On extra-curricular activities

[Berenger]

Found over the internet:

Finishing a degree with very high grades is already quite tough, so why are employers expecting candidates to show them curricula with plenty of extracurricular activities?
It’s so that HRs can do discrimination without getting sued, sorry I thought everyone knew that? HR discrimination is more complex than just simple racism and sexism, though that is important to them as well. Say you are a HR wanting to hire a blonde middle class woman with bad grades, because she partied a lot. The alternative is a male with some accent you don’t like. Of course you and I use the word “partying” for drinking, staying out late, and regarding morning lectures as violation of human rights, whereas entitled middle class kids say “extracurricular”. So she writes “I was a member of three societies, one of which watched football and once we raised $217 for a charity in Africa”, but somehow makes that two long paragraphs. This shows support for the company social values and her “soft skills”.
Many have to work at university to earn money, and so “extras” are for the better off students. This is a good test for any position, do you and yours benefit from it ? You’d be amazed how many hiring policies benefit exactly the sort of people who work in HR. Oh, sorry, you knew already and it amazes you not one little bit.
Extras are such a flexible tool that you can use them to justify someone who just happened to go to the same university as the HR.
It is worst in technology where many firms actively discriminate against people who’ve studied any from of technology.

Never thought about it this way, but makes sense.
Any thought, or past experiences to share?

 

[Onegin]

Found over the internet:

Never thought about it this way, but makes sense.
Any thought, or past experiences to share?

Seems pretty convenient and self serving for the original poster. If the system is rigged, then there’s no responsibility to even try. In fact, only honest thing to do is call everyone a phony and check out of the game entirely.

I haven’t heard of technology firms discriminating against anyone who has studied any form of technology. How do you pass the coding tests without technology study?

discrimination exists, corruption exists. They vary across individuals, organizations, and time. Just like positive attributes. From friends who lived in the Soviet Union, I learned even if the system is completely rigged (e.g. ethnic quotas for university study), it is more useful to assume you can beat the system and work towards that than to give up.

Is there useful info in extra curriculars? I used to think it was bullshit for there to be a perceived preference to hire college athletes. Then I started working, and realized a lot of the individuals I liked working with most were athletes. They were consistent, reliable, disciplined, and in most cases had a strong team orientation. Other people can have these qualities, and not all athletes have them. But it’s very hard to be an athlete at the collegiate level and not cultivate these.

So I think there’s information there, and I think HR / admissions committees need to build a picture of the whole candidate. It’s miserable to work with someone very technically capable but can’t get along with others. The tortured genius is not a good look.

 

[Berenger]

Seems pretty convenient and self serving for the original poster. If the system is rigged, then there’s no responsibility to even try. In fact, only honest thing to do is call everyone a phony and check out of the game entirely.

I haven’t heard of technology firms discriminating against anyone who has studied any form of technology. How do you pass the coding tests without technology study?

discrimination exists, corruption exists. They vary across individuals, organizations, and time. Just like positive attributes. From friends who lived in the Soviet Union, I learned even if the system is completely rigged (e.g. ethnic quotas for university study), it is more useful to assume you can beat the system and work towards that than to give up.

Is there useful info in extra curriculars? I used to think it was bullshit for there to be a perceived preference to hire college athletes. Then I started working, and realized a lot of the individuals I liked working with most were athletes. They were consistent, reliable, disciplined, and in most cases had a strong team orientation. Other people can have these qualities, and not all athletes have them. But it’s very hard to be an athlete at the collegiate level and not cultivate these.

So I think there’s information there, and I think HR / admissions committees need to build a picture of the whole candidate. It’s miserable to work with someone very technically capable but can’t get along with others. The tortured genius is not a good look.

