463213
3213American Sociological ReviewRivera
2012
ASRXXX10.1177/000312241246
Hiring as Cultural Matching:
The Case of Elite Professional
Service Firms
American Sociological Review
77(6) 999–1022
© American Sociological
Association 2012
DOI: 10.1177/0003122412463213
http://asr.sagepub.com
Lauren A. Riveraa
Abstract
This article presents culture as a vehicle of labor market sorting. Providing a case study of hiring
in elite professional service firms, I investigate the often suggested but heretofore empirically
unexamined hypothesis that cultural similarities between employers and job candidates
matter for employers’ hiring decisions. Drawing from 120 interviews with employers as well
as participant observation of a hiring committee, I argue that hiring is more than just a process
of skills sorting; it is also a process of cultural matching between candidates, evaluators, and
firms. Employers sought candidates who were not only competent but also culturally similar to
themselves in terms of leisure pursuits, experiences, and self-presentation styles. Concerns about
shared culture were highly salient to employers and often outweighed concerns about absolute
productivity. I unpack the interpersonal processes through which cultural similarities affected
candidate evaluation in elite firms and provide the first empirical demonstration that shared
culture—particularly in the form of lifestyle markers—matters for employer hiring. I conclude by
discussing the implications for scholarship on culture, inequality, and labor markets.
Keywords
cultural capital, culture, hiring, homophily, inequality, interpersonal evaluation, labor markets
Over the past 40 years, there has been considerable debate about the role that culture plays
in labor market stratification. On the one
hand, status attainment and labor market
scholars have portrayed culture as peripheral
to occupational sorting (Blau and Duncan
1967; Tilly and Tilly 1998). On the other
hand, cultural sociologists contend that culture is an important basis on which valued
material and symbolic rewards—including
access to desirable jobs and occupations—are
distributed (Lareau and Weininger 2003).
Yet, little empirical scholarship investigates the role that culture plays in occupational attainment. One of the most crucial
moments in labor market stratification is the
decision to hire. As Bills (2003:442) notes,
“Ultimately . . . both attaining an occupational status and securing an income are contingent on a hiring transaction.” Although
scholars often hypothesize that cultural similarities between employers and job candidates
matter for employers’ decisions (Lamont
1992), systematic empirical research on the
role of culture in hiring is virtually nonexistent (Huffcutt 2011; Stainback, TomaskovicDevey, and Skaggs 2010).
a
Northwestern University
Corresponding Author:
Lauren A. Rivera, Northwestern University,
Management & Organizations Department,
2001 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208
E-mail: l-rivera@kellogg.northwestern.edu
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Providing a case study of elite professional
service firms, I investigate the often suggested but previously untested hypothesis that
cultural similarities—defined here as shared
tastes, experiences, leisure pursuits, and selfpresentation styles (Bourdieu 1984)—between
employers and job candidates matter for
employers’ hiring decisions. I find that hiring
is more than just a process of skills sorting; it
is also a process of cultural matching between
candidates, evaluators, and firms. Employers
sought candidates who were not only competent but also culturally similar to themselves.
Concerns about shared culture were highly
salient to employers and often outweighed
concerns about productivity alone. I introduce three interpersonal processes through
which cultural similarities affected candidate
evaluation and provide the first empirical
demonstration that shared culture—particularly in the form of lifestyle markers—matters for employer hiring.
HOW EMPLOYERS HIRE
Hiring is a powerful way in which employers
shape labor market outcomes. Hiring practices
are gatekeeping mechanisms that facilitate
career opportunities for some groups, while
blocking entry for others. As an entry point to
occupations and income brackets, hiring is a
critical site of economic stratification and
social closure (Elliot and Smith 2004).
Sociologists typically depict employer hiring as a matching process between organizational characteristics, job demands, and
applicants’ skills (Tilly and Tilly 1998).
Although too voluminous to review here (and
excellently summarized elsewhere), researchers commonly portray employers’ hiring decisions as stemming from estimates of
candidates’ human capital (i.e., hard and soft
skills), social capital (i.e., social connections),
and demographic characteristics; residual
variance is typically attributed to a combination of discrimination and error (for a review,
see Pager and Shepherd 2008). However,
despite a surge of research on employers over
the past 30 years, our knowledge of hiring
American Sociological Review 77(6)
remains incomplete. Even after accounting
for measures of applicants’ human capital,
social capital, and demographic traits, models
of employer hiring still exhibit significant
unexplained variance. Consequently, much of
what drives employer decision-making is still
a mystery to scholars (Heckman and Siegelman 1993).
I argue that much of this gap can be attributed to methodological and data limitations.
The bulk of sociological research on hiring
uses quantitative data on either (1) individuals who enter an organization or (2) pre-hire/
post-hire comparisons that are unable to
explore how hiring decisions are actually
made (Fernandez and Weinberg 1997). Additionally, research is often constrained to easily observable individual-, organizational-, or
industry-level information derived from
employment records or public data. However,
to fully understand how employers hire, it is
necessary to study the process of decisionmaking itself, analyzing how employers evaluate, compare, and select new hires. Doing so
can reveal more subtle factors that contribute
to employers’ decisions and can illuminate
new mechanisms (Gross 2009) that produce
hiring outcomes.
BRINGING CULTURE BACK IN
When studying employer hiring, scholars
typically analyze individual, organizational,
or institutional factors (Pager and Shepherd
2008). However, hiring involves more than
just candidates, companies, and contexts; it is
also a fundamentally interpersonal process.
Job interviews are crucial components of hiring in many industries; subjective impressions of candidates that employers develop
through interviews are strong drivers of hiring decisions, often carrying more weight
than candidates’ résumé qualifications
(Graves and Powell 1995). Still, sociologists
typically analyze pre- or post-interview
aspects of hiring. In light of this, several
scholars have called for more attention to the
interpersonal dimensions of hiring (Roscigno
2007; Stainback et al. 2010).
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The literature on interpersonal dynamics
shows that similarity is one of the most powerful drivers of attraction and evaluation in
micro-social settings (Byrne 1971), including
job interviews (Huffcutt 2011). Although hiring research has examined similarities in sex
and race, similarities in tastes, experiences,
leisure pursuits, and self-presentation styles
also serve as potent sources of interpersonal
attraction and stratification (Lareau and Weininger 2003; Wimmer and Lewis 2010). Seeking out commonalities in knowledge,
experience, and interests is typically the first
thing two people do upon meeting (Gigone and
Hastie 1993). Discovering such similarities
serves as a powerful emotional glue that facilitates trust and comfort, generates feelings of
excitement, and bonds individuals together
(Collins 2004; DiMaggio 1987; Erickson
1996). In fact, the original articulations of the
similarity-attraction hypothesis in psychology
(Byrne 1971) and the homophily principle in
sociology (Lazarsfeld and Merton 1954) posited that cultural similarities yield attraction.
However, cultural similarities are more
than just sources of liking; they are also fundamental bases on which we evaluate merit
(DiMaggio 1987; Lamont and Molnar 2002).
Early scholars, including Weber (1958) and
Veblen (1899), argued that similarities in leisure pursuits, experiences, self-presentation,
and other “lifestyle markers” serve as badges
of group membership and bases of inclusion
or exclusion from desirable social opportunities. In fact, Weber suggested that lifestyle
markers are fundamental bases of status group
reproduction and social closure.
Indeed, consciously or not, gatekeepers may
use cultural similarities when evaluating others
and distributing valued rewards. For example,
in a classic study of interviews between college
counselors and community college students,
Erickson and Schultz (1981) found that establishing similarity was critical for whether a
counselor believed a student had potential for
future success and delivered a positive recommendation. Co-membership could occur on
various lines, but similarities in experience and
culture were most crucial. More recently,
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Lamont (2009) found that scholars were more
likely to recommend proposals for prestigious
academic fellowships that were topically similar to their own research interests. Such patterns
have implications not only for immediate
access to material and social rewards but also
for longer term educational, economic, and
social trajectories (DiMaggio and Mohr 1985).
Although plentiful, research on culture and
stratification disproportionately focuses on
investigating shared culture in educational settings (for a review, see Stevens, Armstrong,
and Arum 2008). Missing in this literature is
an examination of whether shared culture matters after graduation, when students with similar credentials compete for jobs in the labor
market. Employer hiring is a particularly clear
example of the stratifying power of shared
culture. We can see whether students cash in
displays of cultural signals for monetary
rewards in the form of desirable jobs and salaries; that is, whether cultural similarity has an
economic conversion value (Bourdieu 1986)
in job markets, a proposition often hypothesized but not yet analyzed empirically (Bills
2003). Given that qualities we use to evaluate
others are context specific (Lamont 1992), one
cannot assume that shared culture works identically in the classroom as in the interview
room; both warrant empirical attention.
