The Student Room Group

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

You'd think that as top employers for students/graduates that they would have their wits about them...but I guess not.

For a finance related position (not accountancy):

Why do they deem a Durham university graduate with a BSc in maths (2:i) and a C in GCSE maths as less fit for their graduate positions than a say, Dundee Accountancy graduate with a B in GCSE maths?

Not bashing Dundee, but there is a difference in the reputation of the two schools obviously. I'm really having more of a go at the difference in the subjects.

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Original post by Et Tu, Brute?
You'd think that as top employers for students/graduates that they would have their wits about them...but I guess not.

For a finance related position (not accountancy):

Why do they deem a Durham university graduate with a BSc in maths (2:i) and a C in GCSE maths as less fit for their graduate positions than a say, Dundee Accountancy graduate with a B in GCSE maths?

Not bashing Dundee, but there is a difference in the reputation of the two schools obviously. I'm really having more of a go at the difference in the subjects.


Are you basically talking about investment banking?
Reply 2
Original post by Et Tu, Brute?
You'd think that as top employers for students/graduates that they would have their wits about them...but I guess not.

For a finance related position (not accountancy):

Why do they deem a Durham university graduate with a BSc in maths (2:i) and a C in GCSE maths as less fit for their graduate positions than a say, Dundee Accountancy graduate with a B in GCSE maths?

Not bashing Dundee, but there is a difference in the reputation of the two schools obviously. I'm really having more of a go at the difference in the subjects.


Top employers don't want someone who couldn't do better than a C in GSCE maths...

You seem to assume all Durham grads are better than all Dundee grads - you don't have your wits about you.

Doesn't Durham dish out more 2.i/1st degrees than Dundee anyway?
No, Durham still holds more clout in industry.

If you got beaten by a Dundee grad, either they have a really great portfolio or you don't go Durham for Maths.
Reply 4
Original post by Anonynous
No, Durham still holds more clout in industry.

If you got beaten by a Dundee grad, either they have a really great portfolio or you don't go Durham for Maths.


Depends if the emplyer takes any account of your degree insitution. Many 'top' ones don't. They use a degree filter at the start of the process then use their own sift processes (online tests, interview, assessment centre) which is pretty much instituion blind.

I don't see why a Durham Maths grad would have any advantage in applying to managerial training schemes, especially in say retail over other Durham grads.
Reply 5
Original post by Et Tu, Brute?
You'd think that as top employers for students/graduates that they would have their wits about them...but I guess not.

For a finance related position (not accountancy):

Why do they deem a Durham university graduate with a BSc in maths (2:i) and a C in GCSE maths as less fit for their graduate positions than a say, Dundee Accountancy graduate with a B in GCSE maths?

Not bashing Dundee, but there is a difference in the reputation of the two schools obviously. I'm really having more of a go at the difference in the subjects.


Newsflash! Most employers don't care where you went to university! There was a survey done about a year ago, unfortunately I can't find it now, and I think the figure of employers who said they looked at which university candidates went to was around 13%.

Employers tend to look at the entire package but place of learning rarely features. First, they look at what you've studied. I'm going to stick my head over the parapet here and say something controversial but please understand I am a Bachelor of Arts myself. I think a lot of employers, especially in finance, prefer a BSc. More generally, they want to see A-Levels and a degree that are either relevant or traditional academic (i.e. Economics, History, Politics, English Literature etc). Vocational degrees in something unrelated are not a deal breaker, but you are going to disadvantage yourself.

Results are a factor, at the sifting stage, so someone with a better GCSE in mathematics has an advantage there, all other results being equal. By the way, I am not of any employer who has created an algorithm that filters out 2:2s and below unless they're from Oxbridge or anything like it!

Then they look at your answers to the questions in the application form or the quality of your cover letter. This is where most people applying mess up and not just with spelling mistakes. A lot of the cover letters I read are just plain awful or unconvincing. Telling me you want something without either telling me why or what my firm gets in return isn't going to make you stick in my mind. You have to be a bit arrogant when you write a cover letter and tell an employer why you're unique. Oh, and by the way, let's leave 'I believe' to Robson and Jerome okay?

