Transcript
According to a study in the December issue of the American Sociological Review, employers are often more focused on hiring someone they would like to "hang out with" than they are on finding the person who can best do the job.
Of course, employers are looking for people who have the baseline of skills to effectively do the job. But, beyond that, employers really want people who they will bond with, who they will feel good around, and who will be their friend and maybe even their romantic partner. As a result, employers don't necessarily hire the most skilled candidates.
Titled, "Hiring as Cultural Matching: The Case of Elite Professional Service Firms," the study is based on 120 interviews with professionals involved in undergraduate and graduate hiring in the nation's top investment banks, law firms, and management consulting firms, as well as participant observation of a recruiting department.
The researchers conducted the interviews - 40 per industry - from 2006 through 2008, and the fieldwork within the recruiting department of an elite professional service firm over nine months in 2006 and 2007.
This is the first systematic, empirical investigation of whether shared culture between employers and job candidates matters in hiring. It found that evaluators at firms often valued their personal feelings of comfort, validation, and excitement over identifying candidates with superior cognitive or technical skills.
In fact, more than half of the evaluators in the study ranked cultural fit - the perceived similarity to a firm's existing employee base in leisure pursuits, background, and self-presentation - as the most important criterion at the job interview stage.
It is important to note that this does not mean employers are hiring unqualified people. However, employers frequently hire in a manner more closely resembling the choice of friends or romantic partners than how one might expect employers to select new workers.
When you look at the decision to date or marry someone, what you think about is commonalities. Do you have a similar level of education? Did you go to a similar caliber school? Do you enjoy similar activities? Are you excited to talk to each other? Do you feel the spark? These same things were salient to the employers studied.
The study also found that the cultural similarities valued at elite professional service firms have important socioeconomic dimensions. Evaluators are predominantly white, Ivy League-educated, upper-middle- or upper-class men and women who tend to have more stereotypically masculine leisure pursuits and favor extracurricular activities associated with people of their background.
Given that less-affluent students are more likely to believe that achievement in the classroom rather than on the field or in the concert hall matters most for future success and focus their energies accordingly, the types of cultural similarities valued in elite firms' hiring processes have the potential to create inequalities in access to elite jobs based on parental socioeconomic status.
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