Just as cultural sociologists have not yet
systematically studied hiring, hiring scholars
have under-theorized culture. The majority of
sociological research on hiring focuses on
how employers estimate applicants’ hard skills
and, in particular, cognitive skills; studies that
look at noncognitive traits most frequently
examine those hypothesized to directly affect
productivity, such as soft skills (Farkas 2003).1
Applicants’ displays of cultural signals and
lifestyle markers are typically classified as
nonproductive and thus have received minimal empirical attention (Tilly and Tilly 1998).
Although hiring studies often recognize that
similarity is an important driver of candidate
selection, research focuses almost exclusively on
analyzing similarities in sex or race (Elliot and
Smith 2004; Gorman 2005). Part of this focus
may be due to data limitations—information
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about underlying tastes and experiences can be
difficult to obtain, let alone quantify (Stevens
2008). Additionally, scholars often portray
demographic similarities as proxies for shared
culture. Although culture and structure are mutually reinforcing (Sewell 1992), and structural
position, including sex and race, strongly influences the content of one’s cultural toolkit
(Swidler 1986), considerable variation in values,
experience, and behavior exists within demographic groups (Lamont and Small 2008). Consequently, it is necessary to consider not only
similarities in demography but also similarities
in culture and experience between employers
and prospective employees (Turco 2010; Wilson
1997).
Finally, some hiring research assumes that
sex and race similarities trump all other commonalities. Although similarities in sex and
race are powerful sources of interpersonal
attraction and evaluation, over the past 25
years psychologists have confirmed Tajfel
and Turner’s (1986) hypothesis that in-group
and out-group preferences are variable; a
robust literature reveals important moderators
of demographic in-group preference (see Ely
1995). In hiring, studies of sex and race similarities between employers and applicants
show inconsistent effects, ranging from positive to negative to nil (Huffcutt 2011).
In light of this, scholars have called for
research analyzing how similarities other than
sex and race influence labor market sorting
(Castilla 2011).2 As noted earlier, one particularly powerful source of interpersonal attraction
and evaluation is shared culture. Although
important in many settings, cultural similarities
are likely to be especially important in hiring.
Psychologists have shown that perceived similarity helps moderate the effect of actual similarity on attraction. The subjective belief that
another is similar to the self on one or more
dimensions that the individual values in a particular context is crucial for understanding patterns of interpersonal attraction (Tajfel and
Turner 1986).3 Subjective impressions of similarity are particularly consequential in one-onone settings where interactions are personalized,
enduring, and based on more information than
what is visible (Montoya, Horton, and Kirchner
American Sociological Review 77(6)
2008), such as in job interviews. In fact, perceived similarity is thought to be more important than actual similarity in the decision to hire
(Graves and Powell 1995). A critical source of
perceived similarity is shared culture (Lamont
and Molnar 2002).
Nevertheless, sociological research on hiring typically sidelines shared culture as a
basis of employers’ decisions. Indeed, there
are whispers of cultural similarity in the hiring literature. A small number of qualitative
case studies—perhaps most notably Neckerman and Kirschenman’s (1991) study of
urban employers—hypothesize that shared
culture between employers and applicants
may shape employers’ decisions.4 DiMaggio
(1992:127) even goes so far as to call organizational recruitment a “cultural matching”
process. Despite the fact that shared culture
between superiors and subordinates is salient
for inclusion and exclusion once on the job
(Erickson 1996; Roth 2006; Turco 2010),
cultural factors are typically bracketed as
nonproductive or unobservable in hiring studies and are excluded from analysis (Pager,
Western, and Bonikowski 2009).
To the best of my knowledge, this article
presents the first systematic, empirical investigation of whether shared culture between
employers and job candidates matters in hiring.
Through a case study of elite professional service firms, I seek to (1) extend sociological
research on culture and stratification beyond
educational settings to the domain of labor markets, and (2) observe what hiring scholars have
typically considered unobservable. My goal is
not to develop an alternative theory of hiring—
cultural similarities certainly work in conjunction with human capital, social capital, and
discrimination—but rather to illuminate one
important but understudied dimension of hiring,
with the aim of more accurately modeling reality from the perspective of employers.
CASE SELECTION
Wall Street versus Main Street
I analyze hiring in elite professional service
firms.5 Although a focus on elite employers
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constrains generalizability, it also offers distinct
theoretical advantages. First, the majority of
hiring studies focus on low-wage or low-skill
labor markets. Such analyses are very important, but inequality is driven by privilege as
well as disadvantage. To fully understand how
employers contribute to economic stratification, it is also necessary to understand entry to
highly paid and prestigious job tracks.
Analyzing access to elite jobs is particularly
important given that the top 10 percent of
income earners has disproportionately driven
economic inequality in the United States in
recent decades (Saez 2008). Because hiring
practices tend to be labor-market specific (Bills
2003), they may differ between Wall Street and
Main Street; both warrant empirical attention.
Second, elite professional service firms are
a fertile ground for analyzing cultural similarities in hiring. Entry-level professional
positions typically require a prestigious university credential, and these employers solicit
the majority of applications directly through
university career centers rather than through
informal networks. Applicant pools are thus
pre-screened, minimizing many traditional
structural and status differences between
applicants. Studying this labor market thus
provides unique opportunities to analyze cultural similarities between job applicants and
evaluators in the absence of stark differences
in applicants’ human or social capital.
Third, elite employers are a particularly fruitful case for examining cultural similarities in
hiring. Cultural qualities tend to be more salient
in settings where differences in quality are minimized (Lamont 2009) and among elites (Lamont
1992). Thus, even if focusing on elite employers
is less generalizable, it allows for analysis of
culture under the microscope. Although a focus
on elites may magnify the relative importance of
cultural similarities in hiring, it can also reveal
important insights about the role of shared culture in hiring at a level of granularity that may be
inaccessible in other settings.
Elite Professional Service Firms
I analyze hiring for entry-level professional
positions in elite investment banks, law firms,
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Table 1. Typical Entry-Level Compensation
by Field and Degree
First Year
Total Annual
Compensationa
Law Firm
JD
Investment Bank
BA
MBA/JD/PhD
Consulting Firm
BA
MBA/JD/PhD
$175–330Kb
$70–150K
$150–350K
$70–100K
$135–200K
Sources: Management Consulted (2012); National
Association of Legal Professionals (2011); Wall
Street Oasis (2012)
a
Starting salaries are standardized by firm and
do not vary by a candidate’s alma mater, grades,
or prior work experience. These figures include
base salary, annual performance bonus, and
signing bonuses; they exclude relocation expense
bonuses, which vary by firm.
b
Only one law firm matches employees’ base
salary in bonus; most firms are closer to the
lower end of this range.
and management consulting firms. These
firms share important similarities.
Rewards. Jobs in these firms hold unparalleled economic rewards for young employees.
Joining one of these firms catapults recent graduates into the top 10 percent of household
incomes in the United States (see Table 1). These
salaries are double to quadruple amounts earned
by graduates from the same universities entering
other jobs in the same year (Guren and Sherman
2008; Zimmerman 2009). Additionally, because
jobs early in the life course play a critical role in
shaping future economic and occupational trajectories (Blau and Duncan 1967), and doing
time within these firms is increasingly required
for senior positions within the government and
nonprofit sectors as well as other corporations
(Kalfayan 2009), these jobs can be thought of as
contemporary gateways to the U.S. economic
elite. Consequently, the stakes for applicants are
high.
Work. Entry-level professionals execute a
combination of research, teamwork, and client
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interaction; analytic and interpersonal skills are
key job requirements. Across firm type, professionals work with similar (if not the exact same)
clients, usually large corporations. Professionals face tight deadlines and highly demanding
work schedules (65+ hours per week).
Recruitment. Firms hire the bulk of new
professional employees through annual, oncampus recruitment programs operated with
career-services offices at elite universities.
Firms seek to create an incoming class of new
hires that enter the firm as a group and undergo
intensive on-the-job training and professional
socialization together. Firms identify a set of
universities—typically through national prestige rankings—where they accept résumés and
interview candidates. At these campuses, any
student may apply. Competition is largely
closed to students who do not attend prestigious
schools (Rivera 2011). After an initial résumé
screen,6 usually based on a grade floor and
extracurriculars, firms choose a subgroup of
applicants for first-round interviews where
applicants meet with one or two employees for
20 to 45 minutes. Firms typically interview
dozens of candidates from a single school backto-back in a campus career center or nearby
hotel. It is crucial to note that candidates are
interviewed by revenue-generating professionals (rather than human resources [HR]
representatives) who have undergone minimal
training in interviewing and could potentially
work closely with candidates hired. Applicants
who receive favorable evaluations in firstround interviews participate in a final round of
three to six back-to-back interviews either on
campus or in the firm’s office. Recruiting committees typically weigh interviews more heavily
than résumés in final offer decisions.
