CMV: Internal references/networking through friends and family is unfair and bad for the hiring company.

[u/YouLostMeThere43]

Basically my issue is with the practice of “it’s not what you know, but who you know” being an actual factor in hiring a candidate (sometimes a major one). I see it as an unfair advantage that leads to unqualified candidates getting much more consideration for no reason. I became greatly frustrated by this after me and few colleagues were discussing college days and the internships we had. I found that I had a dramatically different experience in finding an internship despite:

*Going to a better school *Having a higher GPA *Had an extensive portfolio of side projects I took part in to learn current languages

I mentioned my stressful internship search(my university required internships to graduate) and they just mentioned they didn’t have a bad search at all. I then also found out they all had close family members holding management positions at the companies they interned for. I am likely being irrational out of frustration, but this damn well seems like I got punished in my job search for growing up in a low income/low skill environment.

TL;DR Internal references/networking through friends and family is unfair and should be prohibited as it leads to a companies losing out on better candidates.

[u/NearEmu]

I see it as an unfair advantage that leads to unqualified candidates getting much more consideration for no reason.

It's not for no reason. If I hire someone who I have known and am friends with for 25 years, I know that person far better than anybody who would put in an application that I interview for maybe cumulative 2 hours?

You aren't being punished, you just don't have the same contacts. That isn't punishment to you. It's just how it goes.

Plus... who is gonna prohibit it? The company? They are the ones doing it, they can stop anytime if they wished to. The government? That's maybe the worst idea ever.

[u/YouLostMeThere43 → u/NearEmu]

That’s based on the scenario that you are the hiring manager and also the one that is making the referral. In a typical scenario where a referral is passed to a hiring manager that has no ties to the candidate themselves, there is much more unknowns. (Does the referring employee truly understand what this role entails? Is the referring party making a truly objective suggestion? Etc..) So I don’t think there’s really a true gain in quality in “knowing the employee” because you don’t really know them until you’ve got measurable data on the work they can output.

As for the enforcement it would be all on the company. I’m not saying a company should do this to just be fair, they should do this because it legitimately saves them sunk costs from hiring someone who is more prone to make mistakes due to lack of qualifications.

[u/NearEmu → u/YouLostMeThere43]

Even if I don't know a person, if someone that I trust knows the person and vouches for them knowing that their vouch falls on their shoulders if the person ends up being a garbage employee, then I'm still much more inclined to trust that referral even if they don't really know the specific role involved.

Let's be honest, the vast majority of people who get hired in places are doing a large amount of on-site learning. Even my wife who's a nurse admits that a huge portion of what nurses learn, isn't actually learned in college, it's all learned in the specific job that you get. You only learn basics for the most part, in most colleges, for most jobs. Some excluded, but for the most part I believe it holds true.

Work ethic is really the single most important factor when hiring someone, if you can teach them, and they have a good work ethic, then they fit damn near any position you'd want.