Research: How Companies Committed to Diverse Hiring Still Fail

This article from Harvard Business Review delves into the factors that contribute to bias from employers engaged in on-campus recruiting for graduating seniors at the University of Pennsylvania.

The findings included that internships are view favourably but paid work experience is not.

While the former may be more industry specific, I know I like to see previous working experience when reviewing graduate resumes. Perhaps this is because I started working part-time when I was 14 and it was normal amongst my peers to work at a fast-food restaurant, retail store, supermarket, or service station while at school and university.

 

Have you ever participated in the short-listing/recruitment process for recent graduates? What were your thoughts on internships and previous paid employment?

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Taranjeet Singh
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February 22, 2021

@Kat Warner I have observed and experienced that most of the US companies do not consider past work experience from an International Student's home country, even if it is relevant to the job, while hiring graduates from US universities. This is a big bias as per my opinion for foreign students, who pay a lot of fees and do a lot of efforts for studying in US universities.

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Jimmy Seddon
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February 22, 2021

Great discussion @Kat Warner!  In my limited experience at every company I have worked for (in Canada) all "co-op" placements (these are students that have not completed their school studies but are gaining work experience in their "off-term") are paid work placements.  As an incentive to hire students the government will contribute to part of what they are paid.

From what I have seen prior work experience is not evaluated, but most of them are given an online practical evaluation (which has been common for full-time hires as well).  This way you can judge a candidate on their practical application of the skills instead of some words written on paper.

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Kat Warner
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February 22, 2021

I know in New Zealand there is a company that specialises in fixed-term internships to help people from overseas get local experience in their current field. 

 

There are also a lot of transferable skills that are potentially being overlooked if you only consider the most recent qualification and internships.

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