To be upset about ‘university blind’ recruitment

[Newname576]

DS has overcome so many challenges and has an unconditional offer from Cambridge after achieving 4 A star last year. He has worked so hard and we are so proud of him! But I was upset to learn that so many companies are recruiting “university blind”now - what the hell is the point of going to a top Uni if no one will know about it! My younger child says she will apply to Manchester Met and have a ball even though she too is predicted stellar grades as there is no point going to a top Uni

AIBU to be sad that companies are recruiting blind?

True. Many top Masters / PHD/ grad schemes will waive a 1st Class Hons requirement for Open Uni grads for this reason (for most of their non-stem degrees 85% is a 1st).

I feel like your DS’s prestigious place means you’ve now rocketed off to the same area as the parents you’re criticising. On one hand you disagree with university blind job offers, on the other hand you say his place means so much more because he was inherently disadvantaged? Surely the former is just a tool of the latter?

I would also like to step on your toes to say I’ve recently had my results of a 2:1, which I completed while having 2 babies, working FT, with no family help and a serious/chronic physical disability. No it wasn’t from Oxbridge/Russell Group but boy oh boy it was a slog and if employers are recruiting going by your grade, experience and enthusiasm then I’m very happy with that. There are all sorts of reasons people can’t attend a top university without intelligence coming into it.

They're not written off though are they. It's blind recruitment. They're judged on their application.

Whether recruitment is blind or not, they have to have minimum academic requirements. That is how they cut down the pile. My DH didn’t have the grades required for top accountancy graduate recruitment. He worked at a tiny local firm whilst he qualified and then moved to Deloitte. It is not the end of the world to not get the graduate job straight away.

My husband got a degree with honours from his chosen university. It is not an RG university but the university in our home city is second in the whole of the uk after another non RG university in construction. He was too old to get a graduate job when he graduated with his second degree at 35. Seven years later he is a member CIOB with a degree in building surveying (MRICS is not required for his job). My dad did attend (in the 70s)what is now an RG university but it wasn’t his degree that got him the job. The degree got his foot in the door but his extra curricular got him the job. Two of his friends also got a job in finance with him despite one having a degree in the classics and one in English literature. Extra curricular counted far more.

It stops bias. I’d say at least 50% of the time when I’ve interviewed people for role the “best” on paper are not the right people. I once interviewed someone who came top 3 globally in a professional exam…zero people skills, couldn’t answer a lot of the questions.

My profession needs academically bright people, no question. However, there is so much more to it - commercial awareness, people skills, ability to condense complex information into snappy concise advice, buckets of common sense, resilience, organisation and time-management.

I used to work with a guy who was lovely, straight A everything, Oxbridge. He knew more about the subject matter than I knew or will ever know. However, he was completely incapable of doing the job; he couldn’t write practical, concise advice to save his life. We guided him but he just couldn’t do it. He eventually left the profession and went into academia, where he would be a perfect fit.

I should balance this by saying we have a lot of Oxbridge grads who are brilliant. However, we also have a lot of grads from other universities that are far less prestigious who do the job equally well.

He was too old to get a graduate job when he graduated with his second degree at 35. Seven years later he is a member CIOB w

When you say 'too old to get a graduate job' - was that how he felt? Or was he excluded from grad schemes based on his age? The latter is illegal

His lecturers told him not to bother applying as no graduate scheme would accept him. He finished university having got himself a non graduate scheme job and that paid £10,000 more per annum than the graduate scheme jobs as a starting salary.

what the hell is the point of going to a top Uni if no one will know about it
😂Said never an educated person.

My younger child says she will apply to Manchester Met and have a ball even though she too is predicted stellar grades as there is no point going to a top Uni. Good, with that attitude, she doesn't belong in a 'top uni'.

We had a number of mature people on our grad scheme, and no employer worth working for would shut out talent whilst breaking the law. Can't imagine the careers service would have said what the lecturers did.

That said, grad salaries are generally lower than those of experienced hires, as your DH found out. However, not everyone has the skills and experience to walk into an experienced hire job and some mature grads choose to go for the grad scheme with lower pay in the early days as an investment for what comes after that.

