What is the matter with how top grad employers hire grads?

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Why will they be statistically invalid?

You really don't have a clue, so it's clearly going to be impossible to rationalise things with you.

Because there are so many factors there is simply no way you could control for. Its rather revealing that you know so little about statistics that you actually believe such a study might even be possible.

I've studied HR, I know exactly what a pile of unscientific vacuous bull**** it is.

Reply 121

cole-slaw

Original post by J-SP

No recruitment process is perfect, the wrong people will be hired from time to time. But there is no reason why a business would support a unsuccessful recruitment system in the long run, it doesn't make sense. There are reasons people are recruited in the manor they are and it's because they are the most cost effective and efficient ways of doing so.

Come on now, you must remember your management degree, is the rational decision making model considered to a realistic descriptor of real-world decision making? Can you name me three more realistic models?

No offence, but your level of knowledge of organisational theory does not fill me with confidence in HR personnel.

Reply 122

cole-slaw

Original post by ChemistBoy

Very difficult when they are based in an office in another country and our 'business partner' is around 1 day a week. We used to have our own HR team, but they disappeared a few reorganisations ago. The reality of post-2008 corporate life for most people in large organisations is centralised business services, often a long way from where you are and overworked 'business partners' that have no time to support change - cost control is king.

I'm not sat on my hands though, I'm working through the business case for an internal project with the board to review our recruitment practices in our area.

It is the sad reality that you're probably better off taking things into your own hands. Your company's situation is by no means unique.

Reply 123

cole-slaw

Original post by J-SP

What management degree?

I assumed, perhaps naively, that if you were working in the field, you would have some kind of relevant qualifications.

Reply 124

ChemistBoy

Original post by J-SP

I disagree with you on all the above points but we just seem to be going spring the houses here. I too have "studied" HR to PG level and I am also qualified to do the type of analysis mentioned. It isn't a perfect system but it's about finding trends and correlations to make mass recruitment processes more efficient and effective. It does work even if you think the system is invalid or wrong.

Like I've said before it doesn't really work for me - but maybe that is a case of misapplication more than anything else. However KPI's and their definition is the key thing here to judge success. If your KPI's are based around controlling cost and getting in people who have displayed one type of approved behaviours then these things are fine (and I suspect that at board level that is what looks good). However, some stakeholders (such as actual hiring or placement managers) might have different KPI's for a successful hire depending on their own success criteria - that is where you have conflict with any centralised process and it is why you need to have a decent amount of flexibility in a process. However that flexibility puts cost on the central process to benefit operational departments. I've found that when the knives are out it is easier to reduce flexibility and let the operational managers deal with the fall-out (high turnover, reduced efficiency in completing work, difficulty in maintaining customer relationships, etc.).

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 125

cole-slaw

Original post by J-SP

I have the relevant qualifications for HR and I am an accredited professional. Doesn't mean I have done a management degree though.

Posted from TSR Mobile

Oh right, well generally a lot of inconsistencies and inefficiencies remain in companies' processes and activities, due to flawed decision making (bounded rationality, political influences, randomness), so although there are a few different models of evolutionary processes (competition and legitimisation) guiding firms towards more efficient outcomes, the efficacy of these processes and the ability of firms to adapt is disputed in the academic literature (See Nelson and Winter for an example).

Reply 126

cole-slaw

Original post by J-SP

For once we are in agreement.

Posted from TSR Mobile

Well you had to be right at some point :awesome:

Reply 127

Quady

Original post by cole-slaw

its not known to be less successful at all, because the "studies" that suggest as much are almost certainly completely statistically invalid.

The most cost effective solution would be for companies to simply fire their recruitment consultants and call people in for interview in descending order of their university classifications.

Because interviewing is a great way to know how good someone is at working? :s-smilie:

Reply 128

cole-slaw

Original post by J-SP

No need to be catty.

My opinion is just as valid as yours. You think you are "right" and I disagree with you.

