either. It’s all about performance in the interview and assessment day overall.

My last employer a big consultancy didn’t even share cvs with the interviewers to avoid any bias. They were purely judged on their performance at the interview.

Im in a profession that’s highly respected and paid wel but we do t exclusively hire from the Russel group.

We have found currently (Big 4) that our non Uni employees are progressing better towards partnership than Uni candidates (RG or non).

Interesting how much emphasis is put on interview. This very much benefits dc who speak well, dress well and have good manners and a pleasant demeanour. People who can explain things well and engage quickly with interviewers. So it’s somewhat biased.

What a shame a cv is ignored. It can be a great lead into an interview to put the candidate at east. If DC has done something a bit different or of note, have a brief chat about it. Not looking at a cv means you don’t know about how they might have overcome adversity, worked a bit or even were outstanding at university. I’m amazed at the poor practices on here that actually are not fair, although perversely, the companies think they are!

ATS software is more often used to review cv’s and automatically screen candidates based on keywords and qualifications, to help to identify the most suitable applicants. They aren’t read individually - would take forever.

Process is the online tests, assessment centre, round one interview and if you get through all that, a final round interview with the Partner in the department you are applying to work in. Candidates are eliminated at each stage.

Wish I'd gone to a former poly that dished out firsts to people with two crap A levels rather than going to the RG one I went to ( with good A levels)

Good shout out for Loughborough, Our son did computing and IT, now works for a global company. He chooses where he wants to be based.

I’m at a big law firm and we recruit blind - they’re not allowed to put the name of the uni on the application. By the time they’ve got through all the tests and assessments though, it turns out the vast majority of those accepted went to top unis anyway.

@Parker231 Yes but not reading a cv at final interview is poor. The whole process is dehumanized and in my view, not satisfactory. By the time the candidate, and you, have slogged through everything, it’s very odd people don’t want a friendly question or two based on cv. You don’t know someone unless this is done. They aren’t a person. I think they could read the final round ones.

@Beebumble2 Everyone knows Loughborough, Bath, St Andrews and Lancaster are not RG but they are equivalent. Pretending they are lesser is obviously ridiculous.
@Yuja Yes. That’s what is happening. Same results just dressed up as “fair”.

Turning up well dressed to an interview is a complete nil point. It's what you say in an interview that matters.

Not in my experience. Not this century anyway! My opinion is based on 30+ years working in Finance and Consulting, and I’ve been involved in recruitment for most of my employers (and several clients) throughout that period. We don’t care where you went to school or university. We care about you being intelligent, open-minded, having integrity and a work ethic, and being able to demonstrate that you’re actually a decent person who has a (successful) life outside beyond study and/or work. We care about your languages and your international experience because this is often an indicator that you cope well with change and respect and value differences. We care about drive and collaboration and empathy and ambition. We absolutely don’t care which university or school you went to other than it being a basic entry criteria for applying.

I honestly couldn’t tell you which university 99.9% of my colleagues went to. The remaining 0.1% is down to me looking up one of my interviewers (obviously quite a few years ago) on LinkedIn and seeing he had a MBA from INSEAD and thinking oh God, he’s going to be a dick! 😂

Yes. But turning up badly dressed can be a deal-breaker.

I work in finance and have worked in big insurers, big highstreet banks, one of the big 4 and then challenger banks and can safely say none of the employers would care.

a degree is one thing but experience is another, some of the brightest minds I’ve worked with don’t have degrees and I have several all from russel group unis and they are more senior (and as a result) better paid than myself

Big multinational in the FMCG category. We don’t care in general.
Maybe a little bit for “first job after uni” types, but even there not a lot.
Work experience and internships on the other hand are super relevant.

From my post:

Oxbridge candidates are also disproportionately likely to have a public school background

Which bit are you confused by?

Yes, our (also Big) process very similar although three rounds of interviews rather than two.

Like you we also see non Uni staff and “small” name Uni staff often making better progress to partner level than most of their RG/Oxbridge peers.

How long before Universities start gaming the situation?
Companies say they are doing 'blind recruitment' but do a first sift on the Class of degree. If I was a VC then I would start leaning on the staff to hand out 2:1 and Firsts like sweeties.

RG got my dc a job straight out of uni. Because generally the most able dc go to them, obviously there are exceptions

Out of interest, what type of job they get a job? (great for them BTW as I know many people whose DC are struggling to find a job post uni).

There is some insufferable snobbery on this thread. I suspect the main culprits are posters who whose DC have been privately educated and who have had no concept of what it is like for some families where going away to university is unthinkable due to financial and other constraints.

The snobs calling some higher education establishments the university of nowhere says more about the poster than it does about the students that go there, and I say that as the parent of a DC with a first class STEM degree from an RG university.

That many successful job applicants are from the top tier universities in spite of blind recruitment just means that they were chosen by merit.

What about the contacts people make in a RG uni? All the people they meet, etc? I can't understand why someone would go elsewhere if they had the opportunity to go to a uni that will open many doors.

I'm a little cynical about the comments about meeting the right people. I doubt very much that this happens in most RG universities TBH.

his 6th form have pretty much told him if he doesn't get into e RG Uni then it's not worth attending Uni and based on what most people have said on this thread, that's terrible advice.

@paygride DD's school also pushed the RG narrative, and heaven forbid that you took a gap year because it didn't show on the schools destination statistics.

@42wallabywaysydney Lancaster is known as an RG Plus university. It has consistently been in the CUG top ten for years and is highly regarded.

Interestingly, the most targeted university by employers is not Oxford or Cambridge, but Manchester (at no 28 in the CUG and with 7 non RG universities ranked higher)