'Pedigree: How Elite Students Get Elite Jobs'

Inside Higher Ed interviews the author of the new book, Pedigree: How Elite Students Get Elite Jobs, Lauren Rivera, “an associate professor of management and organizations at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.” She is also a graduate of both Harvard and Yale.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/05/27/qa-author-new-book-how-elite-students-get-elite-jobs

The problem is, Rivera showed that she had no clue how the recruiting process for MBB management consulting actually works.

So why don’t you enlighten us, @PurpleTitan? And please define “MBB” for the masses who aren’t in on the lingo.

McKinsey, BCG, and Bain.

An offer is dependent pretty much solely on how well you do in their case interviews. They do recruit at target undergraduate and b-schools (though PhDs from anywhere), so you’d want to go to those, but so long as you can get an interview, how well you do on cases is all that matters, not schmoozing or knowing the school fight song or whatever.

However, it looks like she is claiming that selection criteria for whom to interview is biased in favor of targeted elite admissions schools plus other factors that correlate to high SES background (e.g. lacrosse playing).

That’s funny…I had never heard of MBB even though I consulted at one of the firms and also managed recruiting. You learn something new every day.

I will echo that for the most part offers had nothing to do with what school the candidate went to. That said, recruiting DID tend to devote time/effort to the schools that provided a good stream of candidates (at the undergrad and MBA level…PhD was another animal entirely). It is all about return on resources deployed (as consulting recruiting is quite labor intensive and the labor employed is usually consulting talent that would otherwise be deployed with clients) and most of the name brand/high prestige schools proved over time to be the best places to spend time.

@ucbalumnus, the Street loves athletes but consulting firms, in general, could care less. It’s a bit annoying when an outsider conflates what 2 different industries tend to look for or their recruitment processes just because they recruit at mostly (but not entirely) the same set of schools.

BTW, a Wall Street trading floor is one of the most diverse places in the world. They try to get the most competitive smart people in the world and care absolutely zero about your background. Only PNL. And street-smarts are valuable there. Plenty from non-privileged backgrounds on a trading floor.

It’s always easier to let some other entity perform a pre-screen for you. It’s even better if you don’t have to pay them to do it. Indeed, colleges do the same thing for a lot of their admits.

I can chime in a bit too. I’ve hired almost a thousand people over my career and probably interviewed twenty thousand people. I haven’t read the book; however, several years ago I did read one of Rivera’s original research articles that seem to form the basis for the book. I can’t speak to law firms, but I can speak to its conclusions about hiring practices in other sectors. On the whole the observations were mostly silly. Almost anyone experienced in those industries would tell you that there are elements of truth but they have been so exaggerated and distorted that the picture it paints is pretty much false. There are definitely biases (unconscious or otherwise) and problems with every hiring process, but to me it seems like Rivera started with a conclusion that she thought would get her notoriety within the ranks of sociology faculty and then assembled anecdotal data to support it.

I think books like this tell you much more about the ideological biases of sociology professors than they do about the hiring practices of elite professional services firms for entry-level positions. You want to write an interesting sociology paper? I’d study the sociology of sociology professors. Survey their beliefs on a variety of questions that the public is evenly divided on. I’m sure you’ll find that sociologists as a class exhibit an unbelievable amount of ideological conformity – comparable to that of the Soviet ruling class after repeated Stalinist purges. To think that doesn’t mean they have substantial predilections for “finding” certain answers is silly, and the conclusions of many papers in the field should be viewed through that lens.

Definitely. One (now defunct) firm had an acronym for what they were looking for - PSD (“Poor”, “Smart”, “Deep Desire to become Rich”). The “Poor” was important because rich kids - due to their upbringing and the safety net they have - often aren’t motivated enough to become really successful.

Al2- profound point. I also hire for a living and after reading one of Rivera’s original articles my thought was “a little bit of this is quite accurate and the rest of it is garbage”.

Lacrosse? give me a break.

Fact- companies are not going to interview at 50 colleges for their entry level class if they can get their target numbers by interviewing at 20 schools. Fact- the “density” of smart, quantitatively oriented kids at schools like Stanford or MIT is higher than it is at U Conn or Stonehill. That doesn’t mean that employers are prejudiced against kids from U Conn or Stonehill. Fact- graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Yale will likely mean that a person’s reading comprehension, writing, and verbal skills are higher than someone who is graduating from Hofstra with a 3.0 GPA. That doesn’t mean that your kid who went to Hofstra is unemployable.

Rivera’s perspective on law firm hiring seems very pre-2008 IMHO.

Differences in opinion between university faculty and the general public are not limited to sociology faculty. For example, biology faculty likely show a high degree of ideological conformity on some subjects where the public is close to evenly divided on ([see here](http://www.gallup.com/poll/21814/evolution-creationism-intelligent-design.aspx)).

ucbalumnus - Nice bit of snark. I assume you grasp the difference between statements about facts and statements about values that people hold.

