Extending Offers to Weaker Candidates to Protect Yield

I go to a target, and I've noticed that many on-campus recruiting teams are obsessed with yield. There even has been multiple cases where a top tier BB (think GS/JPM/MS) has decided to extend offers to weaker candidates who have lower GPAs, but no potential competing offers in the pipeline than stronger candidates have multiple Superdays. Can anyone clarify what is the thought process behind this? Why the obsession of ensuring that the candidate accepts the offer when they extend it? Can't they extend the offer to top candidates, and if they reject move down to the weaker candidates? Not trying to find the best talent for your organization seems paradoxical. Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.

19 Comments
 
Best Response

Agree.

Lower GPA > weak candidate.

Weak interviewer = weak candidate.

Just because a candidate can bury his face in a pile of books without coming up for air doesn't mean he's socially intelligent or has the level of intensity required to dominate his peer group (outside of academia) and excel in a fairy demanding environment.

They will almost always extend an offer to the strongest candidate. I've seen my bank extend offers to kids with 3 or 4 (far superior) offers because we really like they guy.

At the end of the day, you extent the offer to the best candidate possible and sell the shit out of him. If you do a good job, often time's he'll take your offer even over seemingly better offers. And if he/she doesn't, move on to the next one.

 
jec

Lol, whatever helps you sleep at night man.

Pretty much this.

"For I am a sinner in the hands of an angry God. Bloody Mary full of vodka, blessed are you among cocktails. Pray for me now and at the hour of my death, which I hope is soon. Amen."
 

This absolutely 100% happens. Multiple theories on why, I think a big part of it is HR's desire to "wrap things up" quickly for any given season's recruiting process and not draw things out. Similar trend you see with many large banks is their hiring iffy to subpar summer analysts simply because they don't want to put significant time or resources into full time recruiting.... Just one theory though

 

Never seen this happen before. This isn't college admissions. Nobody cares about "yield". If a strong candidate turns down the offer, you go to the next one.

 
kidflash

At my school, a eb/bb stopped recruiting about 4-5 years ago because too many kids rejected their offers every year.

u went to NYU right
speed boost blaze
 
Magneton kidflash:

At my school, a eb/bb stopped recruiting about 4-5 years ago because too many kids rejected their offers every year.

u went to NYU right

lol not even close. but I did turn Stern down back in high school :P.
 

It's not just GPA per se, but just overall stronger candidates being brushed aside for weaker ones in favor of ensuring an offer gets accepted.

 
213830

It's not just GPA per se, but just overall stronger candidates being brushed aside for weaker ones in favor of ensuring an offer gets accepted.

Apparently your judgement of candidates is not in step with the actual inverviewers.

"For I am a sinner in the hands of an angry God. Bloody Mary full of vodka, blessed are you among cocktails. Pray for me now and at the hour of my death, which I hope is soon. Amen."
 

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This to all my hatin' folks seeing me getting guac right now..

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