Silicon Valley is the hub for identifying and cultivating high potential ideas which eventually turn into billion dollar companies. So it stands to reason that tech giants like Apple, Google, and Amazon would select talent from the best schools in the country. Think again. None of the eight Ivy League schools: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth and the University of Pennsylvania, cracked the top 10 on a list of the universities sending its grads to tech companies, according to an analysis by HiringSolved.
Top tech hasn’t excluded all Ivy League graduates completely, but interest in “lost Einsteins” is on the rise. These lost Einsteins are competing against Ivy League talent that typically end up working for Facebook, Google, Uber etc. These individuals are commonly referred to as “found talent” because their career paths have been clearly defined and their social networks may include extremely successful individuals helping them get discovered. Those with a less traditional education, also known as “unfound talent”, fall into the opportunity gap where employment opportunity isn’t as equally distributed. Attending a state school or local community college has historically led to less career advancement compared to someone with the same amount of years with an Ivy League background. More and more companies are looking for these unconventional, young, creative minds that have yet to be discovered.
Companies like Google for example, are taking the lead on searching for candidates who can perform not just on paper, but in the real world. In a recent study conducted by Google, Code-named Project Aristotle – a tribute to Aristotle’s quote, “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”, researchers set out to find what made Google employees (specifically those working in teams) so successful. The researchers found that what really mattered was less about who is on the team, and more about how the team worked together in addition to how the team was managed. This isn’t to say that Google has given up on the importance of higher education completely (although they did just remove the need to have a college degree). But if others follow Google’s lead and consider non traditional education equally as important, it could portend big changes for the future of higher education in addition to bridging the opportunity gap.
What these top tech companies are noticing is that an Ivy League education doesn’t guarantee proficiency in technical skillset. Actually, a vast number of programmers for example learn to code on their own and many even pursue other majors in lieu of taking redundant computer science courses in college in addition to programming bootcamp courses or certifications (these are the lost Einsteins). Admission to an elite university isn’t a prerequisite for a career in Silicon Valley, and what you know is more important than where you learn it.
If you’re interested in reading about the innate characteristics that I’ve found to be strong indicators of performance and success when hiring I wrote about that previously which you can find here. If you found this article valuable to you it would mean a lot to me if you could share it. Thank you!
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