But fair enough. I will absolutely accept the conclusions of any sociology paper that manages to support its conclusions with even 10% of the weight of evidence that supports the theory of evolution. Wake me up in a couple centuries when you find one …

So the question isn’t whether I am a believer in the importance of rigorous research in establishing scientific results, but whether others are …

Did you even read the interview? She’s claiming that two kids from the SAME ELITE SCHOOL are not given equal consideration, based on the “signals of merit” they present with.

I’m not arguing her conclusions are accurate, but you’re mischaracterizing the point she’s trying to make.

The point she’s making is even more ludicrous.

The “signals of merit” vary tremendously among employers. Polish may be important for a client facing role at a bank- polish is irrelevant on that bank’s trading floor (believe me- I’ve worked on one. Fart jokes are considered high minded entertainment).

The idea that low income students are systematically excluded from the hiring process is factually incorrect, and her analysis that it’s because they have less polish or social capital is ridiculous. For every decision meeting I’ve conducted (or attended) where someone has eluded to “Came over on the Mayflower” or “Uber upbringing” when it’s come up in an interview, I could point to 50 such meetings where someone has lauded a self-made man/woman, commented on a kid who made it to Harvard NOT from Stuy or a magnet HS but from a regular old public HS in the Bronx, or had a discussion about a student’s entrepreneurial bent which began working the cash register at the family diner or bodega.

Back in the 1970’s when the social register types still ran parts of this country her conclusions may have held some validity. But she’s arguing with herself on this class/elitist stuff. Many elite employers prefer candidates who’ve held paying jobs- even the non-glamorous ones- throughout college for example- “Daddy got me an internship at Vogue” doesn’t carry much weight in a lot of industries.

Way to disregard an entire profession!

Honest question: Would you pass on any and all sociology majors when considering potential hires, even if the applicant is a Harvard-trained sociologist?

Here’s a link Laura Rivera’s vita: https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/directory/rivera_lauren.aspx#vita

Well, I’ll unpack that question into its component parts -

  1. I’m sure the fact that Laura Rivera has been educated at very good schools means she is very bright academically. However, the CV you linked to shows that her direct exposure to consulting was only as a very junior level employee and not as a decision maker in Monitor’s hiring process.

  2. Her educational credentials don’t impress me to the point that I’d be willing to accept her conclusions over the facts that I see with my own eyes everyday, nor should they. I work everyday with several people whose academic credential are as good as Rivera’s (modesty prohibits me from discussing my own academic CV, but suffice it to say that it might even be a small tick up from her’s on the prestigiosity scale). Trust me, we make plenty of mistakes - just ask my wife for a complete list :slight_smile:

  3. Given that one of Rivera’s papers points out the “snobbery” in some firm’s hiring practices since they mostly only do entry-level hiring from a small list of “elite” schools, I’m sure she’d find it ironic to use the “eliteness” of the institutions she attended as support for the correctness of her conclusions.

  4. No, I wouldn’t pass on all sociology majors when hiring just because they are sociology majors. It’s a matter of what job I’m hiring for and what qualifications the individual brings. However, at least at the undergraduate level, sociology isn’t the major one generally associates with the sharpest tools in the shed or with training in rigorous analysis. I don’t know of anyone who found sociology too hard and so had to switch their major to theoretical astrophysics :slight_smile: To be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever personally hired a sociology major, but that’s probably largely a function of the types of jobs that I am hiring for.

  5. Anyway, my diatribe wasn’t directed at the qualifications of sociologists like Rivera but rather at their revealed biases. Sociologists themselves view ideological conformity and its associated lack of intellectual diversity as directly leading to flawed conclusions and research. It’s certainly a point they raise often. I’m merely applying their own methods to the field of sociology itself. Or, said better than I can -

An alternative characterization might just be “interview skills.” I would tend to believe that socio-economic background influences interview skills. Not necessarily the vast group in the upper and middle class, but more so people from disadvantaged backgrounds. Four years at Harvard aren’t going to erase basic social differences between people from vastly different socio-economic backgrounds. The interviewer might not think, “this guy is from a rich family and played lacrosse,” but they might think, “this guy will be a good fit with the corporate culture.”

Re: “interview skills”

Other studies have indicated that attending a highly selective school is more beneficial for low SES background students (versus high SES background students), perhaps due to helping them socialize in upper and upper-middle class environments* which helps them in job interviews for jobs where current employees are mainly upper and upper-middle class.

*Many of the highly selective private schools have about half of their students not getting financial aid, which implies something like $200,000+ family income.

I believe that the most interesting and fulfilling and life-changing jobs are not the ones that hire only from X colleges…these types of careers are fading away…as even their top guys begin to realize how much more others are enjoying life (and doing well at it). So this is a fading-away sort of lifestyle…

That said, we do have a partner from a (well-known) law firm on our street…and there is only a handful of colleges that they will even consider…if you didn’t attend one of those 6 or 7 schools, it’s kind of a waste of time to apply.