Once you get past this stage, you will normally go to an interview or, often these days, an assessment centre. This is where the uber competitive types from Oxbridge and the Russell Group tend to mess up by demonstrating that they don't work well with others (and presumably come on to TSR to say if I couldn't make it with an RG degree, no one below me can!) I've attended assessment days where non-traditional university graduates have been outnumbered at the start of the day but make up the majority of those who succeed precisely because those who are over confident talk over others or lack initiative.

It's worth bearing in mind that you don't really ever get a chance to show initiative in education until you can get a First at degree level (all three of the universities I have attended for various degrees and diplomas have mark schemes that don't mention original thought until First class honours, one of which is RG and another of which is top 10). A-Level is obviously all just rote learning, that goes without saying. So, extra-curriculars and performance at assessment days is really critical and a lot of 'top' students demonstrate to me a great memory, good regurgitation skills and absolutely no initiative. By the way, this isn't a problem exclusive to 'top' students although some of the ex-Polytechnics are quite good at teaching their students these skills, not least because of their placement year courses.

I've gone a little off topic but what I want you to appreciate is that there are far more important things in a recruiters mind than where you got your degree from. Besides, people choose their universities for all kinds of reasons and too many people are doing degrees they don't want just to get an RG name on their certificate. If people were bolder and prouder they'd go where they want, do what they want and show just how good students from their university can be. That's got to be more character building than the status quo.

Worst of all, if university really matters, then surely so does the school you went to? I imagine amongst that 13% of employers it really does. You want to encourage that? David Cameron likes Old Etonians doesn't he? Public school educated students (myself included) are already grossly overrepresented in the professions but many of my peers will do anything for another leg up. I've written at length before on university snobbery, why people think it happens and why it does happen. It comes down to being a symptom of the devaluation of degrees because a mass higher education and didn't happen in any of the earlier waves of new universities (e.g. red bricks becoming universities in their own right, technical colleges becoming universities and new universities in the 1960s) because they still weren't widespread enough to deliver mass higher education. University snobbery is a marketing response to competition rather than anything substantive.
Agree with this. It's so annoying. I did dreadful in school, but I got myself into a Russell Group uni (based on working before) and am on for a 2:1, but I'm filtered out of some schemes due to what I did between 11-18.

Hate all the tests as well. Would be easier to just send a CV/Letter and then them get back to you for a one on one interview. You might be poor at those tests but have fantastic business/soft skills.
Reply 7
Original post by Eboracum
Agree with this. It's so annoying. I did dreadful in school, but I got myself into a Russell Group uni (based on working before) and am on for a 2:1, but I'm filtered out of some schemes due to what I did between 11-18.

Hate all the tests as well. Would be easier to just send a CV/Letter and then them get back to you for a one on one interview. You might be poor at those tests but have fantastic business/soft skills.


You realise each grad scheme gets 10,000+ applications right?

How the hell would you assess all those CVs/Covering letters fairly?

How many interviews would you have for the 200-300 places?
Original post by Quady
You realise each grad scheme gets 10,000+ applications right?

How the hell would you assess all those CVs/Covering letters fairly?

How many interviews would you have for the 200-300 places?


So annoying. When our parents generation when to uni, they could take their pick of grad job. Far too many people go to university. Bottom 50% of unis should be gone to make degrees more valuable.
Reply 9
Original post by Eboracum
So annoying. When our parents generation when to uni, they could take their pick of grad job. Far too many people go to university. Bottom 50% of unis should be gone to make degrees more valuable.


So why argue against grad schemes filtering? Thats what you're advocating...

I think you're looking with rose tinted specs if you think they had it so easy. My dad went into teaching after graduating as it was the only way to avoid national service...

My grad scheme has had the same application process as it did over 20 years ago, with the exception that the online tests used to be written based at centres.
Reply 10
Original post by Quady
You realise each grad scheme gets 10,000+ applications right?

How the hell would you assess all those CVs/Covering letters fairly?

How many interviews would you have for the 200-300 places?


