NY Times: McKinsey, Other Top Firms Eschew Elite Degrees For Merit In Hiring

New York Times, Don’t Say ‘Elite’: Corporate Firms’ New Pitch Is Meritocracy:

If you ask a graduating M.B.A. student, a prep school guidance counselor or the internet how to be hired at the global consulting firm McKinsey, you’re likely to find a list of prestigious “target schools” where it has consistently aimed its recruiting efforts. You know the ones — Harvard, Yale, Stanford.

But these days, McKinsey would prefer a different answer. “Exceptional can come from anywhere,” its career website says. And then, in case that wasn’t clear enough, “We hire people, not degrees,” and also, “We believe in your potential, regardless of your pedigree.” Katy George, Mckinsey’s chief people officer, told Fortune last year that the firm had increased the number of schools that its new hires came from to 1,500 from about 700, part of its process of “pivoting from pedigree to potential.”

Many companies are working toward a similar makeover.

“Elite” has never sat well with many American institutions, but the word has taken a particular beating in recent years. On the 2016 campaign trail, Donald J. Trump used the label practically as an insult; the Black Lives Matter movement drew attention to racial disparities along the path to people becoming rich and powerful; and debates over free speech and safe spaces on college campuses transformed into hot-button issues, leading to opinion essays with headlines like “Elite Universities Are Out of Touch” and “Why I Stopped Hiring Ivy League Graduates.”

The legitimacy of traditional markers of brilliance, like an Ivy League diploma, are being questioned. And so, companies have had to come up with other ways to convey to recruits, investors and customers that they’re not just ticking boxes that may be outdated — their talent is truly the most talented. Broadening the recruiting net fits the bill, but may come with some of the same shortcomings as previous strategies. ...

The pitch is basically meritocracy. And it’s everywhere.

McKinsey has developed a video game to assess candidates’ cognitive skills, which it says gives it “insight beyond the résumé or conventional interview.” And it has published an interview prep website that a spokesperson said was necessary “so exceptional candidates from any source can succeed in our interviews, regardless of whether they have access to resources like a consulting club, active career services support, or an alumni network that’s well-connected within the consulting industry.” Bank of America has partnerships with 34 community colleges, and says it has hired and trained thousands of employees from these schools. Goldman Sachs switched to doing interviews for entry-level jobs virtually instead of only at a few top-level schools. “We now encounter talent from places we previously didn’t get to,” its global head of human capital wrote in 2019. ...

Economists generally agree that eschewing unnecessary degree requirements (or prestigious degree requirements, in McKinsey’s case) is a good idea — particularly in an era of degree inflation and a tight labor market. Reducing reliance on credentials is also more likely to increase diversity, even when it’s not a stated objective.

It also happens to be easier to state as an objective. “I think it’s hard to be opposed to it, frankly,” said Anthony Carnevale, who recently retired as the founding director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, and worked on employment policy under three White House administrations.

“Somebody who is most skilled for the job and deserves the job, they ought to get the job,” he said. “I don’t know how you argue with that.”