
How We Recruit - On Formal Credentials vs Experience-based Education - rpledge
http://blogs.zoho.com/general/how-we-recruit-on-formal-credentials-vs-experience-based-education
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kevinpet
Well now hold on a minute. First, out of necessity, they adopt a recruitment
model that disregards academic credentials, and then they find no correlation
between academic credentials and performance. How about the possibility that
they never saw the really talented people because they all got snapped up by
companies that high based on academic reputation?

I don't have any evidence that this is the case, but the fact that he's
restricted himself to a talent pool that excludes the top 20% academically
makes his results not generally applicable.

We've heard this same story from Google, where they say that among those that
they hire, those who don't meet their standard academic cutoffs turn out to be
their best employees. What's missing from that statement is accounting for
whatever got them hired even though they don't meet the criteria.

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xiaoma
_"the fact that he's restricted himself to a talent pool that excludes the top
20% academically makes his results not generally applicable."_

The article said nothing of the sort. It said he _didn't_ restrict applicants
to any particular academic group.

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dlo
He didn't restrict himself intentionally. I don't think that was what the
poster meant. Rather, the poster probably meant that Sridhar was forced into
this restriction by not being very attractive to those in the top 20%:

"Our company in India always faced trouble recruiting, because most college
graduates, particularly from well-known colleges, would prefer big-brand-name
firms. Simply out of SHEER NECESSITY, we started to disregard the kind of
college a person graduated from, and the grades they obtained."

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kranner
How do salaries at Zoho compare to the average in the local market?

Part of me is happy that they give disadvantaged students a fair chance.
Another part is suspicious that salaries are low on average because employees
are informed that they are lucky to have a job at all.

Does anyone know?

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sunkan
Very interesting. Check out the video in this link where he further expounds
on what was written in the blog.

[http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/06/alternatives-to-
college.htm...](http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/06/alternatives-to-college.html)

Also the comments in the link above give a good perspective on the positives
and negatives of such an approach.