That is a reason but not the main one. CVs, cover letters and an interview have been found to be a wholly unsatisfactory way to find talent. People still put up with it for experienced hires (it's just assumed if you can hold down a job, you don't need such vigorous testing) but it generally gives mediocre results. I think a good practice goes along the following lines:

1) Filter by core criteria. Firms shouldn't be lazy and just look at UCAS points or degree grades. They should think about exactly what they want and be brave enough to say so, then at the very beginning of an application yes/no questions should be asked. If you don't meet the criteria, you don't proceed (saves the servers time, and the applicants time). Questions might be things like 'do you have a degree in X, Y or Z' or 'do you have A, B, C work experience.

2) Set psychometric tests. People who don't like them tend to be pathological liars (joke!). Actually, the truth of it is the verbal and numerical reasoning tests are there to check you're not a fraud (although you can still get someone else to do the test for you if you are, hence why they might reset the tests when you come to an assessment day). The personality tests are designed, I think, to see how honest you will be. People who answer what they think the employer wants rather than the truth can get very weird results.

3) Get your local offices to read CVs/cover letters. Weed out the weirdos.

4) Assessment day. See how potential recruits problem solve and work with others.

5) Interview. Iron out any doubts you might have about the candidate.

Doing just 3) and 5) doesn't really cut it.

As for cutting the number of university places. Well, that's just daft isn't it? If someone is capable of getting a degree, then that's the end of it. Who are you to stand in the way of someone else fulfilling their potential?

Actually, degrees being worth less is a good thing. It makes people look at the potential of the individual and not some scrap of paper. Our parent's generation did have it easy, far too easy, but the downside of that is that an awful lot of incompetent people had important jobs, which is why we are where we are today.
Original post by AW1983
Actually, degrees being worth less is a good thing. It makes people look at the potential of the individual and not some scrap of paper. Our parent's generation did have it easy, far too easy, but the downside of that is that an awful lot of incompetent people had important jobs, which is why we are where we are today.


There no such thing. The truth is, it's a disgrace how the Major and Blair governments chased after this illogical idea of having everyone go to university. The Further and Higher Education Act 1992 should never have been passed. There should not be an obsession with equality of result, only with equality of opportunity.

We have to move away from the idea of mass young people at university. Around 50% of school leavers going to university is a disgrace. We have to accept that if you got CDD at A Level, then maybe university isn't for you, and perhaps more suitable alternative (and less expensive) qualifications which lead into other routes should be pursued. For example, companies like Deloitte and Jaguar-Land Rover have excellent schemes for school leavers. Many degree subjects and (you could argue) institutions are worthless, and just lead to debt but without better prospects. In that sense I'd be looking to close the bottom 50% of universities and turn them into things more useful. University should only be for the elite. But lets be clear, here I speak of the academic elite, not the financial elite, the latter of course being irrelevant. With this policy, we'd be able to lower fees for those that do go to university, and save the tax payer money in the long run. It would also increase standards.

The reality is our parents generation had it exactly how it should be. Mass university has done two things; devalued degrees in general and invented a soul destroying process for graduates. If you go to university, you should be pretty much guaranteed a graduate level job, because getting into that university was hard in the first place. My parents left a RG university and had 30k+ jobs lined up already. I'd be looking for a situation where employers compete for the top graduates, and not the only way around. RG graduates shouldn't have to apply for 40 graduate schemes in the hope of getting one. It's a reason so many now turn to a Masters, because it's an age where everyone has a degree. I'd like it to be the case of 'Wow you have a degree, that's awesome'. In that sense, I don't welcome the extra competition.

The online tests aren't helpful at all. You might be a fantastic candidate, but poor at looking at diagrams/maths. Lets be honest, many graduate jobs you're never going to need maths, or rather, you're never going to need to do the specific maths under the specific conditions set in online testing. What if you've got great leadership skills, experience, soft skills, but you're not sharp enough to get in the top 30% of a test at Barclays? It's just lazy and generic and some great candidates get trapped.
Reply 12
Original post by Eboracum
There no such thing. The truth is, it's a disgrace how the Major and Blair governments chased after this illogical idea of having everyone go to university. The Further and Higher Education Act 1992 should never have been passed. There should not be an obsession with equality of result, only with equality of opportunity.


