US unis, UK Jobs

[OneTwoThreeFourFives]

Something I've been wondering is that I see from threads here that where you go to university is mattering less and less. It doesn't matter if you go to Oxford and Cambridge etc.

But I've been wondering if that holds true for a "wow" US university. By that I mean HYMPS.

Just a musing I had.

If an employer is doing ‘blind’ recruitment and can’t see where your degree is from, that will hold true regardless

Why do you think it doesn't matter if you go to Oxford or Cambridge? Is this a new concept, or just something perpetuated by Mumsnetters?

It's what I've read on MN.

@DingleDongBellEnd recruiters are increasingly doing blind recruitment. When I assess our candidates' responses I don't see their name, where they are from what school they attended or what university they went to.

Can you be more specific? Recruiters where? I worked for a while in a recruitment company and we definitely knew everything, right down to people's A levels in some instances.

When was that? Blind recruitment has become popular in the last few years. I'm not saying who I work for but I will say it is in the legal sector.

Ah ok. I was in media recruitment and my experience is clearly out of date.

Here's a thing - different recruiters in different sectors have different recruitment practices!

I agree that Oxbridge ‘doesn’t matter’ only when recruitment is blind. In open recruitment, certainly in STEM and I think in other fields, I would expect the universities listed by OP to have similar cachet to C and O. I would add Chicago to her list

I went to what is considered one of the best art universities in the world in the US. No one here (applying for design jobs) had heard of it.
A lawyer friend said she wouldn't get a good job in Boston because she didn't go to Harvard Law. If she was applying here not sure it makes any difference where she went (she did go to a Seven Sisters uni - like the female equivalent to Ivy League - all bar Cornell were initially male only).
I think it matters more in some limited fields, and some unis, like MIT, must carry weight internationally.

Doesn't the applicant him/herself have to demonstrate a bit of personal cachet, though? Or should I'm a Harvard / Brown / Cornell (or wherever graduate just be accepted as a proxy for, I'm the best candidate.

Fun fact - not a hotshot multinational legal firm, granted, but at the company that DD has just left, which obviously does employ blind recruitment, DD was asked a couple of weeks in, which university had she been to and were there more like her available?

She is a graduate of the University of Birmingham.

Good on her, @MarchingFrogs !

Of course the person is more important than the institution

It's bit of both, I think. I went to MIT undergraduate and it definitely opened doors for me on both sides of the pond....although not exactly the doors you might always think. I got a job as a bouncer at a nightclub while at Uni simply because they liked to brag that their bouncer was a student at MIT. The university you went to can be an eye catcher, but I have found that putting my plumbing skills on my resume when applying to jobs completely unrelated to plumbing was just as much of an eye catcher. I believe that my extensive (and varied) work history (first paying job was as an apprentice car mechanic at 15, went on to work for a biotech company during my summers off from University) was much more important for getting a job when I was young.

I have read a few articles recently that suggest that work experience in ANY field is much more desirable than anything else to employers for young workers in any field.
My DD is 21 and bounced around several lower level community colleges/universities in the USA before graduating with a degree from a mid level Uni (UC Santa Cruz). However, throughout this academic journey she worked a lot (she says she likes nice things that the meager allowance I gave her wasn't enough for). As a result, she has an enormous amount of work experience starting from the age of 12 or 13 in a variety of non-career related jobs (babysitting, retail, restaurant, catering). The unusually large amount of work experience for her age compared to her peers makes her stand out when applying for jobs and and she gets interviews and hired because of that even for positions in fields completely unrelated to her useless degree in Philosophy.

I think it depends on your field. My DC (cousin) has a science degree (PhD) from one of the top 3 US universities and had job offers before graduation and didn’t even need to apply anywhere. My understanding is that science degrees are very much in demand in some industries.

Blind recruitment will be blind to everywhere but there's still a lot of recruitment that isn't blind (I got offered another job the other day where they specifically mentioned Cambridge University in a very positive light) and for those that aren't blind high ranking universities in the US will be treated similarly to Oxford and Cambridge. Some US universities are a lot better known here than others though.