Candidates. These firms attract similar
applicant pools. The majority of students at
top-tier undergraduate and professional
schools apply for these jobs.7 Elite undergraduates frequently debate between entering
banking, consulting, or law school upon graduation; business school and law school
students often apply simultaneously to banks
American Sociological Review 77(6)
and consulting firms; and newly minted JDs
increasingly seek employment in banks and
consulting firms (Leonhardt 2011; Rimer
2008).
Despite these similarities, these firms also
display differences, enabling consideration of
sources of variation in hiring evaluations.
Work. Although work in all settings entails
similar skills, new consultants generally have
the greatest amount of teamwork and client
contact; new lawyers have the least. Additionally, consulting and investment banking entail
more quantitative analysis than does law.
Such differences can illuminate links between
job requirements and the role of cultural similarity in hiring.
Interview format. Law firm interviews
focus exclusively on testing candidates’ interpersonal skills through informal conversation.
Banks follow a similar format but also test
candidates’ basic familiarity with financial
principles. Although such probes are typically
rudimentary (e.g., “What is NASDAQ?”
“How do you value a company?”), they incorporate a basic level of job-relevant knowledge
into interviews. Consulting firms employ the
most technical evaluations, consisting of a
brief conversational interview, similar to those
in banks and law firms, followed by a 20- to
30-minute case in which interviewers describe
a hypothetical business problem and ask applicants to talk about how they might solve it.
Such variation enables analysis of whether
there are links between interview formats and
the role of cultural similarity in hiring.
METHODS
To investigate the role of cultural similarity in
hiring, I conducted interviews and participant
observation. Because this article focuses on the
evaluation process and evaluators’ subjective
impressions of candidates, I draw heavily from
the interviews—which are particularly suited
to the study of subjective interpretations and
social processes (Yin 2003)—but use fieldwork to supplement participants’ narratives.
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Interviews
Participant Observation
From 2006 to 2008, I conducted 120 interviews with professionals involved in undergraduate and graduate hiring in top-tier firms8
(40 per industry). Participants included hiring
partners, managing directors, mid-level
employees who conduct interviews and screen
résumés, and HR managers. I recruited participants through stratified sampling from
public directories of recruiting contacts, university alumni directories, and multi-sited
referral chains (see Part I, section C, in the
online supplement [http://asr.sagepub.com/
supplemental]). Because elite populations are
often difficult to access, referrals and my university and prior corporate affiliations were
helpful in gaining consent and building rapport with participants. Interviews lasted 40 to
90 minutes, took place at the time and location
of participants’ choosing, and were taperecorded and transcribed word-for-word when
participants consented. Following Lamont’s
(2009) protocol for probing evaluative criteria, I asked evaluators specific questions about
the qualities they looked for and about recent
interviewees. Additionally, I asked evaluators
who screened résumés to verbally evaluate a
set of mock candidate résumés. I constructed
résumés that were somewhat standard for
these firms—all had attended selective universities, met firms’ grade floor, and were
involved in extracurriculars. The mock candidates, however, varied by sex, ethnicity, educational prestige, GPA, prior employer, and
extracurriculars (see Part V in the online supplement). Because more than one characteristic varied between résumés, profiles were not
intended to be an experimental manipulation
but rather a launching point for discussion to
illuminate processes of evaluation in real time.
Qualitative research is a social endeavor,
so it is possible that my identity influenced
the tone of interviews. I am an Ivy Leagueeducated female from a mixed ethno-religious
background, which may have primed respondents to emphasize high-status cultural practices (which they did) and favor diversity
(which they did not).
Over nine months in 2006 and 2007, I conducted fieldwork within the recruiting department of one elite professional service firm,
which I refer to by the pseudonym Holt
Halliday, or simply Holt. My role was that of a
participant observer. Given my prior professional experience, I was brought on through a
personal connection as an unpaid “recruiting
intern” to help execute recruitment events. In
exchange, Holt granted me permission to
observe its recruitment process for research
purposes. During these months, I shadowed
evaluators through full-time and summer associate recruitment from an elite professional
school. Due to institutional review board (IRB)
restrictions and Holt’s request, I was unable to
sit in on interviews. However, I attended
recruitment events, interacted with candidates,
debriefed evaluators about candidates after
interviews, and sat in on group deliberations
where candidates were discussed and ultimately selected.9 In addition to informing my
interview protocol, such observation enabled
examination of candidate selection in action
and could reveal patterns outside the awareness of evaluators. Although I did not observe
interviews directly, witnessing how employers
discussed candidates and ultimately made
decisions behind closed doors provided crucial
insights into the hiring process. How we interpret events plays a critical role in orienting
action (Turner and Stets 2006). Similarly,
evaluators record subjective impressions—not
objective details—of interactions on written
interview reports and use these narratives to
argue for or against candidates in hiring committee deliberations. These subjective impressions are the most important determinant of
interview evaluations (Graves and Powell
1995). Although I observed only one firm,
these data represent a starting point for understanding basic features of the hiring process.
Data Analysis
I developed coding categories inductively and
refined them in tandem with data analysis
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American Sociological Review 77(6)
Percent of Interviewees Who Used
Each Process in Evaluation
100%
N = 117
N = 107
80%
N = 94
60%
40%
20%
0%
Organization Driven
Cognitively Driven
Affectively Driven
Types of Processes
Figure 1. Relative Prevalence of the Processes through Which Cultural Similarities Affected
Candidate Evaluation (N = 120)
Note: The graph refers to the percent of participants who spontaneously used cultural similarity in a
particular way when evaluating any candidate (i.e., recently interviewed, ideal, or mock profile) in
research interviews.
(Charmaz 2001). In primary coding rounds, I
coded mentions of any criteria or process
participants used to evaluate candidates in my
interview transcripts and field notes. I did not
set out to analyze cultural similarities. In fact,
I originally intended to study gender in hiring.
However, after noticing the high frequency
with which employers used similarity as a
basis of evaluation, I developed secondary
codes to capture the role of similarity in hiring, specifically codes referring to (1) types
of similarities employers used in evaluation,
(2) meanings employers attributed to particular similarities, and (3) how employers used
similarities in evaluation. I followed a similar
procedure to code instances when similarities
(or a lack thereof ) inhibited evaluation. Next,
I compared evaluators’ biographic and demographic information obtained in conversations with their discussions of the relative
importance of particular qualities for points
of concordance and discordance. Finally, I
quantified and compared code frequencies
using the data analysis software ATLAS.ti.
HIRING AS CULTURAL
MATCHING
Cultural similarities were highly salient to
employers in hiring. Perhaps surprisingly,
similarity was the most common mechanism
employers used to assess applicants at the job
interview stage.10 Similarities in extracurricular/leisure pursuits, experiences, and selfpresentation styles were most commonly
used. I argue that cultural similarities affected
candidate evaluation through three processes:
(1) organizational processes encouraging
selection on cultural fit; (2) cognitive processes, whereby similarities contributed to
greater understanding and valuation of candidates’ qualifications; and (3) affective processes, whereby similarities generated
excitement and increased the likelihood that
evaluators would fight for candidates in deliberations. As illustrated in Figure 1, organizational processes were most prevalent.
ORGANIZATIONAL
PROCESSES: FITTING IN AS
FORMAL CRITERION
In these firms, cultural similarity is a formal
evaluative criterion structured into candidate
screening and selection. Law firm partner
Omar11 (black, male) explained, “In our new
associates, we are first and foremost looking
for cultural compatibility. Someone who . . .
will fit in.” This notion of cultural fit,12 or
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perceived similarity to a firm’s existing
employee base in leisure pursuits, background,
and self-presentation, was a key driver of
evaluation across firms. Evaluators described
fit as being one of the three most important
criteria they used to assess candidates in job
interviews; more than half reported it was the
most important criterion at the job interview
stage, rating fit over analytical thinking and
communication.13 Although this number may
seem high, firms mandated that evaluators
assess candidates’ fit along with a variety of
technical and communication skills in résumé
screens and first- and second-round job interviews. Consequently, even evaluators who
weren’t personally fond of fit, like consultant
Priya (Indian, female), frequently reported
using it in assessment. Priya explained, “I
don’t think [fit] should be [a consideration] at
all, it seems to me a very [shakes her head]
American thing. But it’s what [firms] want, so
it’s what you do.”
