Don't say 'elite': Corporate firms' new pitch is going to be meritocracy

McKinsey, Accenture, and other big firms want to recruit with a wider net, focusing more on skills than on pedigree

By Sarah Kessler

If you ask a graduating MBA student, a prep school guidance counselor or the internet how to be hired at the global consulting firm McKinsey, you’re likely to find a list of prestigious “target schools” where it has consistently aimed its recruiting efforts. You know the ones — Harvard, Yale, Stanford.

But these days, McKinsey would prefer a different answer. “Exceptional can come from anywhere,” its career website says. And then, in case that wasn’t clear enough, “We hire people, not degrees,” and also, “We believe in your potential, regardless of your pedigree.” Katy George, Mckinsey’s chief people officer, told Fortune last year that the firm had increased the number of schools that its new hires came from to 1,500 from about 700, part of its process of “pivoting from pedigree to potential.”

Many companies are working toward a similar makeover.

“Elite” has never sat well with many American institutions, but the word has taken a particular beating in recent years. 

The legitimacy of traditional markers of brilliance, like an Ivy League diploma, are being questioned. And so, firms have had to come up with other ways to convey to recruits, investors and customers that they’re not just ticking boxes that may be outdated — their talent is truly the most talented. Broadening the recruiting net fits the bill, but may come with some of the same shortcomings as previous strategies.

One way companies have tried to highlight the fairness of their recruiting practices took off in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in 2020, when they doubled down on emphasising a commitment to “diversity, equity and inclusion.” 

That approach has since become a political minefield and, in some cases, a legal liability. Today, executives are talking less about diversity. Some have started emphasising “inclusion” or “belonging.” But many were already pivoting to something broader.

“Skills-based hiring,” “skills-first hiring” and efforts to break the “paper ceiling” — the bias against those without college degrees — are all rising buzz phrases. 

The idea, as the consulting firm BCG described it, is putting “competence over credentials,” meaning that companies should stop looking for the right degree and instead focus on who has the right skills, regardless of how they acquired them.

The pitch is basically meritocracy. And it’s everywhere. McKinsey has developed a video game to assess candidates’ cognitive skills, which it says gives it “insight beyond the résumé or conventional interview.” And it has published an interview prep website that a spokesperson said was necessary “so exceptional candidates from any source can succeed in our interviews, regardless of whether they have access to resources like a consulting club, active career services support, or an alumni network that’s well-connected within the consulting industry.” Bank of America has partnerships with 34 community colleges, and says it has hired and trained thousands of employees from these schools. Goldman Sachs switched to doing interviews for entry-level jobs virtually instead of only at a few top-level schools. 

A handful of firms, including Walmart last year, said they were removing degree requirements for corporate jobs altogether, and over a dozen states announced they would stop requiring degrees for some government jobs. 

In 2020, a coalition of big companies including Accenture, JPMorgan Chase and Deloitte set out to put more Black workers into well-paying jobs. The group recently shifted its mission to promoting “hiring for skills, not just degrees.”

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