Posted from TSR Mobile

Did you not see the "I'm yanking your chain" smiley?

Reply 129

cole-slaw

Original post by Quady

Because interviewing is a great way to know how good someone is at working? :s-smilie:

it doesn't tell you much, but its probably worth doing, because what it can tell you is exactly the kind of stuff that doesn't show up on CVs.

Reply 130

ClickItBack

Original post by AW1983

Depends what you want to do in an investment bank of course. I work for one myself though not in the front office. That said quite by accident I've found myself dealing with regulatory change with front office people now.

Of course, if you're after the six figures then yeah, you probably do need a 2:1 in the right subject. The whole culture of front office banking is rotten to the core so it wouldn't surprise me if they did worry about university in that small example too. The average front office employee is so slap dash with controls and corporate governance that not bothering to have a robust recruitment strategy would be both fitting and explain a lot!

The good news is that European and US laws will slowly erode the bonuses and the ability to perform proprietary trading so investment bankers will start to be paid a sensible amount like everyone else, rather than the Pseudo-Marxist state of affairs we've had for years where the workers have taken everything and then some!

Wow. That's a lot of embittered jealousy you've got there.

Reply 131

ETRC

Original post by Eboracum

The Mathematics tests for some schemes are insanely hard for a lot students. You must be incredibly clever, but I know people on Firsts at LSE doing Economics who are failing the Maths tests. There very very hard and harder than they need to be. I'd favour a bit of dumbing down here.

That is because the maths in Econ at LSE is SIMPLE compared to Warwick/Imperial/Oxbridge/UCL and maybe even Bristol.
One of my teachers did econ at LSE and graduated 3 years ago and said maths was simple there, he got like 85+% easily in every module.
LSE needs to make the maths more challenging in their courses imo cos it is not difficult enough to challenge the best students. He said the maths modules had little proof and was just applied maths.

Reply 132

Smack

Volunteer Team

Original post by cole-slaw

What, why do you say that?

Lets say you're recruiting for an electrical engineer, who will need to train in a specialist subfield and complete a series of projects based around that knowledge.

Explain to me how a first class degree in electrical engineering from, say, Manchester would not have prepared him for this role.

Because university degree engineering is fairly different from engineering in industry. The vast majority of engineering managers would quite horrified at the thought of graduate engineers being selected merely on the basis of their grades, something you allude to in a later post.

Original post by Et Tu, Brute?

Talking about anywhere that asks for a GCSE grade B in maths.

Is that how you genuinely think graduate recruitment works? :curious:

Reply 133

Josb

Original post by Eboracum

Are you saying that around 20-25% of German school leavers go to university as opposed to the more 50% of people that do here? If so, then yes, that is absolutely worth looking into.

It's written in the document linked. :biggrin:

Reply 134

Et Tu, Brute?

Original post by Smack

When it gets filtered out before anyone see you, yeah

Reply 135

Quady

Original post by Et Tu, Brute?

When it gets filtered out before anyone see you, yeah

Yeah. Its awful man!

I aint got a degrees and they just filter me out! Dont look to see what great candidate they am. Its a stupid system!

Reply 136

AW1983

Original post by ClickItBack

Wow. That's a lot of embittered jealousy you've got there.

It would be jealousy, or maybe envy is a better word, if I wanted to be like them and be rewarded like they are. It is a critique that the left are often subjected to on a wide range of subjects.

The point is that I don't want to be like them and I don't feel the need to be rewarded like they are either. I look at the front offices of a number of financial institutions and see a lot of unreformed behaviour, bad practice and unjustified reward. It is done at a cost to wider society, many of whom do not and never have benefited from the economic system in place since the early 1980s. The reason I say what I do is because I want to play my part in change for the better.

I am not bitter; I am optimistic that change will come about. Support for the status quo is dwindling and so are the numbers of people who benefit from neoliberalism. It's on borrowed time.