Hiring by School Tie Happens All the Time, But Is It a Good Idea?
Peter Ireland finds the continuing tug of school and fraternity ties in the business world bizarre but difficult to escape. The founder of antiventurecapital.com once helped four graduates of Washington State University, home of the Cougars, get financing for their pet project. Whenever the four met someone who was also a Cougar, "They'd jump up and down and shout, 'He's a Coug!' " Mr. Ireland recalls.
He also says a good number of his classmates -- mostly "party animals," he notes -- ended up in the marketing department of a major consumer-brand company with offices in western Canada.
And he remembers how much effort his former business partner put into helping a fellow fraternity member. The young man had an idea for a door lock that people could use if they felt a hotel's locks were insufficient. "It was dumb," says Mr. Ireland. But "my friend started going out of his way to provide assistance for this guy." When Mr. Ireland asked why, his partner said, "He's a fraternity brother," as though that explained it all.
School ties are immensely powerful in the business world, providing preexisting networks of relationships and low search costs. But while relying on them often works out just fine, lost in the mix of well-meaning loyalty to educational institutions and nostalgia for the past is the possibility that the ties that bind can also blind, undermining corporate efforts to build meritocracies.
Everyone knows that the educational degrees you earned can affect your career. How else to explain the spate of exaggerated claims of academic prowess among top executives, some of whom have decades-long track records but nonetheless continue to inflate precareer educational achievements. Most recently, Radio Shack was stung by this problem. But it also happened to Bausch & Lomb, Veritas Software, A.T. Kearney and the U.S. Olympic Committee when they welcomed executives to their top echelons.
If prestigious academic degrees make job candidates more attractive, it isn't a big leap to suggest that hiring people with shared experiences at particular schools can make sense too. Walter "Woody" Powell, a professor of business and education at Stanford University, argues that the door-opening component of school connections has the advantage of generating mobility for minorities and others who are underrepresented in the business world. But Prof. Powell also notes research that shows that school ties are less likely to produce a diversity of creative solutions to business problems.
Many people forget as the years go by that some of their classmates weren't that productive and others got into school thanks to charitable notions of merit. "I wouldn't hire any of my fraternity brothers," says commercial real-estate executive Jason Anderson with a laugh. But not everyone feels that way. Three of Sen. Trent Lott's chiefs of staff were fraternity brothers from Ole Miss. "A lot of his former staff" were Sigma Nus, says one of them.
When Texas A&M grad David McMahon worked at Union Carbide, he was the college-relations representative there for his alma mater. When he heard of job openings, he would call the school and get 15 or so résumés within the hour. "If I could get there with my candidates before another guy from another school could get there," he says, "I had a better shot."
David Davis, formerly the chief of staff for a U.S. senator from Texas, favored Texas A&M graduates even though he wasn't one himself. He says they exuded a love of Texas and country.
Louis Conzo played a lot of Dungeons & Dragons in college, not the sort of detail he'd feature on a résumé. But a fellow player recruited him for an engineering job "because of our association in our gaming group," which was kind of like a fraternity, Mr. Conzo says.
Rob Meyer, the chief executive of a software company, warns that "common backgrounds also include common and negative perceptions of other places and groups" that can cause problems. When he was considering a joint venture with a company that had a large number of same-school graduates, he worried that graduates of other schools might have a "reasonable belief" that they wouldn't advance.
April Benetollo is a marketing director at a software company. She says that when a University of Alabama graduate headed her company, "the overwhelming majority of us were Alabama graduates." Then a graduate of Auburn University, also in Alabama, was hired as president, and since then a growing number of Auburn graduates are showing up. The rivalries go way too far, Ms. Benetollo says. "You almost grow up thinking if someone goes to the other school, they're stupid," Ms. Benetollo says.
Yale Law School graduate Stephen Weiss got help from other Yalies landing a summer clerkship at a firm where he later worked as an associate. But he concedes that not all his former classmates would be good hires. There were some, he says, "whose emotional intelligence wasn't great," while others were "mesmerized by the sound of their own voices." He says he has decided that "all you know is the kid was smart enough to get in and graduate. Beyond that you don't know a hell of a lot more."
