Originally posted by The Ellimist
You are hiring an engineer for a project to, say, design a rocket. You're a pretty big and very well coveted company. If any further details matter, we can discuss how they affect the answer.Lily just graduated from MIT with a perfect academic record. She placed on international coding and mathematics competitions and has been published multiple times in prestigious journals. However, she has no full-time work experience beyond some summer internships at prestigious firms.
John has been an engineer for twenty years. He's a graduate of a decent state school, where he was moderately above average. He's been working at decently well known companies in the aerospace industry, where his coworkers describe him as solid and reliable, but he hasn't done anything mind-blowing.
They're competing for the same six figure salary, and have good social skills. Their work ethics are not directly known to you.
Who do you pick?
This is an easy decision to make as long as some unknowns are fleshed out a bit better.
Based on the salary you're describing, the position is not entry-level. Hiring Lily for that position is not only inappropriate, it is bad human resource management.
As a hiring manager, you need to be acutely aware of CURRENT statistics which include education trends and employment trends. Placing talent in your open positions has a huge overhead cost especially in the high-skilled/deep-education positions. In one of the jobs I had before, for a particular position for which we had 8 slots, after everything was said and done and all direct and indirect costs were compiled, the average cost to fill each position was $24,000. Twenty Four Thousand Dollars. This was another position that was high-skilled/deep-education. That's quite a bit of money.
What happens if you take a gamble on a fresh college graduate on a not-entry-level position? You can squander quite a bit of money.
So back to why this is just simply bad management:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/05/20/only-27-percent-of-college-grads-have-a-job-related-to-their-major/
"In 2010, only 62 percent of U.S. college graduates had a job that required a college degree.
Second, the authors estimated that just 27 percent of college grads had a job that was closely related to their major."
And that data is outdated. From what I understand, the data is worse and even more lopsided for our young and educated Americans.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-study-shows-careers-and-college-majors-often-dont-match/
And a significant portion of Americans just don't work in a field related to their major.
For STEM majors (relevant to your OP), it is less than half who actually end up working in their field of study:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/most-with-college-stem-degrees-go-to-other-fields-of-work/2014/07/10/9aede466-084d-11e4-bbf1-cc51275e7f8f_story.html
Add on the other fact that men still make up a very large majority of the STEM major related jobs, and Lily's gender also becomes another variable (why? Because real life gets in the way for many women around that age...especially children, so they fade out of their STEM-related jobs within a few years). BUT WAIT! You say, that's sexism, right? It really is. It really really is.
But that is not everything. If Lily has never ever worked in her entire life at any job before, it would be a solid no from me. If I had an entry level position (it would pay 50-70k a year if it is engineering), I'd consider her for that. But is she did have work experience in ANY job, I'd want multiple references and I would verify actual working relationships. If she got stellar accolades from coworkers and bosses at other jobs, even if it wasn't related to engineering, that would put her very high upon the consideration list. Why? Because I have found that regardless of where a person works, if they put in effort and care about doing a good job, they'll do a good job in just about any position as long as they get the training they need to be successful. The work ethic is what makes a good employee. The onus is on me to train my people to be most successful in their jobs.
But that's not everything! Nope, not at all. Since this is a mid-level engeering job (based on the description you have), I would talk to my other engineering leads and ask them about a common major issue they encounter as it relates to the job. I would prioritize the top 3 and then I would present those scenarios to the top 3. Here's the kicker: 2 out of those 3 would already have been resolved and I would have feedback and lessons learned from those leads about how those were successfully resolved (and how they would do it over again to be even more successful).
When I interview these 2 candidates, I would compare their answers against the real-world scenarios, I would review the candidate answers with the engineering leads, and I would obtain an consensus on an "over-all best fit." All these factors would be weighed to come to a decision.
Usually, the more experienced candidate will be the winner especially for mid-level and above STEM jobs.
Who knows? Perhaps Lily will knock it out of the park.
Anecdote: that's how I get my big break at my last job. The CIO took a risk on me even though I missed the requisite experience required for the job by about 5 years (needed 7, I had 2). I was running up against 2 other decade+ people. The group that interviewed me felt that I just did so much better than the others when I was presented with the scenarios. And the fact that I'm an arrogant bastard who doesn't crumble under public speaking pressure certainly made it easier to get the position.
But how did I REALLY get the position? I knew what the **** I was talking about. 😐 That's pretty much the biggest difference.
So what if Lily, in your scenario, shadowed several very seasoned engineers during her college days? What if she gleaned quite a bit of "not- taught-in-school" ideas from those veterans? She may end up having answers that the other engineer doesn't have. Why? Because no one person can know everything. So why not learn from everyone to increase your own ability to adapt and succeed? Why repeat others' mistakes? Why not benefit form others' successes?
Okay, there is your real answer.