Running head: RECRUITING AT ELITE PROFESSIONAL SERVICES FIRMS

Recruiting at Elite Professional Services Firms:

Whats In - Cultural Fit; Whats Out Ivy League School Preferences

RECRUITING AT ELITE PROFESSIONAL SERVICES FIRMS2

Recruiting at Elite Professional Services Firms:
Whats In - Cultural Fit; Whats Out Ivy League School Preferences
The topic I have chosen for this paper will focus primarily on the new preference of
cultural fit and how in the world of global professional services firms, cultural fit is now more
important than ones graduation from a top tier university. As someone who has been employed
by professional services firms throughout my career, I recently reflected upon my own
professional lifestyle, the colleagues I have had in the past fifteen years and my analysis of both
how we became professional colleagues and whether the recruiting method at these larger firms
is the new methodology that human resources departments are utilizing in the never-ending quest
for the best and brightest. It appears fairly evident that the key element in the criterion and
hiring processes utilized by the human resources departments of these professional services firms
focuses on cultural fit. This paper will demonstrate how culture, not education, is a primary
driving force when hiring decisions are made at the top professional services firms. My
introduction of this topic is somewhat of a social concern as well because it demonstrates how
social inequality is promoted legally throughout the ranks within these types of firms. The
population studied and researched includes college students seeking employment and a random
sampling of working adults employed by the top professional services firms. From my own
experience as one of the candidates sought and hired by these firms, elitism is a part of the
professional life I naturally practiced while employed by Deloitte & Touche, KPMG, Boeing,
Jefferson Wells and Accenture, as it was a part of the culture and the theme promoted and
absorbed internally. In their hiring practices, this isn't considered discrimination; it is a hiring
preference. As someone who has operated and passed the cultural fit test, I can understand and

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will show from an internal perspective, why this is important to the professional services firms of
all sizes.
The Cultural Fit Competition
When the name of the school has more prestige than a person's achievements, it can be
somewhat frustrating to those who for reasons of financial restrictions or fiscal responsibility,
choose not to accept an unimaginable education debt following graduation. This also highlights
the ongoing debate about whether the cost of a college degree is worth it since so many students
are saddled with high student loan balances and in a recovering employment economy, new
graduates struggle to find jobs.
Competition for employment following graduation from college has exponentially
increased to levels where college graduates in the United States have found themselves still
seeking that first official job that signifies ones major accomplishment and entry into the real
world, there exists a population of graduates who had never thought unemployment would be
included in their real world scenario. These are the graduates who were selected to attend the
top-tier schools, where their pursuits in the academic worlds of management and finance have
always guaranteed interviews and ultimately offer letters from the top financial houses, Wall
Street and the big management consulting firms. Those guarantees no longer exist; what has
happened? Northwestern University associate professor Lauren Riviera, with funding from the
National Science Foundation, examined the cultural fit focus in the area of recruiting by these
firms. Prior to Professor Rivieras entry into academia, she too attended an Ivy League
university and was employed as a management consultant. The conclusion to her research project
validated her arguments supporting the practice and application cultural fit in hiring decisions.
In her summary, she stated, Cultural similarities influenced candidate evaluation in multiple,

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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.1
My own attitude and desire to find that cultural fit when representing the firm at a college
recruiting event was evident throughout my interactions with students. Those who approached
and were aggressive and confident in their responses, accompanied by a general knowledge of
the firms history, yet were able to convey insight into their outside interests within the two
minutes of introduction allowed, received more than an empty thank you for stopping by
reaction. In my training class for recruiting, the human resources division had documented a
script specifically for all rounds of interviews, including on-campus, 2nd interviews, initial phone
conversations and our in-office final rounds.
According to Martha Whites story written for CNBC, many top firms continue to focus
their hiring and recruiting efforts to their primary feeder schools, wherein they can be assured
that hiring people who have been educated the same way can make it easier for people to work
together in teams, but it curtails the infusion of new ideas and perspectives.2 Diversifying a
companys employee population is imperative in providing those employees with a realistic view
of the working world. It is also true that tech firms who are constantly seeking the latest
innovative idea have no qualms about hiring people from any level, yet the primary focus is
1 Rivera, Lauren. 2012. Hiring as Cultural Matching: The Case of Elite Professional
Service Firms. American Sociological Review. 77: 999-1022
2 White, M. C. 2013, March 15. How Important Is a College 'Pedigree?'. Retrieved
March 29, 2014, from http://www.cnbc.com/id/100558834

