By Sarah Kessler
If you ask a graduating MBA student, an academic advisor, or the Internet how to get hired at the global consulting firm McKinsey, you will likely find a list of prestigious “target schools” where it has consistently focused its recruiting efforts. You know them: Harvard, Yale, Stanford.
But today, McKinsey would prefer a different answer. “Exceptionality can come from anywhere,” the 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 origins.” Katy George, Mckinsey’s chief people officer, told Fortune last year that the company had increased the number of schools its new hires came from from about 700 to 1,500 as part of the process of “moving from pedigree to potential.”
Many companies are working on a similar makeover.
“Elite” has never sat well with many American institutions, but the word has taken quite a beating in recent years.
The legitimacy of traditional markers of genius, such as an Ivy League degree, is being questioned. And so companies have had to come up with other ways to signal to recruits, investors and customers that they’re not just checking off boxes that may be outdated; their talent is truly the most talented. Widening the recruiting net is a good solution, but it can come with some of the same shortcomings as previous strategies.
One way companies have tried to highlight the fairness of their hiring practices came in the wake of the 2020 killing of George Floyd, when they emphasized their commitment to “diversity, equity and inclusion.”
That approach has since become a political minefield and, in some cases, a legal liability. Nowadays, managers talk less about diversity. Some have begun to emphasize “inclusion” or “belonging.” But many were already working on something broader.
“Skills-based hiring,” “skills-first hiring,” and efforts to break the “paper ceiling”—the bias against those without college degrees—are all increasingly common buzz phrases.
The idea, as consultancy BCG put it, is to “put competence over credentials,” meaning companies should stop looking for the right degree and instead focus on who has the right skills, regardless of how they acquired them .
The field is essentially a meritocracy. And it’s everywhere. McKinsey has developed a video game to assess candidates’ cognitive skills, which it says “provides insight beyond the resume or a conventional job interview.” And it has published an interview preparation website that a spokesperson said was necessary “so that exceptional candidates from any source can succeed in our interviews, regardless of whether they have access to resources such as an advice club, active career support or an alumni network that is well connected within the consultancy 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 conducting interviews for entry-level jobs virtually instead of just at a few top schools.
A handful of companies, including Walmart last year, said they would eliminate degree requirements for corporate jobs altogether, and more than a dozen states announced they would stop requiring degrees for some government jobs.
In 2020, a coalition of major companies, including Accenture, JPMorgan Chase and Deloitte, wanted to place more Black workers in high-paying jobs. The group recently shifted its mission to promoting “recruitment for skills, not just degrees.”
©2024 The New York Times News Service
First print: June 11, 2024 | 1:45 IST