Much as I disagree with you and don't like living in a world that punishes people for not being clever - which we do, there are few unskilled jobs that pay a living wage - it's not just about equality of result but freedom of choice. If someone wants to study, what right do you have to stop them? Once you start dictating to others what they're allowed to do based on their ability, you begin to treat them like a slave. That's how the working classes were treated in the UK before the 1940s and I don't know many people who would want to turn back the clock.

We have to move away from the idea of mass young people at university. Around 50% of school leavers going to university is a disgrace. We have to accept that if you got CDD at A Level, then maybe university isn't for you, and perhaps more suitable alternative (and less expensive) qualifications which lead into other routes should be pursued. For example, companies like Deloitte and Jaguar-Land Rover have excellent schemes for school leavers. Many degree subjects and (you could argue) institutions are worthless, and just lead to debt but without better prospects. In that sense I'd be looking to close the bottom 50% of universities and turn them into things more useful.


The flaw in your argument is that it fails to take into account that A-Levels and degrees require a very different style of learning. That is why you will see people with straight As dropping out and others making remarkable improvements. Degrees are much more self reliant and require much more thinking and much less rote learning, which works for some and not for others. Of course, you also have people who change their minds about education later in life and go on to the Open University, for example. I do agree that vocational qualifications need to go up a notch though, because our country does have skills shortages.

University should only be for the elite. But lets be clear, here I speak of the academic elite, not the financial elite, the latter of course being irrelevant.


Okay, first of all, that is still an elitism based largely on inherited traits. Second of all, if you have rules like this in place, the rich will send their kids abroad to get a degree. Rich people, being like they are, will then seek to devalue UK education in the same way as they try to devalue new universities now. Make no mistake, they are at the heart of university snobbery. Third, they spend a lot of money on their children's educations to give them an unfair advantage to get into the best universities in their battle to stem the tide of social mobility. They'll keep doing that too.

With this policy, we'd be able to lower fees for those that do go to university, and save the tax payer money in the long run. It would also increase standards.


You wish. University should be getting cheaper as class sizes are getting bigger. It's not because universities have a ceiling on how much they can charge and would still like to charge a lot more. Also, if you close half the universities, the other half won't suddenly see their operating costs drop. The reason people generally think students would pay less if there were fewer of them is because they think the government would subsidise them like they used to. Truth is the cost of paying for everyone now would not be insurmountable, they just choose to spend the money on older people because people like your parents tend to vote and young people like us don't.

The reality is our parents generation had it exactly how it should be. Mass university has done two things; devalued degrees in general and invented a soul destroying process for graduates. If you go to university, you should be pretty much guaranteed a graduate level job, because getting into that university was hard in the first place. My parents left a RG university and had 30k+ jobs lined up already. I'd be looking for a situation where employers compete for the top graduates, and not the only way around.


You can blame neo-liberal economics, dual earner households and technology for that, not mass education. It was easier to get a graduate job because there was full employment in the UK and very little work was automated. The technology and dual earner households are here to stay but we could do with some government intervention in the economy.

RG graduates shouldn't have to apply for 40 graduate schemes in the hope of getting one. It's a reason so many now turn to a Masters, because it's an age where everyone has a degree. I'd like it to be the case of 'Wow you have a degree, that's awesome'. In that sense, I don't welcome the extra competition.


People with RG degrees really aren't anything special and never were. Sorry to burst the bubble, but degrees aren't really that hard to get are they?

The online tests aren't helpful at all. You might be a fantastic candidate, but poor at looking at diagrams/maths. Lets be honest, many graduate jobs you're never going to need maths, or rather, you're never going to need to do the specific maths under the specific conditions set in online testing. What if you've got great leadership skills, experience, soft skills, but you're not sharp enough to get in the top 30% of a test at Barclays? It's just lazy and generic and some great candidates get trapped.