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connecting the cultural fit between a candidates capacity and capability. Kenexa, a division of
IBM has made this connection and turned cultural fit into a profit center of consulting services to
other organizations. Anthony Coe, Director of Research for Kenexas Employment Branding is
now responsible for teaching organizational culture and fit to a global marketplace of clients
trying to leverage that key ingredient in the secret sauce. See. Figure 3.
Corporate Cultural Fit
When taking culture into consideration and the term cultural fit, most people would
immediately think about culture amongst social groups and not necessarily in the employment
world. The word culture is defined as the quality in a person or society that arises from a
concern for what is regarded as excellent in arts, letters, manners, scholarly pursuits, etc.
(Definition of the word Culture). Firms hire most of their new employees through annual, on
campus recruitment programs that are operated in conjunction with career-services offices at elite
universities. While these firms seek to create an incoming group of new hires who will enter the
firm and be integrated by way of intense on-the-job training, organizational culture training and
professional socialization together. The professional services firms I have been employed by all
call this your start group and your first internal network. As a side note on the turnover rates
experienced, voluntarily and involuntarily, after four years, my start group of 8 was down to 3.
In analyzing management consulting firms hiring practices, human resources places a
very high rating factor on ensuring that hired candidates are behaviorally and socially the same.
My interviews with Deloitte & Touche, Accenture and Ernst & Young all included a phase of the
interview process that is called the behavioral interview. This interview usually is the second
step in the process, following the resume screening. There are many schools have their students
failure to be successful in the behavioral interviews has actually caused them to lose their status

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as a direct feeder school. Within Accenture, as a part of my extra-curricular tasks as a manager, I
was a part of the East Coast recruiting. Accenture was recruiting at Howard University, but only
the School of Engineering. As a Howard alumnus, I didn't understand why we were only
spending one day doing recruiting and interviewing at that school, when there was a huge team
scheduled to travel from DC to do recruiting for a week at each school of Hampton, Spelman and
Morehouse. I later was told that Howard University School of Business students could never get
past the behavioral interviews and management made a decision to only recruit from the School
of Engineering and those numbers were very limited. The students did not possess all of the
attributes needed to succeed in the Accenture culture. I was contacted by a former colleague
who had taken a position at American University and inquired about Accenture recruiting at that
school. The response that HR passed through me to Americans career services was that their
students were welcome to apply online, but it isn't a school that the firm is interested in
establishing a presence or relationship with. This was the turning point for me is realizing the
environment I was operating in; corporate discrimination is easy to achieve and rename as
simply hiring preference.
On a positive note, the creation of a culture of professionals with the same mindset,
strengths and characteristics usually causes the lines between professional and personal lives to
be blurred. These are the people that you spend the most amount of time with and since the
majority of consultants do work double the typical 8-hour workday, having people that you relate
to, have similar interests and participate in the same elite activities actually for me was a plus. I
was rarely concerned with who I would attend a function with or the need to prep an escort for
proper etiquette or behavior. My work friends were my personal friends. Interestingly, as a

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federal employee, that is no longer the case. In my interviews, I continued to follow the methods
that had worked for me in
Cultivation of High Performance. Delivered.
My experience at Accenture gives validation to the process that this top ranked
management consulting firm practices hiring people who are exactly alike, while the diversity of
culture, education and age are secondary. Accenture had no qualms with informing employees
that the firm is so great because they purposely seek to hire only type A personalities. When
you are within an employment situation wherein everyone thinks alike, is very competitive, and
willing to complete whatever task in the most efficient and effective manner that maintain and
elevate the companys outward positive reputation, for well-established and traditionalist
companies that appears to be a win-win situation. At the same time, my experiences functioning
in this type of environment also perpetuated the cutthroat nature of the elite firms. Promotion,
ratings, rankings, raises and bonuses are tied to your performance. The higher your rank, the
greater your percentage in receiving these financial benefits.
There is no denial that seeing your companys name plastered throughout airports
internationally or the recognition that outside individuals give when a firm that you are
connected to is mentioned gives a personal sense of pride. I can admit that I was guilty of having
that pride; taking pictures of my employers office buildings, as I traveled for work and posting
these photographs on Facebook was always met with questions of where are you now? I wore
the label of road warrior for almost 15 years, which even included an international relocation
to Europe. My life was great; I did the best travel, choice accommodations, best restaurants and
corporate perks too numerous to name, yet there always is a price to pay and each year the price
to pay is higher if you have not delivered as expected. Annual performance evaluations provided

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the time for people to establish whether the goals they had documented the previous year had
been achieved and how well did they perform in comparison to everyone else. Annual review
was the time period where 50% of the firm would not happy. Human resources developed an
evaluation system wherein 50% of the firm would be ranked average to at the very top, while the
other 50% would be ranked below peer group and needs improvement. Obviously these
designations are not applicable when such an elite firm has purposely sought and hired the crme
de la crme of available employees, all with the same work ethics and professional personalities,
each year it is difficult to understand that someone could truly be considered as functioning
below peer group. Although this was deemed as unfair, the firm has maintained this practice
as the way it assessed employees and makes determinations for involuntary separations. Having
a cloud that bears the thought of job and salary loss hanging over your head is an absolute
incentive to perform at and above the levels that the firm establishes. My own fear of job loss in
a weak economy actually benefitted me very well. My first full year employed was 2009 and I
was able to establish and maintain my utilization rate of 128% for the year, even with vacations
and training periods that are actually calculated as a negative against utilization numbers.