Management scholars have discussed the
benefits of hiring based on matches between
candidates’ skills and those required by jobs
(Cable and Judge 1997). Additionally, following the cultural turn in management, many
employers use organizational culture as a way
of motivating employees. Strong cultures are
often seen as enhancing organizations’ productivity, profitability, and creativity (Barley
and Kunda 1992). Consequently, some scholars advocate selecting new hires based on fit
between an organization’s culture—defined
as the shared values that delineate appropriate
workplace behavior—and applicants’ stable
personality traits (e.g., extroversion versus
introversion) and work values (e.g., a preference for independent versus collaborative
work).14 Such matches can enhance employee
satisfaction, performance, and retention
(Chatman 1991).
However, the notion of fit evaluators in
this study used differs from this conception
because here it typically referred to individuals’ play styles—how applicants preferred to
conduct themselves outside the office—rather
than their work styles. Moreover, evaluators
distinguished fit from the communication
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skills required in client-facing professions,
which they grouped into the separate category
of “polish” or “presence.” Consultant Eugene
(Asian American, male) fleshed out the distinction between fit and client skills:
When you are judging someone [to see] if
you want to put him in front of a client, the
question is do they conduct themselves professionally. . . . You need someone who
speaks in a way that earns your trust, who
presents their opinion respectfully but also
convincingly. . . . But in terms of “fit,” it’s
someone that we want on our case team. . . .
You want someone that makes you feel
comfortable, that you enjoy hanging out
with, can maintain a cool head when times
are tough and make tough times kind of fun.
Moreover, unlike fit, evaluators believed client skills could be taught or “coached.”
Why did evaluators and firms prioritize
cultural fit? When explaining the importance
of fit to me, evaluators cited the time-intensive nature of their work. With the long hours
spent in the office or on the road, they saw
having culturally similar colleagues as making rigorous work weeks more enjoyable,
although not necessarily more productive or
successful. Law firm partner Vivian (white,
female) explained, “When I hire an associate,
what I want to know is, is this person someone I could be sitting across the table from at
2 a.m. when trying to get a brief done?”
Because of hefty time commitments, coworkers often by default became an employee’s primary social network. Consequently,
evaluators at all levels of seniority reported
wanting to hire individuals who would not
only be competent colleagues but also held
the potential to be playmates or even friends.
Consultant Lance (Asian American, male)
described this position:
It seems like we’re always at work. We work
nights; we work weekends; we are pretty
much in the office or traveling. It’s way
more fun if the people around you are your
friends. So, when I’m interviewing, I look
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for people . . . I’d want to get to know and
want to spend time with, even outside of
work . . . people I can be buddies with.
Additionally, evaluators frequently perceived work in their firms as requiring only
minimal specialized skills; they commonly
described their work as “not rocket science”
and cited the extensive training given to new
hires as minimizing the importance of prior
technical knowledge for job success. Therefore, once candidates passed an initial screen,
most commonly based on educational prestige, fit was typically given more weight than
grades, coursework, or work experience even
in first-round interviews. Banker Nicholae
(white, male) explained his justification for
emphasizing fit:
A lot of this job is attitude, not aptitude . . .
fit is really important. You know, you will
see more of your co-workers than your wife,
your kids, your friends, and even your
family. So you can be the smartest guy ever,
but I don’t care. I need to be comfortable
working everyday with you, then getting
stuck in an airport with you, and then going
for a beer after. You need chemistry. Not
only that the person is smart, but that you
like him.
Consequently, evaluators saw selecting culturally similar candidates as a way to increase
their personal enjoyment at work.
Even so, recall that fit was not merely a
personalized criterion but also a formal one
embedded in official recruitment policies.
When asked to describe why fit was formally
structured into candidate evaluation, participants most often discussed the concept in
relation to retention. These firms experience
significant turnover. Most new hires will
leave within four years of being hired; a significant proportion will leave after only two
years. This attrition is structured into the promotion systems of many elite professional
service firms. Many employees opt-out,
though, seeking jobs in other firms or industries that exhibit better work-life balance, more
American Sociological Review 77(6)
intellectually stimulating work, or, in the case
of hedge funds and private equity firms,
greater financial rewards. Firms thus try to
minimize attrition by using fit as a selection
tool. Culturally similar candidates were perceived as more likely to enjoy their jobs, be
enjoyed by their co-workers, and stay longer.
Banking director Mark (white, male) confessed, “We try to hedge our bets. Through
the recruiting process, we want to find those
people . . . who will fit in so that once they get
here, they will not leave.” In the face of high
turnover, employers also saw creating a tightknit workplace of like-minded people as a
selling point to keep attracting new applicants. Annual recruitment presentations held
on elite campuses to solicit applications
emphasized that new employees would not
just enter a prestigious, lucrative career track
but also acquire—in the words of a Holt managing partner in his address to a packed hotel
ballroom during one presentation I observed—
a “lifelong network of close friends.”
MEASURING CULTURAL FIT
Employers strongly emphasized selecting
candidates who were culturally similar to
existing employees. But precisely how did
they evaluate fit? In this section, I discuss the
two most common methods.
Cultural Similarity to Firm
A majority of evaluators described firms as
having not only particular organizational cultures (e.g., interdependent versus independent) but also distinct personalities, derived
from the typical extracurricular interests and
self-presentation styles of their employees.
They contrasted “sporty” and “fratty” firms
with those that were “egghead” or “intellectual.” Some companies were “white-shoe” or
“country club,” while others were “gruff ” or
“scrappy.” Evaluators who believed a common personality characterized employees in
their firm frequently looked for candidates
who fit this image. Consulting partner Grace
(white, female) said, “We want people who fit
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not only the way we do things but who we
are.” Although HR managers emphasized that
achieving gender and racial heterogeneity
were recruiting priorities, and elite professional service firms devote significant
resources to increasing the demographic
diversity of applicant pools (Rivera 2012),
HR managers believed that achieving a baseline of cultural similarity represented a
recruitment success. Law firm hiring manager Judy (white, female) boasted:
We have a weekend getaway for our new
summer associates their first week here.
When one of our summers got back the next
week, he said to me, “We’re all so different
in our different ways but you can tell we
were all recruited to come to [FIRM]
because we all have the same personalities.
It’s clear like we’re all the same kind of
people.”
In essence, firms sought surface-level (i.e.,
demographic) diversity in applicant pools but
deep-level (i.e., cultural) homogeneity in new
hires (Phillips, Northcraft, and Neale 2006).15
Although firms already constrain applicants’ cultural characteristics by restricting
on-campus recruiting to elite universities
(Stevens 2007), evaluators further screened
résumés based on the presence or absence of
similarities in extracurricular interests
between applicants and firm employees.
When applying to these firms via on-campus
recruiting, students must follow a standardized résumé format that lists not only educational and work experiences but also formal
and informal extracurricular pursuits.
Whether someone rock climbs, plays the
cello, or enjoys film noir may seem trivial to
outsiders, but these leisure pursuits were crucial for assessing whether someone was a
cultural fit. In the face of large volumes of
candidates with decent grades at prestigious
schools, firms used such “fine distinctions”
(Stevens 2007) to screen résumés and compile interview pools.16 For example, legal
hiring manager Mary (white, female) rejected
mock candidate Blake, who had grades that
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met her “scrappy” firm’s grade floor and relevant work experience (which is rare for law
students), based on perceived extracurricular
misfit. In a noticeable regional accent, she
said, “I’m looking at the interests [on his
résumé]—lacrosse, squash, crew [laughs].
I’m sort of giving him a personality type here,
and I don’t think he’s going to fit in well here
. . . we’re more rough and tumble. . . . I’m
going to let him go.” Just as these sports were
seen as a deterrent to fit in her firm, these
same activities were seen as evidence of a
match in others. For example, “white-shoe”
investment bank HR manager Kelly (white,
female), dressed in a buttoned, pastel cardigan and pearls, asserted, “I’d have to pick
Blake and Sarah. With his lacrosse and her
squash, they’d really get along . . . on the trading floor.” There was even a firm for people
who lacked “personality” as defined by extracurricular pursuits. Monotone-sounding attorney Paul (white, male) explained, “We don’t
really like people here to have outside interests. We’re kind of a boring firm in that way.
So, honestly, when I see people who have a
lot of activities on their résumé, or if they
seem to have a really strong passion for
something outside of work, I’ll usually take a
pass because it’s not going to be a good fit.”