I disagree. I've always done Arts subjects like History out of choice but if I couldn't do the mathematics tests it would mean I wouldn't even be worth my Maths GCSE.
Reply 13
One other thing wrong with your argument by the way. You say on the one hand university should be elitist and only those with the grades should go. Yet you also complain that those going now make it too competitive for you to get a job. You can't have it both ways. Either these universities are turning out candidates who are better than you or they shouldn't be a problem for elite academics like you because their applications will be filtered out and shouldn't be your concern!
Original post by AW1983
Much as I disagree with you and don't like living in a world that punishes people for not being clever - which we do, there are few unskilled jobs that pay a living wage - it's not just about equality of result but freedom of choice. If someone wants to study, what right do you have to stop them? Once you start dictating to others what they're allowed to do based on their ability, you begin to treat them like a slave. That's how the working classes were treated in the UK before the 1940s and I don't know many people who would want to turn back the clock.


Thanks for your responses. Glad you are open to a debate on this. I don't entirely understand the first principle here, surely it's not about what they want, rather, it's about what is available and what their talents would be best used for. You can't just say if they want something who is anybody to stop them. Otherwise, who is anybody to stop me studying at Oxford and starting on 45k a year at Goldman as my first post-university job. If that's what I want who is to stop me? University isn't a human right, nor a civil liberty. It's something that only about 20-25% of school leavers should be doing. We provide the right to study for every single UK citizen up to the age of 18, but after that you should have to earn a place at university and it should be much tougher.

Original post by AW1983

The flaw in your argument is that it fails to take into account that A-Levels and degrees require a very different style of learning. That is why you will see people with straight As dropping out and others making remarkable improvements. Degrees are much more self reliant and require much more thinking and much less rote learning, which works for some and not for others. Of course, you also have people who change their minds about education later in life and go on to the Open University, for example. I do agree that vocational qualifications need to go up a notch though, because our country does have skills shortages.


Whilst this point is probably correct, I'm not sure how that is relevant to the debate however. There different skills, but probably a degree is more valuable than A Levels, where you are basically spoon fed to pass the course.

Original post by AW1983

Okay, first of all, that is still an elitism based largely on inherited traits. Second of all, if you have rules like this in place, the rich will send their kids abroad to get a degree. Rich people, being like they are, will then seek to devalue UK education in the same way as they try to devalue new universities now. Make no mistake, they are at the heart of university snobbery. Third, they spend a lot of money on their children's educations to give them an unfair advantage to get into the best universities in their battle to stem the tide of social mobility. They'll keep doing that too.


On your first point, I note your notion of "it's unfair that child A was born cleverer than child B, regardless of this both should get the same opportunities", I just don't see how a society could be practically ordered on that principle. Surely jobs, university places have to be based on competition. What we have to do is promote alternatives to university, which can lead to success later in life as well.

I don't understand why the rich would send their kids abroad? Most private school kids would be in Russell Group universities anyway surely? They'd all still be open, and because of the quality of the schools they got in, they'd be able to gain places at those institutions. And if the children of the wealthy weren't eligible to gain entry to one of our 60 odd universities, the universities they went to abroad wouldn't be good enough to raise their profiles at our universities expense, as lets face it, if you can't get into a top 50 UK university, you wouldn't be studying anywhere in America of great significance.

Original post by AW1983

You wish. University should be getting cheaper as class sizes are getting bigger. It's not because universities have a ceiling on how much they can charge and would still like to charge a lot more. Also, if you close half the universities, the other half won't suddenly see their operating costs drop. The reason people generally think students would pay less if there were fewer of them is because they think the government would subsidise them like they used to. Truth is the cost of paying for everyone now would not be insurmountable, they just choose to spend the money on older people because people like your parents tend to vote and young people like us don't.

There seems to be an element to your post that the preferable option is ramming as many possible through the door. That's what i'm opposed to. I'm opposed to larger class sizes. I'm opposed to George Osborne lifting the cap of the number of students universities can enrol. If some people miss out on university one year, they could step their game up and re-apply. We shouldn't just continue to create new universities so everyone gets in. Maybe there are better things they should be doing.

