Economic Wisdom to Apply in Your Twenties

Chapter 48

Chapter 6, Section 4 Recruitment "discrimination" stems from corporate rationality

If you have fought hard in the job hunting field, you must have experienced such experiences:

Some corporate job fairs set up a special "admission qualification review area", and graduates from non-renowned universities do not even have the qualifications to enter.The review process of the resume review officers is very simple: first look at the school, if you are not from a prestigious school, you will be eliminated in the first round and there will be no chance for an interview.

A HR once said frankly in an interview: "The recruitment information we released has stated that we only accept students from the top 20 colleges and universities in the country... Students from prestigious universities such as Peking University will definitely be admitted."

The practice of similar companies has aroused dissatisfaction among many students. They are very angry at the company's practice of only recognizing "brands" and think it is discrimination.

"I'm not even given an interview opportunity, so how do I know my level?" A classmate said that he has a good grasp of his major and has rich social practice experience, "but he was stopped before the door was opened. Is it fair?"

This is indeed unfair, but companies also have their own difficulties.Every enterprise has a thirst for suitable talents, and also has the trouble of not being able to find suitable people.Many corporate HR said that restricting prestigious schools is indeed a helpless move.

From an economic point of view, this is actually information asymmetry at work.Imagine that there are two types of candidates in the market—high-powered and low-powered.We applicants often know our abilities better than companies.But no matter whether they are high-energy or low-energy, both of them actively convey the message that they are very capable to the employer, especially the low-energy person must try to disguise himself as a high-energy person.

When the company can't pass several written tests and interviews, it can identify whether you are a high-energy or low-energy talent. What kind of education you have received becomes an objective and credible tool for conveying information.According to the general thinking of ordinary people, people who go to famous universities are generally smarter and more diligent than students in ordinary schools, and they have received better influence in the atmosphere of famous schools.Although not all high academic qualifications necessarily mean high ability, even famous universities will have some students with poor ability and knowledge, but in the absence of better options, companies can only believe in the signals conveyed by academic qualifications.

The model of information transmission was proposed by Michael Spencer, a professor at Harvard University, for which he and Akerlof won the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics.When Spencer was a doctoral student at Harvard University, he observed a very interesting phenomenon: Many MBA students were ordinary before entering Harvard, but after several years of Harvard education, they can earn several times or even several times more than professors. Ten times the money.This makes people wonder why Harvard education is really so powerful? The result of Spencer's research is that education is not only productive, but more importantly, education has the function of signal transmission.

That's what brand names do.Defective products may also appear in prestigious universities or star enterprises, but the probability of this is relatively much lower.Moreover, the establishment of a famous brand is the result of the accumulation of effective information costs over the years, and no one is willing to easily destroy their reputation.Therefore, even if there is a problem, the cost of solving it is correspondingly low.

Just as we believe in buying "famous brands" when we buy things, companies also have the same complex for "famous brand" colleges and universities. "Famous brand" always means higher credibility and lower selection cost.Therefore, although it is generally believed in the society that enterprises' preference for students from prestigious schools in the recruitment process is an obvious "recruitment discrimination", it has to be said that from the perspective of economists, this is also a "rational" behavior of enterprises. .

So, if you are looking for a job and you are not from a prestigious school, the most reasonable way is to make your information more public when facing "discrimination", so that you can be more competitive than students from prestigious schools, so that companies can trust you Ability. 
Wisdom Pieces: How You Can Build Your Personal Brand
1.Personal brand positioning.Personality is the foundation of building a personal brand.You might as well ask yourself: What is my personal strength?What kind of work am I suitable for?What kind of image do I want to create in people's minds? ...

2.Strong work skills.Deep professional skills are an important element of personal brand building.How to make your work excellent and irreplaceable is the key to building your personal brand.

3.Strong learning ability.Building your personal brand doesn't happen overnight, you have to keep learning.Only after continuous accumulation and slow cultivation can you form a brand recognized by everyone.

4.character quality.Moral standards and character are also crucial to personal branding.

5.Pack yourself appropriately.Maybe you are very capable, but you don't pay attention to your appearance, and you don't have any characteristics, so it's hard to attract attention.You can impress others with better clothes, a more attractive tone of voice, etc.

(End of this chapter)