In addition to influencing résumé screens,
perceptions of fit via similarity to firm
employees also affected interview evaluations, as I observed first-hand at Holt. When
arguing against inviting a candidate (white,
male) back for a second-round interview,
manager Hans (white, male) explained, “He
did well on the case and was very articulate.
He’s a very interesting guy with a good story.
But I think he’s too intellectual for [FIRM].
You know, he is very into 18th-century literature and avant-garde film. . . . [sighed ] I don’t
think he’d be a good fit.” The candidate was
not invited back. Interviewers also rejected
candidates whom they perceived as more
similar to the self-presentation style of other
firms. For example, to justify his decision for
rejecting one candidate (white, male), manager Mayank (Indian American, male) said
matter-of-factly, “He’s very gregarious . . .
1010
kind of a frat boy . . . I think he’s more of a
[FIRM] person.” Evaluators thus selected
candidates who fit the extracurriculars and
self-presentation styles typical of a firm’s
employees.
Cultural Similarity to Self
A second way evaluators assessed fit was by
using the self as a proxy. The logic underlying
this method of evaluating fit was that an
evaluator represented the firm and its personality. If an applicant fit with the evaluator, then
the applicant would fit with other employees.
Attorney Carlos (Hispanic, male) explained,
“You . . . use yourself to measure [fit] because
that’s all you have to go on.” Whereas measuring fit by the degree of similarity between
candidates’ lifestyle markers and firm personality was more common in résumé screens,
using the self as proxy was more common in
first- and second-round interviews.
Evaluators likened ascertaining fit in interviews to selecting romantic partners. Attorney Beverley (white, female) explained, “The
best way I could describe it is like if you were
on a date. You kind of know when there’s a
match.” In addition to intangible feelings of
“match,” roughly four-fifths of evaluators
used a heuristic known as the “airplane test,”
which HR often endorsed. Evaluators drew
from a wide array of airports and flight interruption imagery in describing this test, but
investment banking director Max (white,
male) expressed its essence:
One of my main criteria is what I call the
“stranded in the airport test.” Would I want
to be stuck in an airport in Minneapolis in a
snowstorm with them? And if I’m on a business trip for two days and I have to have
dinner with them, is it the kind of person I
enjoy hanging with? And you also have to
have some basic criteria, skills and smarts or
whatever, but you know, but if they meet
that test, it’s most important for me.
Similarity was not always a prerequisite
for feelings of fit between an applicant and
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interviewer. However, in line with research
on the role of similarity in attraction (Byrne
1971), finding common experiences stimulated the feelings of “match” and “chemistry”
evaluators described as essential components
of fit in interviews. Attorney Denise (white,
female) explained, “I really do think it’s about
finding . . . something in common with your
interviewer.”
Evaluators often assessed fit through icebreaking chitchat during the first minutes of
interviews. They described beginning interviews by scanning résumés for shared experiences to discuss. As attorney Jamie (white,
female) illustrated, they typically sought
extracurricular or extraprofessional similarities: “I usually try to start with something not
related to law school. I take a quick look at
their [extracurricular] activities to see what’s
there. I usually try to pick something that I
find interesting . . . that I can relate to or that
I know something about.” Some interviewers,
like attorney Carlos, explicitly sought biographic commonalities:
I usually start an interview by saying, “Tell
me about yourself.” When I get asked that, I
talk about where I’m from, where I was
raised, and then my background. A not-good
way to start is with law school. I want to
hear your life story. Hopefully there’s something more interesting about your life than
deciding to go to law school. . . . When they
tell me about their background, it’s easier to
find things in common. . . . Maybe . . .
they’re from Seattle and I’ve been to Seattle.
We can talk about that and develop a
connection.
When the presence or absence of a one-onone match was unclear via informal conversation, some, like banker Oliver (white, male),
asked targeted probes:
If I didn’t get a good feel through the interview, I’ll ask a bunch of broad-based
personal questions like, “What do you like
to do?” And hopefully I’m not getting the
coined answer, “Oh! I like to you know pick
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Percent of Evaluators Who Cited “Fit”
as Top Evaluative Criterion
80%
70%
N = 30
N = 26
60%
50%
40%
N = 16
30%
20%
10%
0%
Law Firms
Interpersonal Skills
Investment Banks
Consulting Firms
Technical Skills
Figure 2. Percentage of Evaluators Who Ranked Fit as Their Most Important Criteria in Job
Interviews by Firm Type (N = 120)
Note: These numbers correspond to the percent of evaluators in each type of firm who—in research
interviews—ranked fit as the most important criterion they use to assess applicants in job interviews.
Evaluators were asked to describe the specific criteria they use to assess candidates in interviews. I then
asked them to force-rank the criteria they had mentioned.
stocks or read finance books.” For me, it’s
more like, “Oh! You know, I like to scuba
dive or hike.” . . . Or I’ll ask, “Do you follow
your school’s basketball team?” . . . “Where
did you grow up? Did you play any sports in
high school?” Just things that try to get a
feeling for somebody to see if you have a
connection.
To summarize, in interviews evaluators
typically selected candidates who fit their
own extracurricular and extraprofessional
experiences.
Who Put Fit First?
Although fit was highly salient across settings,
its relative weight in evaluation varied by firm
type. Figure 2 compares percentages of evaluators by firm type who, when asked to force-rank
the criteria they use to evaluate candidates in
order of importance, ranked fit first. Interestingly,
the emphasis on fit did not increase with the client- or team-facing demands of the job; fit was
least important in consulting, where work is
most interpersonally focused, and it was most
important in law, which has the least interpersonal demands during the first years on the job.
Use of cultural fit is thus not purely an artifact
of a job’s social demands.
In line with research suggesting that structured interview formats can reduce subjectivity in evaluation (Reskin and McBrier 2000),
however, the importance of fit decreased with
the inclusion of technical questions in interviews. In consulting, using case-based business questions provided evaluators with bases
to assess candidates other than cultural similarity. Naveen (Indian, male) explained,
“Even if someone’s a perfect fit, if they absolutely bombed the case, they’re out.” However, due to the widespread belief—supported
by firms’ policies—that the ideal worker
(Acker 1990; Turco 2010) is not only competent but also culturally similar, case interviews reduced but did not eliminate the use of
cultural fit in hiring; 40 percent of consultants
still ranked fit first. Manager Kai (white,
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male) described the tension between case
performance and fit: “It’s like air versus
water, you really need both.” Once candidates
demonstrated a baseline of competence, perceptions of fit rather than absolute case performance routinely drove assessments.
Manager Perry (white, male) recalled one
instance: “On the fit side, I wrote [on the
evaluation form] . . . ‘Will quickly become
everyone’s best friend.’ . . . That’s what I call
a good fit. But quite frankly, his case performance wasn’t the best. But because his personality and presence were so strong, I
forwarded him on [to second-round interviews].” Both interview format and conceptions of the ideal candidate therefore
influenced to what degree evaluators prioritized cultural similarity in evaluation.
COGNITIVE PROCESSES:
LOOKING-GLASS MERIT
In addition to selection on cultural fit, cultural
similarities between interviewers and applicants affected evaluation by facilitating
greater comprehension and valuation of candidates’ qualifications. Similarities in experience could result in informational advantages
unavailable to evaluators with different backgrounds.17 Banker Jason (white, male) described
how experiential similarity could provide a
greater quantity and quality of data to assess
candidates:
He was an “ethics, politics, and economics”
major. Although I’m sure other people
would be like “What the hell?” and assume
it’s a cushy major and discount his GPA,
because I went to Yale and had a lot of
friends who did it, I know it’s actually one of
the toughest and most competitive majors.
Jason rated the candidate highly and forwarded him on to second-round interviews.
Conversely, experiential dissimilarities could
result in informational disadvantages. Consultant and Ivy-grad Logan (white, male)
described difficulties he faced when evaluating students from non-Ivy League schools: “I
American Sociological Review 77(6)
just don’t know how tough it is to get in to
those places and how hard it is to do well
there.” Similar processes were at play for
applicants with work experience outside
“blue chip” companies, which were most
familiar to evaluators. Banker Aaron (white,
male) explained:
From going through the recruiting process
myself and from my friends . . . I have a
blueprint in my head of what it’s like to
work at the major companies—not only at a
bank but at a consulting firm or a Google.
You know, what the commitment is and
what the normal career progression is. . . .
With a small firm that I’ve never heard of,
it’s just harder to know. Did the person do
what’s on their résumé? Were they at home
at 5 p.m. every day?
Such sentiments support research suggesting
that people experience greater facility processing persons and objects that conform to
familiar categories and penalize individuals
who deviate from them (Zuckerman 1999).