I take it as a given that you understand that even with university fees moving from 3k to 9k, the government still subsidises all students yes? Even if you take three or four lots of 9k plus accommodation every student is subsidised. If you cut 50% of them, and had them at day time colleges living at home studying cheaper and different qualifications, you'd save the tax payer a lot. And lets be honest, subjects like Journalism or Museum Studies aren't worth a degree.

Original post by AW1983
You can blame neo-liberal economics, dual earner households and technology for that, not mass education. It was easier to get a graduate job because there was full employment in the UK and very little work was automated. The technology and dual earner households are here to stay but we could do with some government intervention in the economy.


I take it you are a Keynesian? These are factors. But mass education is a massive factor as well.

Original post by AW1983
People with RG degrees really aren't anything special and never were. Sorry to burst the bubble, but degrees aren't really that hard to get are they?


Depends. Not on TSR no, as it is the norm to have four As and a Cambridge or UCL degree, but in the wider society I still think theirs something there.

Original post by AW1983
I disagree. I've always done Arts subjects like History out of choice but if I couldn't do the mathematics tests it would mean I wouldn't even be worth my Maths GCSE.


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.
(edited 9 years ago)
Original post by AW1983
You can blame neo-liberal economics, dual earner households and technology for that, not mass education. It was easier to get a graduate job because there was full employment in the UK and very little work was automated. The technology and dual earner households are here to stay but we could do with some government intervention in the economy.


I think a more realistic explanation is that, back in the olden days where a far fewer percentage of school leavers went to university, those that did were generally from at least moderately monied backgrounds, and had the connections to help shepherd them into fairly nice middle class positions upon graduation.

And that's before we even discuss what a "graduate" job is, and how it differs from a "non-graduate" job. I don't think I'd be met with much disagreement if I was to state that, by and large, what many graduates who started their graduate jobs this year, have started jobs that yesteryear would have been taken by school leavers. I'll definitely admit that it's true for mine. In the 70's or 80's, I'd have probably been an apprentice, not a graduate.

One other thing wrong with your argument by the way. You say on the one hand university should be elitist and only those with the grades should go. Yet you also complain that those going now make it too competitive for you to get a job. You can't have it both ways. Either these universities are turning out candidates who are better than you or they shouldn't be a problem for elite academics like you because their applications will be filtered out and shouldn't be your concern!


Exactly. This is a fundamental point that all of the whinging RG students ignore.

A popular paradigm on here is that (good) jobs are rewards for previous academic success. Many who espouse this view aren't explicit about it, but it is fundamentally what they believe in. But employers are free to select whomever they want, even if it is the wrong choice according to TSR. Closing down X% of our universities won't make employers make the "right" recruitment decisions; if they're noticing that a large amount of potentially strong candidates no longer meet the requirements, they'll change them.
Reply 16
Original post by Et Tu, Brute?
You'd think that as top employers for students/graduates that they would have their wits about them...but I guess not.

For a finance related position (not accountancy):

Why do they deem a Durham university graduate with a BSc in maths (2:i) and a C in GCSE maths as less fit for their graduate positions than a say, Dundee Accountancy graduate with a B in GCSE maths?

Not bashing Dundee, but there is a difference in the reputation of the two schools obviously. I'm really having more of a go at the difference in the subjects.

This financial organisation will receive many applications and it won't have time to analyse all of them, so having minimum grade cut-off requirements is a commercial decision.

In your example, it's more likely that the financial organisation will hire neither of those people and instead hire the Durham grad who has at least a B in GCSE Maths.

It may seem harsh and unfair to you, but the financial organisation will still receive talented graduates regardless, so it's no great loss to them.
I've seen some requirements that are CCC at A Level but must have a 2.1!! It means that someone with AAAA and a 2.2 in a tough subject and top uni is rejected. That's madness. I'll bet my bottom dollar who's more intelligent amd will be more successful on the job.

Totally aware it's all to do with whittling down applications to a manageable number and not a reflection of the true worth of the candidates but it's madness nonetheless
(edited 9 years ago)
Reply 19
Original post by AW1983
That is a reason but not the main one. CVs, cover letters and an interview have been found to be a wholly unsatisfactory way to find talent.


Its how Goldman Sachs do their sift...

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