Before my mom retired, she was head of HR for a large multi-national company. My mom’s predecessor had a tradition of hiring Harvard MBAs and such. The high maintenance and elitist MBAs were a determent to the company in that their attitudes towards the rank and file employees destroyed moral and productivity. My mom changed course by hiring people with no formal higher education to the top positions. People that had work in crappy jobs for years slowly working their way to the top. Resumes of Ivy Leaguers were now only reviewed as a last resort. When I was a kid she always talked about how happy she was with all these “uneducated” people and what great things they did for the company. This change in staffing launched her company to it’s greatest profitability. The company expanded overseas and was worth billions.

The founder eventually sold the company to a bunch of Harvard MBAs. My mom lasted two years after the change in ownership. They worked to reverse everything she had created. They were cut throat and boasted about taking from the people below them to give to themselves. The new owners suffered great financial loss as the company deteirated as they were too dumb to realize “the non-pedigrees” had made the company so great.

This was a great lesson to me.

I went to community college and eventually graduated from a Cal State. There was more than enough resources at school for me to launch my career.

Teachers always had free tickets to professional conferences. I went to almost all of them. I pried information out of everybody and anybody I could. So many of my classmates blew this stuff off so most of the professionals were happy to be getting attention.

I made it a point to walk my professors to their cars. Even if I was park clear on the other side of campus. I found I got the best and most honest advice from them in casual settings. I tried hard to connect with my teachers and in turn they were willing to go out of their way to help me.

I joined a professional organization of which I was 1 out of 3 students that attended the meetings. It was a gold mine of future employers. Many acted like they hadn’t seen a person under 30 at one of these meetings in decades. I was happy to find the experts were just as interested in talking to me as I was interested in them.

I cold called small business owners my senior year. If the owner wouldn’t give me a informational interview I’d ask for one with their secretary. Secretaries probably know more about the workings of a business than anyone. They are the gate keepers. Make them feel special and your in.

I was very proud of myself when I worked my way into a private tour of Pimco’s trading floor given by Bill Gross himself.

My first job out of college was at a company solely of MBAs. They actually had a policy of not hiring anyone that didn’t have one. The position I got was really out of my league and I hadn’t a clue how to do the job I was hired to do when I first started. I spent many nights & weekends researching and asking people how to my job. At my 3 month review I was convinced I was going to be fired. My boss ended up giving me a 50% raise.

I never submitted a resume to get my first job. There was no job opening or advertisement either. I got it through all this running around while in school.

that’s a great story… two things jump out at me though… the first was probably unintended and contrary to what i think you’re getting at - but you said your company was comprised almost completely of MBAs.  therefore it does suggest that your best odds of getting your foot in the door is having a similar pedigree.  99 out of 100 guys at goldman sachs got a Harvard MBA, one guy came from the mailroom and became a managing director.  it’s not really an advertisement for NOT going to HBS.

however the more important point is that, ultimately, your education experience is about what you make of it.  it’s NEVER about just what goes on in the classroom.  if you spend 4 yrs of college in your room playing worlds of warcraft, it doesn’t really matter where you went to school.

to back up your point, the last person we hired was just a graduating UC senior even though we were looking for an MBA candidate.  the person distanced himself from other applicants based on work he had done with a several professors we were familiar with, all of whom gave a thumbs up recommendation.  it’s takes a proactive and intellectually curious person to want work with a professor outside of class.  personal distinguishment to their teachers, esp at a UC where there might be thousands in the same program, carried more weight than distinguishment by grades or the school’s prestige.

pedigree only provides certain opportunities.  its up to individuals to take advantage of them, otherwise you’re no better than someone else with more motivation and overall smarts.  that is exactly the problem i have with how the stereotypical overbearing OC parents.  uni high—> sat prep—> prestigious college—> profession in one of the “approved” industries (medicine, engineering, law, finance), etc.  it’s what they believe to be the path of least resistance, although still very different than actually preparing kids for successful, happy, fulfilling lives.

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acpme, thank you for your thoughtful reply.

My point in sharing my story really wasn’t to knock higher education or discourage people from getting MBAs. I just hate when I hear people say Bachelors degrees are useless now or you have to to XYZ school to get ahead, or regurgitate all the other notions heard but never experienced. I, like you, realize the flaws being fixated on college rankings, API scores, etc. Universities are businesses trying to boost sales and make a buck just like everyone else. They have been very successful in their marketing efforts to create a ‘must have’ product.

I’m aware a lot of companies hire XYZ candidate over and over again. I got past the protocol with my first job out of college because I figure a way around it. I believe many more people can do it but don’t. I saw so many lost opportunities when I was in school. I received every scholarship I applied to not out merit but default from no one else applying.

I guess it probably has something to do with the majority of people being risk adverse. They want the guaranteed path.

UCI’s admission selectivitiy is “inflated” due to the large portion of students whose parents want them to remain close to home.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing, since this means undergrad students which might normally shoot for UC Berkeley, UCSD, or an east coast school, end up attending UCI instead, and benefiting UCI’s prestige.  The same thing happened with UCLA vs UCB back in the 1990s.  Despite UCB being ranked significantly ahead in their undegrad engineering department, admission-rate (and student stats) reached parity.  I encountered a lot of Asian kids at UCI, who were pressured by parents to stay close to home, includign some who were admitted to UCB/UCLA (yet for some inexplicable reason, were pressured into attending UCI?!?)

Now that the UC tuition has gone up so much (I paid ~$4000 per fulltime academic yr 11 years ago), I can only assume the UC system as a whole is relatively less attractive to other universities whose costs held relatively constant (or went down.)  It always hurts to see one’s alma mater go down (rather than up) :(

And speaking of attractiveness, UCLA is much MUCH better place than UCB, according to firsthand accounts from my male classmates .... wink, wink (though I’m willing to concede USC outranks UCLA.  Rich+pretty > pretty.)