聘用校友未必是好事
帕特里克?爱尔兰(Patrick Ireland)发现，在商界遇到校友关系有点儿怪怪的，但又难以回避。爱尔兰是antiventurecapital.com的创始人，他曾帮助华盛顿州立大学（学校的标志是美洲豹)的四名毕业生为心爱的项目争取资金。爱尔兰回忆说，他们只要遇见也出生于“美洲豹”的人“就会兴奋地上窜下跳，大喊‘他是美洲豹！’”
他的许多同学──他说他们大多都是“派对动物”──最后都去了加拿大西部一家大型消费品公司的市场部。
他从前的生意伙伴为帮助一个校友使出了浑身解数。那位年轻校友想出了一种门锁，这种锁主要针对那些对饭店房间的门锁不放心的人。爱尔兰说，“想法挺荒唐的。”不过“我的朋友开始不厌其烦地帮助这个小伙子。”爱尔兰问他这是为什么，他只是说，“他是大学联谊会成员嘛。”似乎这可以解释一切。
校友在商界势力强大，通过它可以轻松进入关系网络，也能节约摸索关系的成本。虽然依靠这种关系的结果通常还令人满意，不过人们因为对母校的热爱和怀旧情绪可能会迷失自己、变得盲目，公司寻找精英的努力也可能会因此大打折扣。
我们都知道教育程度可能影响你的职业前途。除此以外，公司高层纷纷夸耀自己的学术造诣还能有什么原因呢？有些人虽然拥有几十年的出色业绩却仍然夸耀自己的学历。最近Radio Shack就在这方面遇到了问题。不过博士伦公司(Bausch & Lomb Inc.)、Veritas Software、科尔尼公司(A.T. Kearney)和美国奥委会都曾出现过这类问题。
如果出众的学习经历能够增强申请人的吸引力，那么聘用一个有共同经历的校友似乎也说得过去。斯坦福大学(Stanford University)商务与教育学教授沃尔特?鲍威尔(Walter 'Woody' Powell)认为，校友这块敲门砖可以帮助少数族裔和其他在商界势力较弱的群体。不过鲍威尔也指出，研究表明校友间难以产生丰富的创造性地解决业务问题的办法。
随著时间的流逝，我们忘记了有些同学的成绩并不出色，有些人则是因为学校的宽松才得以入学。商业地产主管杰森?安德森(Jason Anderson)笑著说，“我不会聘用校友。”而有些人不这么认为。参议员特伦特?洛特(Trent Lott)手下的三个办公室主任都是密西西比大学(Ole Miss)联谊会成员，其中一位主任表示，“许多从前的雇员”也都是校友。
得克萨斯A&M大学(Texas A&M University)毕业生戴维?麦克马洪(David McMahon)在联合碳化公司(Union Carbide)工作时，担任该公司的大学关系代表。当有招聘信息时，他会和学校联系，1小时内就能收到15份左右简历。他说，“如果我能带著校友比其他人先到一步，我的成功几率就更大。”
戴维?戴维斯(David Davis)从前是得克萨斯一位议员的办公室主任。他虽然不是得克萨斯A&M大学的校友，但很欣赏这所学校的学生。他说这是因为这些学生流露出对得克萨斯和美国的热爱。
路易斯?孔佐(Louis Conzo)大学时热衷于《龙与地下城》(Dungeons & Dragons) 游戏，这在简历上当然不能大书特书。不过一个玩伴聘用他做了工程师，他说，“这是因为我们都喜爱这个游戏，”这种关系类似于校友。
一家软件公司的首席执行长罗布?迈耶(Rob Meyer)警告说，“相同的背景还意味著对其他地方和团体有著共同的负面看法，”而这可能会带来问题。当他考虑和另一家公司──那儿的许多员工来自同一所学校──组建合资公司时，他担心其他学校的毕业生可能会“自然而然地认为”他们没有晋升机会。
阿普丽尔?贝内托洛(April Benetollo)是一家软件公司的营销主管。她说，当一位阿拉巴马大学(University of Alabama)的毕业生领导公司时，“公司绝大多数员工也都来自阿拉巴马大学。”后来一名奥本大学(Auburn University，也在阿拉巴马州）毕业生担任了公司总裁，奥本大学的毕业生开始越来越多。贝内托洛说，这种对立后来变得非常极端，以致于“大家几乎认为如果一个人是对方那所学校的，他一定很傻。”
耶鲁法学院(Yale Law School)的毕业生斯蒂芬?韦斯(Stephen Weiss)因为耶鲁校友的帮助在一家事务所得到了暑期实习机会，后来他成为这家公司的合伙人。不过他承认，并不是所有同学都能成为优秀的同事。他说，有些人“情商不高，”有些人“过于狂妄。”他认为“关于校友你知道的一切只是他有能力进入这所大学并且毕业。除此之外，你能确定的并不多。”
