The Pathway to the Elite Professional Services: Motivations and Fairness in Corporate Recruiting at Princeton

Abstract

The human resources practices of elite professional service firms have received significant sociological attention in recent years. While extensive ethnographic research has been conducted on these firms and their hiring practices, this supply-side view of the labor market leaves out the applicants’ perspective. Via interviews and content analysis, I analyze why Princeton students ultimately opt for a career in the professional services and also seek to identify student perceptions of fairness in the process. I find that employers, in general, place more emphasis on the social capital of white males than of any other demographic group. Women and minorities need to exhibit high intellectual capital, particularly with respect to quantitative analysis, whereas most white males had a larger portion of their interviews dedicated to “fit.” Ultimately, I suggest a look into partially algorithm-based human resources practices as a solution to the human bias inherent in the current recruiting process.