SEO Candidates are a joke
Honestly. How much BS is it that they have these sub-par candidates in banking. It's nearly 4:00 am and I am still in the office, and my collegue (came from SEO) left at midnight.
Thankfully his reviews were awful and I hope we get rid of this unqualified diversity moron.
Fuckin joke. At least during a downturn they are the first ones to get fired. Thank god.
Wait a minute he left at midnight while you are still there, and you blame the SEO program for that? And if he wasn't SEO what would be your excuse?
Perhaps it has nothing to do with SEO and more do with him just sucking; something you find amongst colleagues of any race..
Because the idea that the corporate world is a complete meritocracy is a joke. You have the less qualified minorities as well as the wholly unqualified white student who only got an internship because of his fraternity or family/friend connection; for some reason, people find that way more acceptable than the former even if it is more prevalent and essentially the same damn thing
It works both ways.
The best candidates are not white males. The best candidates are Asians ;-). The point of diversity recruiting is, how does it look when you meet a client from a different ethnicity and he sees that the entire team is filled with white males? Also, this just prevents the whole mess associated with the racial discrimination etc. You really don't want to consistently face lawsuits because of this issue. In addition to that, most people who make it through, regardless of their race are very intelligent. The difference comes in the amount of hard work they put in which MonkeyKingdom points out to. Most of the SEO candidates that I personally know off are very intelligent.
Yeah I'm not sure why Howard/Morehouse is so well regarded. I mean historically I can understand, but their SAT entrance scores are in the 900/1000 range. I mean, I think many people on this board - and I say this as a black male - probably could have scored in that range in 5th or 6th grade. (I say that knowing a girl who is now a Yalie who got a 1380 in 7th grade, I think I got a 1120? something like that).
In regards to why diversity is important, its for two reasons
1) PR. Honestly, this is the main issue. If everyone is a white male from Connecticut who went to HYP and is in skull and bones, its not going to look good from a marketing perspective. Now if you're a hedge fund or PE/VC this doesn't matter as you're not dealing with the public. Also, most of your clients are probably white males from CT anyway, so its not an issue. But in any other field you'd be vilified.
2) Minorities can gasp actually be useful. I think people don't realize how much we're a product of our environment in regards to our outlook and perspective and I really could care less how intelligent you are, the fact of the matter is you will still be ignorant to a lot of issues that would be useful in the workplace. Having a diversity of backgrounds leads to a diversity of thought that leads to a better ability to make strategic decisions when you have a more thorough view of the world on the table.
3) Not every minority gets in through AA and many of these people don't have the network or resources that others have and therefore need some kind of push in order to get in. I personally know several people, mostly Africans, who have really high GPAs and fell comfortably within the ranges of admission numbers but they don't know anything about recruiting or how the process works simply because they haven't been exposed to it. I know one girl who had to be told what the SAT was her junior year because she had never heard of it. This goes back to understanding not everyone comes from the same background. Wall Street works in cycles and if you're not in that world, its going to be very difficult to get in when you don't know anything about it. And from a firm's point of view, they're losing talent for that very reason.
I definitely agree that firms and grad schools shouldn't be dipping so low down the chain just to get minority students. Particularly when you have a job to do. Its one thing if Harvard Law wants to let in a kid with a really low LSAT score or something, because its not like they're going to lose anything. If anything, they put themselves in a great position to get more donations later on because that student will inevitably become successful and will be grateful for the opportunity that they received. However, it doesn't make sense to hire people that simply don't have the academic training on par with their peers. I'm not trying to single out Howard/Morehouse/Spelman, but I scratch my head when I see the logic in that.
I remember Morgan Stanley came to my school and met with the black business association and gave interviews to everyone who showed up. That might sound unfair, but as someone mentioned there is no difference between that and making a phone call to the MD who was in your fraternity and your buddy from the lacrosse team who is a 2nd year analyst. The thing is both students have the requisite academic background from a top school and are capable of doing comps.
While you might be frustrated with that one student, take a step back and realize that you can't make a sweeping generalization of a whole race or program because of the potential ineptitude of one individual. While I agree that changes need to be made, its not as bad as a lot of people think it is - at least on the recruiting level.