Posts by Michelle Alvarez8

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How much do entry-level economists actually know? in Economy · Jan 24, 2009

Jeffrey Johnson2 said:It’s honestly wild that nobody’s calling this out yet—leaking data from a single test like that is straight-up unethical. It says everything you need to know about how "professional" the lady handling recruitment actually is. :-S

I bet one of those hundred idiots didn't even know who Bush was—and another probably thought some landmark in NYC was just as important as this lady up there. These "ethical journalists" are real pros, huh? Writing a total trash piece just to bash young people. If they were actually the standard for morality, then all of us with a degree from Harvard Business School should be embarrassed—not to mention those poor souls who actually sat through that testing.

Look, I finished at Harvard Business School and met a ton of people there—honestly, I can't wrap my head around how any of them wouldn't know the answers to the stuff in these articles. It’s basic general knowledge, let alone those "expert" questions about accounts.

And besides—the text doesn't even specify which business schools we're talking about here. Are these those fancy Ivy League management programs or just standard state universities?

Honestly, no University actually teaches you how to be a well-rounded person—they should be pushing students to go out and educate themselves, but that’s the real flaw in our education system. It lets you pass exams just by memorizing a few definitions, and frankly, some professors actually encourage that kind of rote learning. I'm speaking from experience here—I caught a ton of lower grades because I wouldn't just recite a textbook definition word-for-word. Instead, I actually tried to understand the material—always looking for real-world examples and extra context. I could write pages of analysis for an exam and still walk away with a C because the professor thought I was "overthinking" instead of giving the exact answer they wanted. Look, I never gave a damn about the GPA anyway. I left school with a massive amount of theoretical knowledge—some useful, some not—for the job I do now, and honestly? I’ve never found anything I learned to be useless. You can never have too much knowledge.

Look, I didn't hit up University thinking I'd walk out with a plug-and-play job manual—that's not how this works. A University is supposed to teach you how to actually think, not just act like some trade school. So yeah, I finished my degree with pretty much everything I wanted to get out of it. In the real world, I’ve never seen a gap in my skills because of my education—if anything, the "gap" is caused *by* the education. Honestly, I can't tell you how many times at school I'd drop something in conversation like, "Oh, I read about that in a study" or "I saw this in a book." I wasn't some genius or anything—just your average student who spent just as much time hitting the social scene as I did sitting in lectures—so I don't get why everyone's whining about "unprepared graduates."

I went through like 5 or 6 serious job assessments—always getting called back for interviews, too—but I never saw a single damn result until my last one. That was the one where I finally landed a role in my field. After grinding through a year of internship stuff, they actually showed me the scores and offered me a full-time position... honestly, they shouldn't be ashamed of those results—if anything, they should brag about them.

I was throwing my resume at companies I actually cared about—even when they didn't have openings posted—and guess what? It worked. Ended up landing a job where there wasn't even an official listing; they just pulled me straight from their "talent pool."

I’ve sent my resume over to Ernst & Young—specifically where this lady works—maybe two or three times now. Every single time, I hit every single qualification they asked for, yet nothing. Not even a "thanks but no thanks" canned email—just total radio silence. Their hiring criteria are a joke if they're letting people pass tests with results like that. Definitely adding them to my blacklist of places I wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole.

You make a great point about how they basically ran a research study under the guise of recruitment testing. Did you happen to graduate from Harvard Business School or something? 😬

OT: Personally, even more interesting than the sheer lack of knowledge is the number of people who actually walked away from the test. Talk about some bold moves. 🙏 🙏 🙏