Yet, net of the quantity or quality of information evaluators had to assess candidates,
similarity tended to yield more positive perceptions of candidates’ abilities. Evaluators
used their personal experiences as frames
through which they interpreted candidates’
intellectual, social, and moral worth. However, in contrast to prior sociological accounts
of identity in evaluation—in which individuals unconsciously gravitate toward people
similar to themselves (Lamont 2009)—the use
of similarity to the self was commonly active
and intentional. In the absence of concrete
answers to interview questions and reliable
predictors of future performance, assessors
purposefully used their own experiences as
models of merit, believing that because they
had been at least somewhat successful in their
careers, candidates who were experientially
similar to them would have a higher likelihood of job success. Essentially, they constructed merit in a manner that validated their
own strengths and experiences and perceived
similar candidates as better applicants.
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Employers’ own experiences influenced
which qualities they emphasized or discounted. For example, evaluators who
received high grades in undergraduate or
graduate school discussed the importance of
grades as selection devices; those who
received less stellar marks tended to discount
them. In either case, evaluators believed
experiences similar to their own were better
experiences. Attorney Andrea (white, female)
explained why she, despite her firm’s official
grade policy, overlooks grades:
My first year grades were all over the place.
September 11 happened and I was burnt out
from undergrad; I just met my husband and
was hanging out with him all the time. So,
school wasn’t my top priority. But I have
been a good lawyer. I know I am smart. So,
I think grades are really just there to confirm
my personality impression.
Such beliefs about the validity and reliability of evaluative criteria, entrenched in
employers’ own experiences, were particularly meaningful for evaluations of candidates
who deviated from traditional firm standards.
Candidates who might otherwise have been
rejected could be given a chance or even an
edge in evaluation when paired with similar
evaluators who believed in the validity of
their experiences. For example, attorney
Nicole (white, female) who was at the top of
her class at a less prestigious law school
described why she, unlike the vast majority of
interviewers at her firm who came from elite
schools, does not disregard applicants who
earn top grades at non-top-10 institutions:
The people that were the top of my class, we
came in the first day at school [and] we had
to work our butts off; every single one of our
exams was closed book, whereas at . . .
NYU, all of their exams are open book . . .
the curriculum is pretty much the same [as at
NYU], the professors are pretty much the
same . . . the exams are pretty much the
same . . . I do think that the top of my class
at New York Law School can compete just
1013
as well as the top of the class in any other
law school.
Evaluators’ experiences influenced not
only which criteria they used to assess candidates but also how they defined and measured
merit within a given domain. For example, all
firms instructed evaluators to ascertain candidates’ drive or ambition, most commonly
through leadership positions in extracurricular
organizations. However, without clear standards for evaluating this abstract quality, evaluators’ personal experiences colored what they
counted as quality engagement outside of the
classroom. For example, former college athletes typically prized participation in varsity
sports above all other types of involvement.
Consultant and former athlete Jake (white,
male) illustrated such tendencies when selecting between mock candidate profiles:
I know less, admittedly, about sort of being an
editor-in-chief or being a president of a club
than I do about athletics. So I’m frankly not
sure if these titles are as outstanding as the
two athletes are. I don’t think that they are,
just from what I know about . . . what it takes
to be a Division I athlete and what it takes to
be a truly exceptional Division I athlete. You
know I have some sort of notion of the kind of
time and commitment that takes. So, these
leadership qualities are excellent but they are
not as impressive to me as those two athletes.
He ranked the two athletes—Sarah and
Blake—first and second, respectively, and
declined to interview the nonathletes who had
higher grades from more prestigious schools
and relevant work experience. Conversely,
nonathletes were quick to highlight the value
of nonathletic leisure pursuits. Similarly, firms
sought candidates who demonstrated “interest”
in their firm, as interpreted by their interviewer. Evaluators often measured this subjective quality by whether a candidate’s stated
rationale for selecting a firm matched their
own. Consultant Howard (Asian American,
male) described a recent interviewee who
scored well on the criterion of interest: “When
1014
I asked about her interest in [FIRM], she presented answers that I would give, actually. She
went through the same thought process that I
went through when I was choosing.”
Evaluators used themselves as models of
merit not only when assessing soft skills and
intangibles but also when estimating hard
skills. For example, in consulting and banking, evaluators who came from finance or
engineering reported preferring candidates
with similar backgrounds because they
believed that such experience constituted
superior preparation for the job. The converse
was true for evaluators outside these fields.
Consultant Karen (white, female) remarked:
When we’re discussing candidates, there’s
almost always some quant guy who wants to
ding any candidate who studied anything but
econ or math. But I came from a touchy,
feely major and have done just fine. I even
think that having a broader background can
help people understand clients better and be
more creative and flexible. So, if I see you’re
a history major, it can actually be a plus.
Even in more structured consulting case
interviews, evaluators favored candidates who
demonstrated a similar response style. Consulting director Natalie (white, female) said:
I’m definitely an intuitive person, so I can
generally . . . come up with the right answer
really fast. But it takes me personally longer
to do the math behind it. Some people do the
math like this [she snaps] and then can’t
figure out what the answer is. . . . I think you
need both of those types of people in your
firm. But I think the people who are interviewing who have that awesome, super-fast
math ability want the math people in the
firm. And I think that people who have that
more intuitive approach want the intuitive
people in the firm. People like the ones who
are more like them.
Consequently, culturally similar applicants
not only benefited from heightened perceptions
of fit but also more favorable perceptions of
American Sociological Review 77(6)
ability, as evaluators actively constructed and
assessed merit in their own image. Banking
recruiting head Stephanie (white, female) summarized, “You are basically hiring yourself.
This is not an objective process.”
AFFECTIVE PROCESSES:
SEARCHING FOR A SPARK
Finally, cultural similarities affected hiring
evaluations through affective processes.
People experience positive feelings when
interacting with others who validate their attitudes and identities (Turner and Stets 2006).
Banker Fernando (Hispanic, male) provided a
lay understanding of this phenomenon when
he confessed, “I just think human nature is one
that you tend to gravitate towards those people
that validate you the most.” Although affective processes are difficult to study outside of
laboratory settings, I argue that similarities
produced affective benefits observable here:
similarities could provide evaluators with
feelings of excitement that provided advantages in evaluation. Banker Sandeep (Indian,
male) illustrated how shared experiences
could yield excitement prior to interviews
when evaluating mock candidate Sarah.
Scanning the résumé, his face lit up as he saw
Sarah’s extracurricular pursuits. “She plays
squash. Anyone who plays squash I love,” he
said smiling, and immediately ranked her first.
Conversely, a lack of commonalities could
foster feelings of apathy or aversion before an
interview began. When evaluating the same
résumé, consulting director Natalie, whose
background was in public service, wrinkled
her nose and said, “I don’t know. I’m personally not interested in commodity sales.
[Shrugs] I just don’t have that much to talk to
her about.” She declined to interview Sarah.
Commonalities also provided “sparks” of
excitement during interviews. Banker Arielle
(white, female) recalled her best recent interviewee: “She and I both ran the New York
marathon . . . we talked about that and hit it off
. . . we started talking about how we both love
stalking celebrities in New York . . . we had
this instant connection. . . . I loved her.”
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Additionally, affective sparks could color
perceptions of other evaluative criteria. Interviewers described feelings of excitement as a
critical component of the chemistry that was
a prerequisite for fit. Moreover, they often
perceived the ability to immediately strike up
an exciting, effortless conversation based on
shared interests as a proxy for client skills.
Banker Christopher (white, male) explained:
“You just hit it off with them. And you feel
like they can hit it off with anybody.”
Feelings of excitement could color assessments of hard skills. Psychologists have shown
that individuals experiencing positive feelings
such as excitement overweight other people’s
strengths in evaluation and discount their
weaknesses. Conversely, individuals experiencing negative feelings such as boredom or
disappointment exaggerate others’ weaknesses
and discount their strengths. Moreover, people
use their feelings as measures of quality,
assuming that people who make them feel
good are good (for a review, see Clore and
Storbeck 2006). Beyond such well-documented biases in decision-making, a handful of
interviewers admitted they would, on occasion, consciously lower the technical bar for
candidates with whom they had a great spark.
Banker Max said, “You know, if I’m really hitting it off with them, I won’t give them the
numbers because I don’t want to see them
flounder. I want to be able to go back and say,
‘Things went well’ and pass them on.”
