Recently we were talking about the death of yet another Black man.
Today let’s bring this back into the business world.
The business schools promote “fit” tremendously in their marketing efforts. EssaySnark is certainly guilty of this, even going so far — very recently — of saying that it could be the most important factor at all in deciding which school to attend.
But this article about Facebook and hiring practices shed a very different light on the subject.
The tl;dr is that hiring managers at Facebook turned away many applicants of color saying that they weren’t a good “cultural fit.”
However, please don’t be satisfied with our tl;dr note. Please go check out that article. It’s worth reading, for folks who care about equality and are looking for ways to make changes in this world, or at the very least are trying to become more culturally aware and sensitive. (Or, if you’re a Black person or a non-Black person of color, maybe you’ll see yourself in that article, which could be enraging, or maybe validating. Hopefully, the fact that it’s been covered in a mainstream newspaper means that things might actually change.)
“School fit” with the schools may be subject to the exact-same bias. It’s something we’re going to start looking at, asking questions about, getting curious on. Understanding “school fit” has long been a critical success factor in getting in to a top MBA program.
But maybe that’s perpetuating bias and white dominance.
It’s something we’re going to investigate, and see what we may come up with.
For now, we’re still touting the importance of “school fit” in the advice that we offer to applicants. But this, like every other element of the status quo, is worth questioning.
We’ll report back once we have more to say on this.
Thank you for coming around to the blahg and being curious with us on this and all the other things we toss out there to think about each day. We appreciate that you are doing that, and being part of it too.
Tell us what you think.