[ILUG] OT: A university degree is required. Why?

[Colm Buckley]

Couple of things I'd like to clear up:

> I ran a computer repair business for 2 years. Maybe I should look at
> one of those spam emails I get regularly offering me a degree for only
> $39.99. That might get me in the door.

Not at Google, it wouldn't.  We pay close attention to the quality of  
the
institutions awarding degrees to our candidates; based on previous  
hires,
academic reputation, etc.

> "As it happens, my brother does recruiting for Google, and given the
> quality of your experience, he might be able to bypass this  
> restriction
> if you want me to send him your name."

This is emphatically not the case.  Candidates for hire are evaluated
first by the recruiter, then by the hiring manager, then the  
interviewers,
then the hiring committee of the department in question, and finally by
the executive management group.  Each of these will be seeking to
maintain our standards.  A recruiter who sees qualities in a candidate
which indicate that she or he would be a successful hire may ask the
hiring manager to ensure that an interview is given.  But it's certainly
not the case that a recruiter could get a candidate hired if she or he
didn't meet our criteria.

> I could become Google's black sheep, and end up not
> getting on with my co-workers, which would be very bad for
> productivity, and bad for me in general.

But plenty of our staff don't have degrees.  I'd be far more concerned
about the immense chip which you seem to be growing on your shoulder.
Rereading your article, it's only one step from full-blown paranoia.  Be
careful with that.

> First off, why are they called requirements if they are not required.

I understand this to be common practice; desirable qualities are listed
as "requirements" to ensure a reasonable quality of candidates.  A
confident candidate who believes that they have what it takes will put
themselves forward in any case, and our hiring processes are structured
to try to find them.

> If you give a HR worker a list of requirements and a pile of CV's.  Is
> that person not likely to bin all the ones which do not fulfil the
> requirements?

As I explained before, candidates are ranked according to a list of
criteria, one of which is academic qualifications.  There's no pre-
determined cutoff point below which candidates simply aren't
considered; it depends on the quality of the "field", as it were.
Obviously, candidates who satisfy all of our requirements are more
likely to get interviewed than candidates who don't.

	Colm

-- 
Colm Buckley / colm at tuatha.org / +353 87 2469146 / www.colm.buckley.name