Hiring a new leader? Forget looking at their work history or references. What matters most is where they went to school. If they aren’t alumni from an Ivy League or top-tier school, forget about ever hiring them to be a great leader.
Why? People gain instant credibility when they say they went to Harvard or Stanford. People know they are smart and hard workers. But people won’t take them seriously if they went to a lower-tier school.
When given a choice between hiring a manager who went to Dartmouth and one who went to a lower-level school like the University of California, Santa Cruz, the choice is clear: always pick the Ivy League graduate, no matter what. It looks bad for the company to have a leader who went to a no-name school. You don’t want people to think you’ll hire and promote just anyone, do you?
I remember one time I was interviewing a candidate for a potential leadership role and he told me he went to Georgetown University, I said “George who?” and promptly kicked him out of my office.
Companies can’t afford to gamble on a leader who went to a state school. Who knows what weird things that person learned at their non-Ivy League school? Those universities will accept and pass anyone, which means you don’t know if you are getting a great leader or someone who just scraped by. You need a graduate from a proven school.
Even researchers agree with me, stating that “the Ivy League-educated CEOs had led firms with higher market valuations and also had a greater ability to sustain that valuation than other CEOs in the group.” If you want your company to grow and stay successful, you have to hire an Ivy League grad.
Undergraduate programs at Ivy League schools select for general intelligence, analytical ability, social skills, and past achievements. In other words, they teach and reward the most in-demand leadership skills. These schools were made to develop powerful, skilled leaders. Take advantage by making their alums your new leader.
There’s a reason more than half of Fortune 100 CEOs went to private schools, and that’s because these top-tier schools create amazing leaders. Some of the world’s richest people went to Ivy League schools, such as Elon Musk at UPenn and Jeff Bezos at Harvard. Nearly half of all U.S. presidents went to Ivy League schools, and 8 out of 9 members of the U.S. Supreme Court went to Yale or Harvard. That college connection made them incredibly successful and the type of leader you want to hire in your company.
But it’s not only the skills students learn at top universities; it’s the network. Ivy League graduates have more power. The people they went to school with are valuable connections that can help the business grow.
Hiring a leader with ties to Yale or Princeton automatically connects your business to influential and rich people, which takes your business and your leader to the next level. You can’t break into these circles without an alumni connection. All it takes is a leader saying they went to an Ivy League school to have an instant network of people who will help your company grow.
If you want a smart, driven leader who can connect your company to a strong network, you must hire an Ivy League graduate. Nothing else matters on a person’s resume except where they went to school.
If you want the best company, hire from the best schools.
-The Outdated Leader
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Over the last 15 years, I’ve had the privilege of speaking and working with some of the world’s top leaders. Here are 15 of the best leadership lessons that I learned from the CEOs of organizations like Netflix, Honeywell, Volvo, Best Buy, The Home Depot, and others. I hope they inspire you and give you things you can try in your work and life. Get the PDF here.
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