Interesting. I have noted that certain employers, big banks among them, have set up preferred channels of recruitment for veterans.
They may be basing this hiring policy on a heuristic similar to the one you cited about athletes, on their perceived superior conscientiousness and dependability.
But also, we could make the convincing argument that constantly receiving high marks in uni courses is a sign of dependability. And that selecting for 'cool' things like being a collegial athlete introduces an element of unfairness, because many people aspiring to the position, would not have expected this to be a factor, and instead would have focussed their efforts on studying, for years.

In any case I am of the impression that this should apply to less quantitative roles such as as sales, because juggling high level mathematics and the grueling reality of training (and recovery times) connected with being a semiprofessional athlete is quite insane.

Finally, I don't think the original author of the citation I report has any kind of sour grapes complex, any kind of interest in bringing down those with extra-curricular activities, as he is a highly accomplished professional already.
I believe he was referring more to the kind of "3 months in Cambodia to support the empowerment of local rice-picking women" experience, which kind of ticks boxes with HR you wouldn't expect to be ticked.

 

[Daniel Duffy]

Still, it is not cricket (stereotypes).

 

[Berenger]

Still, it is not cricket (stereotypes).

Even though you have published books over a 1,000 pages long, your writing is very terse, to the point of being cryptic. So sometimes it is hard to get you.

More than being fair or unfair, the quote I reported in my first post satirizes the new 'soft skills' fixation that HRs seem to have acquired in a funny and effective manner. I think there is a hard kernel of truth behind the apparent caricature it portraits.
If something appears useless or of a low importance - they tell me - usually it is because it is useful for something else.

And why attaching a video about ruined mornings in a post published at 9.32 PM, and then edited at 11.29 PM?

 

[Daniel Duffy]

Actually, it is 1142 pages, with 22 pages index.

Seriously, this thread is beginning to sound like whinging.

 

[Berenger]

Actually, it is 1142 pages, with 22 pages index.

Seriously, this thread is beginning to sound like whinging.

I'd agree with you about the over-emotional tone of the response #2, which by the way was mostly off-topic, and about the snarky remarks posted in response #4.
They indeed sound like *whingEing*, my very accomplished and illustrious author.

 

[Qui-Gon]

whinging

1. continuous complaining, especially about something that does not seem…

www.google.com

 

[Berenger]

whinging

1. continuous complaining, especially about something that does not seem…

www.google.com

I may err on the posh side, but that is a corrupted version. Without a standardisation of spelling, looks like anything can find its way to the Cambridge dictionary. That is a corrupted form.

 

[IntoDarkness]

after working in the industry for a while, you will realize getting straight As in college is such an ez thing compared to all the challenges you face at work on a daily/weekly basis

 

[Berenger]

I didn't get so many straight As in college, but am glad to have made it look like as if I did though.
And I have practiced sports for years...

 

[Daniel Duffy]

I may err on the posh side, but that is a corrupted version. Without a standardisation of spelling, looks like anything can find its way to the Cambridge dictionary. That is a corrupted form.

It's not a pub quiz.

Though Americans use only one word, “whine,” the British use both: “whining” covers a variety of meanings, including sounds made by people, animals, or inanimate objects, and “whingeing” (also spelled “whinging”) is more specifically for peevish or fretful complaining. The British sometimes use the terms together for emphasis: “Stop your whingeing and whining!”

In Oz, it's Winjin' Pom

The Winjin' Pom - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Berenger]

It's not a pub quiz.

Though Americans use only one word, “whine,” the British use both: “whining” covers a variety of meanings, including sounds made by people, animals, or inanimate objects, and “whingeing” (also spelled “whinging”) is more specifically for peevish or fretful complaining. The British sometimes use the terms together for emphasis: “Stop your whingeing and whining!”

In Oz, it's Winjin' Pom

The Winjin' Pom - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

between a cut'n'paste and another, would you care to actually devote a couple of lines specifying where is it in my posts that I am supposedly complaining, and about what?
That's the least you could do, and afterwards I'll be happy to defend myself from your insinuations. Because right now, I don't have a clue.

And I doubt this time you will find anything on Google, you are going to have to sweat on your own for this one!