Elite recruiters favor financially costly extracurriculars over traditional qualifications
Evidence
Professor Lauren Rivera of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University studied how elite investment banks, management consulting companies, and law firms recruit, and found a consistent bias toward “white, upper-middle-class culture.” Instead of judging candidates on traditionally analyzed labor market signals such as grades, standardized test scores, prior employer prestige, or prior work experience, recruiters emphasized extracurricular activities and prioritized those that involved significant financial investment. As a white male banker said about a candidate whose résumé expressed interest in community service: “I would ask him about the volunteering….Does he drive around with his mom with Meals on Wheels, or did he go to Costa Rica and build houses with Habitat for Humanity?” — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 376
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- SEED: The Costa Rica vs Meals on Wheels quote is a sharp illustration for an argument about class-filtering masquerading as merit.