Career Thoughts and Compensation - Present and Future

jayK said: My main point is that a company who primarily hires based on the name of the school will end up with a weaker workforce in general than a company that hires based on several factors. I can see how it would be tempting to simply throw out everyone who doesn't come from a certain school, but IMHO that's the mark of a lazy HR department. There are better ways to filter candidates pre-interview.You are absolutely correct about this but, as you've correctly pointed out above, it all depends on the industry. In industries such as IT where employers want candidates with practical skills that they can put to use right away, the identity of the school is a lot less important that the skills of each candidate. By the same token, elite law firms, for instance, do not expect their first year associates to have ANY practical skills. It usually takes elite firms several years to teach their junior associates what they need to know to become productive lawyers, so in recruiting, elite firms have to rely on the law schools' ability to differentiate between students with the best analytical and critical reasoning skills, since those students are much more likely to become better associates a few years down the road. Hence, elite law firms concentrate on class rank and law school quality.

RushnRockt said: puckah18 said: Point being, I work at a firm who recruit ONLY at prestigious schools cause we want them to do all the filtering. Sure that we might miss out on some awesome rising star at other schools, but when resumes are flying in faster than can be read, some sort of filter has to be in place.


Hmmm... for a guy complaining about conclusions based on "one" guy from MIT, would you like to provide data showing how much better the median student from a top-tier school does compared to the median student from a second-tier school? Especially over time, when the name on the diploma matters less? You might be surprised with what you find out... of course, that might make using stereotypes a bit harder.

The cream always rises to the top, so why are we comparing median students? There are plenty of state school grads working in wall street that are at senior levels. And seriously, people decide to go to which school when they're 17 years old, if the results of my career hinges on 1 decision that was made when I was 17 I'd be doomed.

I'm sorry if I came across as an "elitist," but I am not. I WENT TO A STATE SCHOOL (a pretty good one, but still a state school). I was a median student as well (3.0 gpa, no extracurriculars), but hardwork and what is accomplished AFTER school got me a job. But once I'm on the job, I realized how difficult it is for non-elites to even break in. Our firm (little one, only 8 people on the asset management side) gets calls from random ivy-league mbas that didn't make it to Goldman Sachs or other bulge brackets as well as other MBAs from top 20 schools. But how many people we hire? We hired 1 person the last 4 years...and that was me (and no, I didn't have ANY sort of network/connection).

I don't want to compare job performance, on the job performance blah blah blah. I'm simply talking bout getting the foot in the door in high finance with an MBA. There are simply more candidates than job positions out there in this field. We're not debating whether we should hire a state school grad w/ a 4.0 or a Ivy grad w/ a 3.3. We're deciding which Ivy Leaguer with a 3.9+ we should bring in for interview.

Thats the current market in this field, to the employer's advantage.

bump to avoid archiving.

Gender: Male
Age: 32
Location: TX
Occupation: Project Manger / Senior Business-Systems Analyst
Education: BS BA Management Information Systems and Entrepreneurship
2006 Salary: I recevid 2 offers i chose $80,000 + 3% per project bonus
Future Salary Projection: Expect to make about $85k for 2007, with 2-8% regular increases each year after that.

Benefits: Full medical, dental, normal sick and personal time, 9/80 work week every other Friday off. 2 weeks vacation.

The other job, was in CA and they offered base of 75K (FYI No state Tax in TX and Cost Of Living 20-25% less)

# 5k Signing Bonus
# 150 Stock Options
# 2x/year bonus reviews
# Comprehensive Relocation
# Immigration Assistance
# Employee Stock Purchase Program
# family medical insurance
# family dental insurance
# vision insurance
# Extensive Training opportunities
# 401(K) Matching
# 3 Weeks Paid Vacation
# 1 Day Personal Holiday
# 10 Company Holidays

What's the job like?

You work with business users and technical people to create new applications and/or updates to existing applications. I used to work in a Microsoft shop now this is all proprietary software. Same Idea you just need to understand basics of coding, Databases, technology in general and be able to work with people who (A) don't speak very good English sometimes and (b) be able to communicate to them what your business user wants. sometimes trickier than it sounds.

Would you recommend the career to others?

If you like technology, and working on teams to solve problems then yeah it is good you won't be bored. I want to move into management and this hopefully will be the last step before I do.

Hope this helps people looking out there. This is obvious butIF you don't like your salary look outside you company 90% of the time you will get at least a 15-20% raise.