[BlandDuck]

> Is it right that I was filtered out by degree and not by capability? No, it’s not right, but it happened.

It is not obvious how to find a better way to filter.

In an ideal world, there would be plenty of time and resources to learn the personality and skills of each applicant, as an individual human being.

In reality, HR has limited resources and needs shortcuts to effectively screen applicants. Experience has shown that degrees and grades are useful summary statistics for filtering. It is not "right, and there are obviously Type I and Type II errors in this process.

[indigochill]

But suppose we gave HR some other shortcut besides a college degree. Something that still attested to a similar level of work ethic and minimal qualification in a field.

If we just set the "college is important for well-rounded life experience blah blah" party to the side for a second and consider it strictly as a job-prep factory (because why else would an average schmuck spend that much on something if not for a good ROI), apprenticeships seem like an obvious better pattern for everyone.

1. They run for a similar length - multiple years

2. They attest to work ethic in the same way college degrees do

3. They're actually productive, unlike (most) undergrad programs

4. They train actual job skills and provide actual job experience, unlike (most) undergrad programs

5. And on top of it all, apprentices still get new life experiences, but probably more productive ones than Greek Life.

To me, it seems companies providing apprenticeship programs as a replacement for an undergrad program should lead to a better-equipped workforce and provide HR with better signal to filter by. Never mind that a successful apprenticeship could lead straight into a longer-term job offer in many cases, making things easier both for new worker bees and for HR.

[Eridrus]

Would the apprenticeship program not have the same problem as HR regularly does?

[indigochill]

I would think it would be more like the problem that colleges face in choosing who to accept. Companies offering apprenticeships obviously have limited resources for managing and running the program, but on the other hand perhaps apprentices can be "expelled" more easily than full-time employees.

Perhaps this is what that one financial firm was on to when everyone ridiculed them for their "Pay us to work for us" scheme (which does sound ridiculous, unless perhaps you can sell demonstrable educational and networking value from the program and can frame it as competing with what colleges offer).

[hackerlight]

> In an ideal world, there would be plenty of time and resources to learn the personality and skills of each applicant, as an individual human being.

I question this. There is signalling value in a degree, but it's more about providing HR and the hiring manager with reputation cover in case the candidate is a failure. "They were from $SCHOOL, it couldn't have been predicted." Another part is signalling value not to your employer, but to the employer's clients. If you're in law or consulting, the value of an elite degree is more to show the client that your firm's high billing rates are justified. A third factor is that some firms are like clubs, where a de facto caste system exists and people from lesser schools are discriminated against. It's morally wrong, but it happens in many of the elite firms and startups.

It takes only a few seconds to legitimately scan through the non-college achievements in order to get a feel for a candidate's true potential. So it should not a real blocker to anyone who is serious about hiring the best people.

[p_j_w]

>I question this. There is signalling value in a degree, but it's more about providing HR and the hiring manager with reputation cover in case the candidate is a failure. "They were from $SCHOOL, it couldn't have been predicted."

I've been part of the hiring process at multiple companies over the course of a decade now, both at large companies and small ones, and not once has anything like this ever happened. A degree in the field has only ever been used as a filter at the start of the process, and in the small number of times there was a bad hire, no one ever used the candidates degree as an excuse because there was no need to: no one blamed anyone for the fact that a shitty employee was hired.

[prepend]

I was a programmer/am still sort of one. And I think a better filter is to be good at something and be able to look at the work of others and evaluate them quickly.

Or to have a work system that allows for lots of contributions to filter people’s work without requiring 40 hours of interviews.

The resume filter by education is used because it’s easy. Graduating from Harvard isn’t perfect. But it’s a fast way to filter out lots of candidates when you don’t have time.

[LunaSea]

> It is not obvious how to find a better way to filter.

An open exam process where anyone can take the test and receive a diploma for each individual class.

A bit like how professional certifications work.

That way, no matter the way you acquired your skills, you can try and get the same diploma.

Of course, you would also need to revise what skills and topics are tested to also provide exams for more practical topics usually ignored in colleges.

[pmichaud]

It probably varies per profession and industry, but in my experience the degree isn't often a good signal for screening, except possibly, in some cases, as a negative correlation.