THIS THREAD WAS STARTED OVER A YEAR AGO

Not true. There is a good deal of cross sector work to ensure quality and comparability of curricular and standards in similar degree programmes.

Jobs shouldn't be offered on the basis of awarding university, rather on the merit of the candidate in the application process. Qualifications are only what get you to interview stage.

Your child will have incredible experiences at such a high caliber university that should help him achieve success in the job market. He can then feel sure he's got the job on his own merit, rather than because of where he studied.

AND?

So you are basically saying that those who have not had the opportunity to go to an elite university but still have the exact same qualification shouldn't be be able to et the same jobs. As someone who got a degree in a standard university please feel free to fuck off.

This is what's wrong with the country!
Recruitment shouldn't be about 'making things much fairer'. It should be about getting the best possible person for the job.

Not saying that isn't someone from a non-Oxbridge university. Just that, if someone's going to be diagnosing my illness or some other highly responsible job, I'd want to think they'd got the best person, not recruited politically to try and make things fairer!

So much ignorance on here about Oxbridge. They've vastly increased their diversity in terms of state/private intake in the last couple of decades.

But a first from Oxbridge is miles ahead than a first from a shitty ex-poly. The standard of work is just so much higher. In fact it’s usually the case that a 2:1 from Oxbridge is equivalent to a First from other non-Russell group unis - that’s how most employers (including my own) see it.

That’s not to say that the Oxbridge person is necessarily the best candidate for the job, but academically let’s not pretend they aren’t miles ahead of their peers!

I work in an ex-poly and have also worked at a more prestigious uni. Trust me, the quality really isn’t the same. How can it be, when my current place accepts students with DDD in their A Levels, compared to Oxbridge with AAA? The students here just can’t cope with academic rigour, so of course the degrees are not equivalent. That’s just something they say to appease little Johnny’s parents when he only gets DDD in his A Levels and so can only get into a shitty uni. Some of the students in my current place can barely string a sentence together.

@Ace56 it sounds like governance at your university is poor! Don't you have external examiners? Ive worked across a range of universities and also been an external and feel there is a good degree of consistency, in my field in any case.

OP, if you don’t mind me saying, you are making a fuss about nothing really. The opportunities at C are fantastic - particularly access to paid summer internships. This is how many of them get jobs after uni anyway. They build up an amazing network of people. On the internships, they find they all went to Oxbridge, Imperial, UCL, LSE, Durham or top Ivy League.

Why do you think just because your son went to Cambridge - he would be a good fit for the job? I have a friend who’s son graduated form Cambridge with a first - socially he really really struggles and has found to very hard to get a job now. It’s not ALL about the university/grades and that’s how it should be.

Plenty of paid internships are available in the careers dept of most universities. For those whose kids went to other Unis please encourage them to visit their Uni careers depts to see the wide opportunities available.
The internship interviews will be very similar to the grad jobs - blind recruitment is pretty standard.

You have evidence for this? And by "elitist" I assume you mean "academically able".

When I was at Cambridge our exams were only moderated by academics at UCL, Bristol etc, whose courses probably were of comparable standard. They weren’t moderated by ex polys which didn’t run a comparable degree course in any case (e.g similar courses at these universities had no language element whereas we had to do almost all our work in two original languages).

A belief that an Oxbridge degree is of the same standard as a degree at any other university requires the belief that students who get DDD at A level and go to a university who will accept them with those grades accelerate their progress so much at university that they catch up with and overtake students who go into Oxbridge with 4 A*s and end up with the same degree grade.

In the meantime Oxford and Cambridge, despite being so well resourced and requiring students to submit a huge number of essays etc compared to other universities, is achieving far lower outcomes for their students in the context of their starting point?

Sometimes that will be true and recruitment should allow for that. There will be very bright students who don’t reach their potential at A level. But on average if Oxbridge students are more academic going in they are probably more academic coming out.

My experience was that I was top of my school, top of law school, came top in professional exams but was completely average at Cambridge.

Of course being the person most able to succeed at Oxbridge doesn’t necessarily mean you’re the best candidate for the job. But sometimes academics are important and where you went to university is relevant information for assessing that.

My firm tried university blind recruitment for a bit alongside a written test. It significantly increased the number of Oxbridge students recruited so they scrapped it again.