The stratifying power of affective boosts
yielded by cultural similarity was most evident in post-interview deliberations. Feelings
of excitement compel individuals to action
(Collins 2004). In hiring, the level of excitement evaluators felt about candidates influenced their willingness to advocate for them
in group deliberations. Because of the large
number of interviewees, candidates needed to
have a champion—an evaluator who would
fight for them in deliberations—to receive a
job offer. When describing this role to me,
participants frequently used the language of
love; a candidate had to get them “riled up,”
“passionate,” or even “smitten” to champion
them. Although a number of qualities could
1015
generate passion, evaluators reported that cultural similarity was one of the most potent.
Banker Vishal (Indian, male), who felt that
his own background and soft-spoken manner
were atypical of employees in his firm, illustrated this point:
Only once have I been passionate enough
about a candidate to fight for him. He came
across as someone who didn’t have the usual
sort of confidence. . . . This guy was a bit
shy but had a very strong drive to succeed. A
lot of people were looking for a frat boy, you
know, preppy, East Coast, private school.
But I’m definitely not that and so I support
people who don’t fit the mold. . . . I loved
him and I championed him.
The candidate received the job offer. The
presence or absence of cultural similarities
could thus yield affective advantages in addition to organizational and cognitive evaluative boosts.
ALTERNATIVE ACCOUNTS
I have argued that cultural similarities
between evaluators and applicants matter for
employers’ hiring decisions. Nevertheless,
one must consider whether attraction produced by cultural similarities is simply a
mask for sex or race homophily. There are
several reasons to believe this is not the case.
First, prior research demonstrates that controlling for the chance of being included in
applicant pools, sex or race matches between
job candidates and evaluators do not consistently drive hiring evaluations; effects range
from positive to negative to nil (Huffcutt
2011). In the firms studied here, the majority
of interview dyads consisted of whites evaluating other whites and males evaluating other
males, yet cultural similarities were still
highly salient bases of evaluation within
same-sex and same-race dyads. Similarly,
although the majority of interviewers at Holt
were white or male, women and minorities
were hired at higher rates than were white and
male applicants (see Part III in the online
1016
supplement). Second, perhaps because applicants were pre-screened for an elite university
credential, sex, race, and experience were
only loosely coupled in applicant pools. For
example, at Holt, female professional school
applicants were more likely than males to be
competitive athletes or former investment
bankers; ethnic minorities were more likely
than whites to have attended Ivy League
schools as undergraduates. Consequently, in
this pool, selection on athletics was not tantamount to exclusion of females, and shared
alma maters were not codes for ethnic exclusion. I am by no means suggesting that sex or
racial discrimination or homophily do not
occur in these firms. Rather, to understand
labor market outcomes, it is necessary to consider not only similarities in sex and race
between employers and candidates but also
similarities in culture and experience.
One must also consider whether superior
résumé qualifications rather than cultural similarities are driving evaluations. However, as
noted earlier, research shows that employers’
subjective impressions of candidates are most
consequential for job interview evaluations;
these impressions do not neatly correspond to
applicants’ résumé qualifications or cognitive
skills (Graves and Powell 1995; Huffcutt
2011). Similarly, at Holt, résumé characteristics predicted neither interview evaluations
nor decisions to hire (Rivera 2009).
Finally, one must consider whether
employers use cultural similarities because
applicant pools are so pre-screened that they
have nothing left to differentiate candidates.
Although they are a select group, graduating
classes at elite universities—like other universities—display internal heterogeneity.18
Given that the majority of students at top-tier
undergraduate and professional schools typically apply to these firms, employers had
bases other than cultural similarity on which
to differentiate candidates. They could have
screened more intensively on class rank, relevant coursework, related work experience,
writing skills, standardized test performance,
or demographic characteristics—applicants
varied along these lines—but they did not
American Sociological Review 77(6)
(Rivera 2011). Rather, employers prioritized
cultural similarity because they saw it as a
meaningful quality that fostered cohesion,
signaled merit, and simply felt good. Although
cultural similarities are more salient when
gross differences in quality are minimized
(Lamont 2009)—such as when employers
create interview pools from résumés received,
narrow a candidate long-list to a short-list, or
make final hiring decisions—their use is not
an artifact of having no alternative screening
mechanisms. Moreover, understanding how
employers make fine distinctions between
candidates who pass a basic threshold of
qualifications is crucial for knowing who is
and is not ultimately hired into these organizations and who receives the material and
symbolic resources these firms offer.
LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE
RESEARCH
My intent was not to develop a universal
theory of hiring but rather to shed light on an
under-examined dimension of the hiring process. Still, several scope conditions are necessary. First, evaluators do not choose their
interviewees. We might see less emphasis on
cultural similarities when evaluators (1)
choose whom they interview, (2) have different structural opportunities to develop relationships with candidates (see Roth 2006), or
(3) lack information about candidates other
than what is visible. Future research should
examine the degree to which gatekeepers use
cultural similarities after the point of hire in
promotion and compensation decisions, an
endeavor not possible here. Other scholars
have shown, however, that cultural similarities, especially sports, are salient sources of
inclusion and exclusion once on the job
(Erickson 1996; Roth 2006; Turco 2010).
Second, evaluators interview candidates for
positions below them. We might see more or
less emphasis on cultural similarities for positions of equal or greater status. Third, given
that cultural fit was strongest in firms that
employed open-ended interviews, selection
on cultural similarity should be tampered in
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highly standardized or technical hiring evaluations. Finally, emphasizing cultural similarities may result in greater sex or race biases,
than was the case in this study, when culture
and demography are more tightly coupled
(Turco 2010).
Although the specific types and relative
importance of cultural similarities may vary
between occupations, use of cultural similarities in hiring is unlikely an elite phenomenon
only. Several studies hypothesizing that cultural similarities matter in hiring analyze lowwage, low-skill labor markets (Bills 1999;
Neckerman and Kirschenman 1991). Future
research should analyze how the types and
relative importance of cultural similarities in
hiring vary between occupations.
CONCLUSIONS
Through a case study of elite professional
service firms, I have argued that hiring is
more than a process of skills sorting; it is also
a process of cultural matching between candidates, evaluators, and firms. Cultural similarities influenced candidate evaluation in
multiple, overlapping ways. Cultural fit was a
formal evaluative criterion mandated by organizations and embraced by individual evaluators. Moreover, evaluators constructed and
assessed merit in their own image, believing
that culturally similar applicants were better
candidates. Finally, evaluators implicitly
gravitated toward and explicitly fought for
candidates with whom they felt an emotional
spark of commonality. Consequently, cultural
reproduction (Bourdieu 1984) of these firms
was in many ways over-determined, as organizational, cognitive, and affective processes
reinforced one another to create new hire
classes that mirrored firms’ existing employees in cultural signals and lifestyle markers.
Implications for Research on Culture
and Stratification
My findings extend work on culture and
stratification beyond educational settings to
demonstrate that cultural similarities between
1017
employers and job candidates matter in
employer hiring, a hypothesis suggested but
heretofore uninvestigated by sociologists.
The fate of students with similar credentials
in the competition for elite jobs was linked to
their display of cultural signals; applicants
whose experiences, leisure pursuits, and selfpresentation styles matched those of employers could cash in these cultural similarities for
jobs offering double to quadruple the salaries
earned by other graduates from the same
schools and for admission to a prestigious
occupational group that serves as a gateway
to the contemporary U.S. economic elite.
Cultural similarity can thus be thought of as a
form of capital that has economic conversion
value (Bourdieu 1986) in labor markets, a
proposition suggested but not previously
demonstrated empirically (Bills 2003).
My results also inform debates about what
types of cultural signals serve as currency in
corporate settings and are salient for North
American elites (Erickson 1996; Lamont
1992). Because candidates could not reliably
predict whom they would be partnered with
for evaluation, having an expansive cultural
tool kit (Swidler 1986) from which to draw to
establish similarities with any interviewer
seemed advantageous. Such results support
Erickson’s (1996) contention that within
North American corporations, familiarity
with a wide array of cultural forms matters
more for advancement than does specialization in highbrow artistic forms (see also Turco
2010). However, my findings refine Erickson’s argument in two important ways. First,
although the particular cultural signals valued
in elite firms were not highbrow or artistic,
they did have important socioeconomic
dimensions. Cultivation of leisure time is a
hallmark of upper-middle-class cultures and
of elites more generally (Lamont 1992;
Veblen 1899). Moreover, evaluators tended to
favor extracurricular activities associated
with the white upper-middle class and that
were acquired through intense, prolonged
investment of material and temporal resources
not only by job applicants but also by their
parents (Rivera 2011; Shulman and Bowen
1018
2001). Given that less affluent students are
more likely than upper-middle-class students
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 (Bergerson 2007),
the types of cultural similarities valued in
elite firms’ hiring processes had the potential
to create inequalities in access to elite jobs
based on parental socioeconomic status.