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References
Culture | What is the Definition of Culture? | Dictionary.com. (n.d.). Retrieved April 2,
2013, from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/culture
Hill, L. (2013, January 3). Job Applicants' Cultural Fit Can Trump Qualifications.
Bloomberg Business Week. Retrieved , from http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-0103/job-applicants-cultural-fit-can-trump-qualifications
National University Rankings | Top National Universities | US News Best Colleges.
(n.d.). Retrieved from http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/bestcolleges/rankings/national-universities
Rivera, Lauren. 2011. Ivies, Extracurriculars, and Exclusion: Elite Employers Use of
Educational Credentials. Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 29:7190.
Rivera, Lauren. 2012. Hiring as Cultural Matching: The Case of Elite Professional
Service Firms. American Sociological Review. 77: 999-1022.
White, M. C. 2013, March 15. How Important Is a College 'Pedigree?'. Retrieved March
29, 2014, from http://www.cnbc.com/id/100558834.

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Tables
Table 1
National University Rankings
U.S. News rank

#1
Overall Score:
100 out of 100.
#2
Overall Score:
99 out of 100.
#3
Overall Score:
97 out of 100.
#4
Overall Score:
95 out of 100.
#5
Overall Score:
94 out of 100.
U.S. News rank

#5
Overall Score:
94 out of 100.
#7
Overall Score:
92 out of 100.
#7

School / Location

Tuition and

Total

Fall 2012

Ave

Fees

enrollment

acceptance

fresh

$ 40,170

8010

rate
8%

retenti
98

Harvard University
Cambridge, MA

$ 42,292

19726

6%

98

Yale University
New Haven, CT

$ 44,000

11906

7%

99

Columbia University
New York, NY

$ 49,138

23168

7%

99

Stanford University
Stanford, CA

$ 43,245

18217

7%

98

School

Tuition and

Total

Fall 2012

Ave

Fees

enrollment

acceptance

fresh

12508

rate
13%

Princeton University
Princeton, NJ

retenti
99

University of Chicago
Chicago, IL

$ 46,386

Duke University
Durham, NC

$ 45,476

15386

13%

97%

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

$ 43,498

11189

9%

97%

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Overall Score:

Cambridge, MA

92 out of 100.
#7

University of Pennsylvania

Overall Score:

Philadelphia, PA

92 out of 100.
#10

California Institute of Technology

Overall Score:

Pasadena, CA

91 out of 100.

$ 45,890

21339

13%

98%

$ 41,538

2243

12%

98%

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U.S. News rank

School

Tuition and

Total

Fall 2012

Ave

Fees

enrollment

acceptance

fresh

Dartmouth College
Hanover, NH

$ 46,752

6277

rate
10%

retenti
98%

91 out of 100.
#12

Johns Hopkins University

$ 45,470

21001

18%

97%

Overall Score:

Baltimore, MD

89 out of 100.
#12

Northwestern University

$ 45,527

20439

15%

97%

Overall Score:

Evanston, IL
Brown University
Providence, RI

$ 45,612

8885

10%

98%

87 out of 100.
#14

Washington University in St. Louis

$ 44,841

13952

18%

97%

Overall Score:

St. Louis, MO
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY

$ 45,359

21424

17%

96%

School

Tuition and

Total

Fall 2012

Ave

Fees

enrollment

acceptance

fresh

#10
Overall Score:

89 out of 100.
#14
Overall Score:

87 out of 100.
#16
Overall Score:
85 out of 100.
U.S. News rank

Vanderbilt University
Nashville, TN

$ 42,978

12710

rate
14%

retenti
96%

Rice University
Houston, TX

$ 38,941

6484

17%

96%

83 out of 100.
#18

University of Notre Dame

$ 44,605

12126

23%

98%

Overall Score:

Notre Dame, IN

#17
Overall Score:
84 out of 100.
#18
Overall Score:

83 out of 100.

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#20
Overall Score:
79 out of 100.
#20
Overall Score:
79 out of 100.

Emory University
Atlanta, GA

$ 44,008

14236

26%

95%

Georgetown University
Washington, DC

$ 44,805

17357

17%

96%

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U.S. News rank

School

Tuition and

Total

Fall 2012

Ave

Fees

enrollment

acceptance

fresh

#20

University of CaliforniaBerkeley

in-state:

Overall Score:

Berkeley, CA

$13,836,

79 out of 100.

35899

out-of-state:
$25,056

Note: Schools in the National Universities category, such as the University of Chicago and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, offer a full range of undergraduate majors, plus master's and
Ph.D. programs. These colleges also are committed to producing groundbreaking research

rate
18%

retenti
97%

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Figures

Figure 1: 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 whoin
research interviewsranked 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.
(Rivera, 2012)

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BUILDING THE BETTER WORKFORCE

Figure 2: Capacity, Capability and the interconnecting Culture Fit diagram by Kenexa.

CULTURAL ASSESSMENT AND

BRANDING CLIENTS
Figure 3: Sample of Kenexa Organizational Culture Clients