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College: Name Brand or Generic?

March 29, 2009

When you go to fill your prescriptions one of the first decisions you have to make is whether to go for the name brand or generic drug. While most may say that their is a huge difference, if you ask a doctor if their is, they will tell you their really isn’t. Just like with medicine, everyday brings new choices, and among those choices is whether to choose the name brand, or the run of the mill generics.

Currently, we are recruiting talent college students to be part of our Entrepreneurship Internship Program. For our internship program we listed at the top 50 schools across the nation. After interviewing many students who are interested in the program, I began to think how big of a role a college’s name has to do with getting a job. On a resume, one of the first things that you list is where you went to school. For my own personal opinion, if someone wrote down on their resume that they went to the best school in the nation, I would be impressed. But the question I asked myself was why? While I didn’t want to create a bias against other applicants, it is hard to not to have some expectations of the applicant. Still, the interview proved to me that a college’s name can only get you so far.

The applicant that I interviewed was anything but stellar and made me realize that ‘brand names’ are just a name. The applicant was incoherent during the interview and was obviously unprepared. No matter what your resume says, your resume cannot speak words nor can it tell others why you should get the position. After having more interviews that resulted in the same way I began to think if we were targeting the right colleges. As a startup company you face many big decisions, one of which is finding the right personnel to join your company. If you think of your company as a boat, then your employees are the propeller that moves you.
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