Second, mere familiarity with a cultural
signal or activity was insufficient; as noted
earlier, evaluators not only spot-checked candidates’ participation in an activity to ensure
it was genuine but also sought formal and
intensive participation. Successful candidates
therefore needed to possess enough cultural
breadth to establish similarities with any professional with whom they were paired, but also
enough depth in white, upper-middle-class
cultural signals to relate to and excite their
overwhelmingly white, upper-middle-class,
Ivy League-educated interviewers. Such
results suggest that both cultural variety and
depth serve as important bases of economic
and social distinction in North American corporate life. Additionally, they suggest that
concerted cultivation (Lareau 2003) of children’s extracurricular lives—a hallmark of
U.S. white, upper-middle-class families—is
not only a prerequisite for admission to America’s most elite colleges (Stevens 2007), but
also for entry to its highest paying entry-level
jobs. Such findings are consistent with
Veblen’s (1899) hypothesis that conspicuous,
intensive investment in leisure activities that
are not directly useful is a powerful marker of
elite status and a basis of economic stratification. Moreover, my findings suggest a social
closure (Weber 1958) of elite occupations by
cultural signals, particularly lifestyle markers
associated with the white upper-middle class.
Implications for Hiring
Although human capital, social capital, and
discrimination play critical roles in hiring,
cultural signals also matter for employers’
choices. Evaluators in my sample sought new
American Sociological Review 77(6)
hires who were not only capable colleagues
but also enjoyable playmates; interviewers
often privileged their personal feelings of
comfort, validation, and excitement over
identifying candidates with superior cognitive
or technical skills. In many respects, they
hired in a manner more closely resembling
the choice of friends or romantic partners
than how sociologists typically portray
employers selecting new workers. My results
suggest that far from just error or discrimination, the residual terms of conventional sociological models of hiring also contain active
cultural work by employers. Incorporating
measures of applicants’ and evaluators’ cultural signals may help account for some unexplained variance in the decision to hire.
Moreover, I go beyond demonstrating that
cultural similarities matter in hiring and introduce three interpersonal processes through
which they matter. These processes have the
potential to inform future studies not only of
hiring but also of interpersonal evaluation in
organizations more broadly. Finally, my
results call attention to the importance of analyzing socioeconomic inequalities in hiring.
Organizational Performance
Whether selecting on cultural similarities produces better or worse organizational performance is outside the scope of this article.
However, just as culture simultaneously
enables and constrains (Sewell 1992), the use
of cultural similarities in hiring likely poses
both benefits and challenges for organizations.
These jobs require significant teamwork.
Cultural similarities can facilitate trust and
communication, but they can also reduce the
attention team members pay to executing tasks
and decision-making quality (Phillips et al.
2006). In the professional service context,
emphasizing extracurricular similarities could
increase employee enjoyment and attachment
in the short-term. But given that these organizations require total work devotion (Blair-Loy
2003), selecting new hires based on extensive
devotion to leisure could backfire in the longterm by resulting in a mismatch with the
Rivera
actual demands of the job. Additionally, allowing evaluators the flexibility to define merit in
their own image and select candidates who
excite them personally could create conflicts
between organizational and individual goals.
Given that evaluators could potentially work
closely with new hires, they might be motivated to hire the most enjoyable over the most
competent candidates; that is, they may hire
for themselves rather than for the organization. Although in some ways functional, how
cultural similarity was defined and prioritized
in these firms may have negative, unintended
consequences. Future research should compare the effect of hiring based on similarity in
work styles, which can be beneficial (Chatman
1991), versus play styles on organizational
performance.
Diversity and Inequality
Selecting new hires based on cultural similarity represents a dual-edged sword that both
enables and constrains (1) organizations’
attempts to diversify and (2) opportunities for
candidates from traditionally underrepresented groups in the competition for elite
jobs. As demonstrated here, it can challenge
traditional sex and racial inequalities by providing new opportunities for women and
ethnic minorities who display the right stocks
of cultural signals, as did many of the athletic,
affluent, Ivy League-educated white and nonwhite women and men who were hired.
However, the specific types of cultural similarities valued had a strong socioeconomic
dimension and could create new inequalities
by parental social class. Moreover, although
culture, sex, and race were only loosely coupled in this population, the particular cultural
signals desired did have a stereotypically
gendered nature. Privileging such activities
could indirectly disadvantage applicants—
male or female—who held more stereotypically feminine leisure interests.
Finally, my study calls attention to the cultural dimensions of homophily and homosocial
reproduction in organizations. Although these
terms have become synonymous with sex- and
1019
race-based preferences in the sociological literature, my findings suggest a return to the
original articulations of these concepts (Kanter
1977; Lazarsfeld and Merton 1954), which
also portray cultural similarities as important
bases of attraction and stratification (see also
Wimmer and Lewis 2010). I show that cultural
homophily and cultural reproduction occur at
the point of hire and introduce key interpersonal processes through which they do so.
Thus, to fully understand hiring outcomes and
inequalities, we must consider not only candidates’ human capital, social capital, and demographic characteristics, but also the match
between their displays of cultural signals and
those of the gatekeepers evaluating them.
Acknowledgments
I wish to thank Michèle Lamont, Frank Dobbin, Mary
Brinton, Brayden King, Klaus Weber, Brian Uzzi, Gary
Fine, Viviana Zelizer, Simone Ispa-Landa, Chana Teeger,
Kevin Lewis, Tony Brown, Katherine Donato, Larry
Isaac, Holly McCammon, and the anonymous reviewers
for helpful comments on previous drafts. Earlier versions
of this article were presented at the American Sociological Association and Eastern Sociological Society Annual
Meetings.
Funding
This research was supported by National Science Foundation Dissertation Improvement Grant [#0727427] and
the Ford Foundation.
Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
When culture does enter discussions of hiring, it
typically does so in the form of employer stereotypes about demographic groups (Gorman 2005;
Holzer 1999). Although stereotypes are important
forms of culture, sociological understandings of
culture have evolved beyond stereotypes and universal group values to include contextually specific
styles, signals, and schemas, including the lifestyle
markers analyzed here (Lamont and Small 2008).
Similarly, networks scholars have demonstrated interest in cultural similarities (Wimmer and Lewis 2010).
Race and sex can be important bases of perceived
similarity; however, they are not consistently so, particularly in high-status work contexts (see Ely 1995).
See also Bills (1999) and Turco (2010).
Professional service firms are businesses—most
commonly law, investment, and consulting firms—
that sell customized advice to clients. Studies of
1020
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
these firms include Gorman (2005), Roth (2006),
and Turco (2010).
The most elite law schools are exceptions; career
offices force firms to interview all applicants.
For information on the percentage of top-tier graduates who enter these industries, see Granfeld (1992)
and Rampell (2011).
I identified firms based on national and major-market prestige rankings.
For a description of the hotel where Holt conducted
interviews, see Part IV of the online supplement.
The next most common mechanisms in interviews
were emotional response (code: emotion) and inferring merit from high-status activities (code:
signaling). Signaling was the most common mechanism used in résumé screening. For an in-depth
discussion of résumé screening, see Rivera (2011).
I use pseudonyms to protect confidentiality.
“Cultural fit” is a term used by employers rather
than one I imposed.
The next most common criteria were interpersonal
(i.e., polish or presence) and then analytic skills.
This literature characterizes culture at the individual
level as stable personality traits and universal values
(Rokeach 1979); sociologists have developed more
nuanced conceptions of culture (Lamont and Small
2008).
Contrary to stereotypes of these firms, new hires
display nontrivial sex and racial diversity (see Part
III of the online supplement).
Although candidates varied in class rank, work
experience, and demographic characteristics at this
stage, employers were more likely to use extracurriculars to create interview pools (Rivera 2011).
Similarities could also yield disadvantages when
increased knowledge provided discrediting information (e.g., “gut” academic majors). Similarity is
risky to fake. People often react negatively to others
who are inauthentic in their self-presentation
(Lamont 2009). Evaluators reported spot-checking
candidates’ experiences to see if participation was
genuine and extensive.
Cognitive ability is only one avenue for admission
to elite universities (Shulman and Bowen 2001).
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Lauren A. Rivera is an Assistant Professor of Management & Organizations and Sociology at Northwestern
University. Her research, which resides at the cusp of cultural sociology, social psychology, and social stratification,
investigates how people evaluate worth and social status
in real-life, naturalistic contexts and how the ways they do
so relate to broader social inequalities. She received her
PhD in Sociology from Harvard University. Before entering academia, she was a management consultant.
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