Understanding hiring signals, uncertainty, and why companies make decisions that candidates often disagree with.
TL;DR
- Companies don’t prefer IIT graduates because they believe they’re inherently better engineers. They use IIT as one of many signals to reduce uncertainty.
- Senior engineering roles often attract thousands of applications, making filters a practical necessity rather than a judgment on someone’s potential.
- As engineers gain experience, stronger signals such as previous employers, technical achievements, leadership, and reputation gradually replace educational background.
- Every hiring process involves trade-offs. The goal isn’t to build a perfect system but to make consistently better decisions with limited information.
- Whether or not you agree with using IIT as a hiring filter, understanding why companies rely on hiring signals leads to a more productive discussion about hiring.
Why This Question?
A few days ago, I shared a senior engineering role that listed an IIT degree as a preferred qualification. Most of the discussion that followed wasn’t about the role itself, but about a single question: Why do some companies still prefer IIT graduates for senior engineering roles after five or more years of experience?
It’s a fair question. Rather than responding to individual comments, I wanted to explain the broader thinking behind these decisions. This article isn’t about defending IIT-only hiring or suggesting that IIT graduates make better engineers. It’s about understanding how companies make hiring decisions when they have limited time, incomplete information, and thousands of applications to evaluate.
A Different Perspective on Hiring
My perspective comes from being on the hiring side of the table.
Since April 2024, I’ve been directly involved in hiring nearly 300 engineers across startups and product companies. Around 15% of those hires were IIT graduates. The rest came from NITs, IIITs, state universities, private colleges, and institutions that most people have probably never heard of.
I’ve rejected IIT graduates who weren’t the right fit and hired engineers from lesser-known colleges who exceeded every expectation. Those experiences reinforced one belief: great engineers come from everywhere.
The difficult part isn’t proving that exceptional talent exists outside a handful of institutions. The difficult part is identifying that talent consistently when thousands of applications arrive for a single role.
The Scale Most Candidates Never See
Candidates usually experience hiring one application at a time. Hiring teams experience it thousands of applications at a time.
A senior engineering role can easily receive 2,000 to 2,500 applications within a week. For popular remote roles, that number can be even higher. Every application deserves attention, but no hiring team has enough time to evaluate every candidate equally.
Even if reviewing a resume took only one minute, evaluating 2,200 applications would require more than 36 hours of uninterrupted work. That estimate doesn’t include interviews, debriefs, reference checks, stakeholder discussions, or offer negotiations.
At that scale, filters become unavoidable.
Companies don’t create hiring filters because they believe everyone outside those filters lacks ability. They create them because reducing thousands of applications to a manageable shortlist is impossible without some way of prioritizing candidates.
Why Companies Need Hiring Signals
Hiring is fundamentally a decision made under uncertainty.
A resume tells you where someone has worked, but not how much they contributed. An interview reveals how someone performs over an hour, not how they’ll perform over several years. References, technical assessments, and portfolios all help, but none of them remove uncertainty completely.
This is why companies rely on hiring signals.
A hiring signal is simply a piece of information that increases confidence in a decision. Previous employers, referrals, open source contributions, technical writing, leadership experience, and educational background can all serve as signals depending on the role.
The important point is that signals don’t guarantee success. They simply help companies make better decisions than they could with incomplete information alone.
Hiring Is a Game of Probabilities
Hiring is less about certainty and more about probability.
Imagine buying two used cars that look almost identical. One comes with complete service records while the other doesn’t. The second car may actually be in better condition, but most buyers would choose the first because it reduces uncertainty.
Hiring works in much the same way.
Companies aren’t trying to identify the single best engineer in the market. They’re trying to maximize the probability of making a successful hiring decision using the information available at the time.
Every hiring signal, including educational background, exists for that reason.
Where IIT Fits
So where does IIT fit into this picture?
An IIT degree is one hiring signal among many. It isn’t proof that someone is a better engineer, nor does it guarantee future success.
For decades, IITs have been one of India’s strongest engineering talent pipelines. Many graduates begin their careers in organizations known for rigorous hiring standards and strong engineering cultures. As a result, some companies continue to view an IIT degree as a proxy for experiences that they believe correlate with future success.
The important word here is proxy.
Companies aren’t optimizing for the degree itself. They’re using it as one of several indicators while making decisions under uncertainty.
Different companies value different signals. Some prioritize previous employers, others focus on technical interviews, domain expertise, or open source contributions. There is no universal hiring formula.
How Hiring Signals Change Over Time
Educational background is most valuable early in a career because there are relatively few other signals available.
As engineers gain experience, stronger signals naturally emerge. The systems they’ve built, the products they’ve shipped, the teams they’ve led, and the business impact they’ve created become much more meaningful than where they studied.
By the time someone reaches a senior engineering role, their body of work should speak much louder than their degree.
The goal isn’t for your college to remain your strongest signal forever.
The goal is to replace it with stronger ones.
Every Hiring Process Has Trade-offs
No hiring system is perfect.
Every company rejects candidates who would have become excellent employees, and every company hires people who don’t meet expectations after joining.
Hiring teams know this.
The objective isn’t to eliminate mistakes. That’s impossible.
The objective is to reduce them while balancing speed, fairness, business needs, and the practical limits of time.
Every hiring process is a series of trade-offs.
What Hiring Has Taught Me
If hiring nearly 300 engineers has taught me anything, it’s that talent is distributed far more evenly than opportunity.
I’ve seen exceptional engineers from IITs and exceptional engineers from colleges that rarely appear in hiring discussions.
Over time, the engineers who stand out aren’t remembered because of where they studied. They’re remembered because of the products they built, the problems they solved, the teams they influenced, and the reputation they earned.
That eventually becomes the strongest hiring signal anyone can have.
A Better Question
The debate often begins with the question:
“Why do companies still care about IIT?”
I think there’s a more useful question.
“What signal am I building today that will matter more than my college five years from now?”
That’s the question every engineer can answer.
Degrees open some doors. Careers are built by consistently creating value.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does experience matter more than an IIT degree?
In most cases, yes. As engineers gain experience, previous employers, technical achievements, leadership, and measurable impact become much stronger hiring signals than educational background.
Do all companies prefer IIT graduates?
No. Every company designs its hiring process differently. Some prioritize referrals, technical interviews, previous employers, or domain expertise instead.
Is an IIT degree a guarantee of success?
No. Like every hiring signal, it increases confidence in some situations but guarantees nothing about future performance.
Can engineers from Tier 2 or Tier 3 colleges build equally successful careers?
Absolutely. Over time, the quality of your work, your reputation, and your impact matter far more than where you studied.
Final Thoughts
College is one chapter of a career, not the entire story.
The longer you stay in the industry, the less people remember where you studied and the more they remember what you’ve built, how you’ve worked, and the impact you’ve had.
In the end, those are the signals that matter most.