How We Recruit - On Formal Credentials vs Experience-based Education | Hacker News Reader

How We Recruit - On Formal Credentials vs Experience-based Education

blogs.zoho.com

37 pointsrpledge6 comments

Well now hold on a minute. First, out of necessity, they adopt a recruitment model that disregards academic credentials, and then they find no correlation between academic credentials and performance. How about the possibility that they never saw the really talented people because they all got snapped up by companies that high based on academic reputation?

I don't have any evidence that this is the case, but the fact that he's restricted himself to a talent pool that excludes the top 20% academically makes his results not generally applicable.

We've heard this same story from Google, where they say that among those that they hire, those who don't meet their standard academic cutoffs turn out to be their best employees. What's missing from that statement is accounting for whatever got them hired even though they don't meet the criteria.

"the fact that he's restricted himself to a talent pool that excludes the top 20% academically makes his results not generally applicable."

The article said nothing of the sort. It said he didn't restrict applicants to any particular academic group.

He didn't restrict himself intentionally. I don't think that was what the poster meant. Rather, the poster probably meant that Sridhar was forced into this restriction by not being very attractive to those in the top 20%:

"Our company in India always faced trouble recruiting, because most college graduates, particularly from well-known colleges, would prefer big-brand-name firms. Simply out of SHEER NECESSITY, we started to disregard the kind of college a person graduated from, and the grades they obtained."

I didn't even consider that. I just assumed he meant that the kids that they did hire with superior academic backgrounds didn't outperform the kids who didn't have those backgrounds.

He never said kids with good grades never applied for a job, he said that they were less likely too.

How do salaries at Zoho compare to the average in the local market?

Part of me is happy that they give disadvantaged students a fair chance. Another part is suspicious that salaries are low on average because employees are informed that they are lucky to have a job at all.

Does anyone know?

Very interesting. Check out the video in this link where he further expounds on what was written in the blog.

http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/06/alternatives-to-college.htm...

Also the comments in the link above give a good perspective on the positives and negatives of such an approach.

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