Pedigree (ebook)

Argumento de Pedigree (ebook)

"[Pedigree] provides an insider look at how top-notch places hire, and explores how their processes serve those with the most privileged and affluent backgrounds."--Bouree Lam, The Atlantic

"[Rivera’s] richly described account is mesmerising--and horrifying."--Gillian Tett, Financial Times

"Forget Hollywood. Forget the American Dream. In Pedigree, Lauren Rivera discloses the harsh reality of landing a job on Wall Street. . . . In this valuable book, [she] sheds light on [the] selection process, homing in on how employers contribute to elite reproduction. The outcome is a highly informed analysis of class and cultural capital."--Angelia Wilson, Times Higher Education

"In this riveting account of how the nation's top investment banks, consultancies, and law firms choose employees, Lauren Rivera goes inside the recruitment process, interviewing the interviewers and sitting in on their decision meetings. This eye-opening book exposes how the American elite keep the best jobs for themselves."--Frank Dobbin, author of Inventing Equal Opportunity

"Pedigree provides a rare behind-the-scenes look at the hiring processes for elite jobs. Rivera’s thoughtful ethnographic observations illuminate exactly how social class matters, and how the display of cultural skills can be crucial for job seekers to gain access to elite positions. It is an eye-opening book."--Annette Lareau, University of Pennsylvania

"Rivera identifies the myriad ways that class influences every stage of the hiring process at top-tier firms, showing how it is that individuals from affluent backgrounds have come to dominate the most elite segments of the American labor market. She pulls back the curtain time and time again, revealing how processes that are apparently class, race, and gender neutral are anything but."--Elizabeth A. Armstrong, coauthor of Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality

"Pedigree sets a new standard of rigor for qualitative social-science research. Rivera shows how educational stratification in the United States is particularly pronounced and caste-like at the gateway to elite professions, and how the boundary between elite colleges and the elite firms that recruit from them is so fuzzy as to be only ceremonial."--Mitchell L. Stevens, author of Creating a Class: College Admissions and the Education of Elites

Winner of the 2016 Max Weber Book Award, Organizations, Occupations, and Work Section of the American Sociological Association
Winner of the 2016 Mary Douglas Prize for Best Book, Sociology of Culture Section of the American Sociological Association
Co-Winner of the 2016 Distinguished Book Award, Sociology of Law Section of the American Sociological Association
Co-Winner of the 2016 Silver Medal in Career (Job Search, Career Advancement), Axiom Business Book Awards
One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2015

Lauren A. Rivera is associate professor of management and organizations at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

"Pedigree: How Elite Students Get Elite Jobs is an academic book with the requisite references to gender theory and Marxist concepts of inequality. But read it carefully and it becomes something far more useful--a guide on how to join the global elite."--Economist0Acknowledgments xi
1 Entering the Elite 1
2 The Playing Field 29
3 The Pitch 55
4 The Paper 83
5 Setting the Stage for Interviews 113
6 Beginning the Interview: Finding a Fit 135
7 Continuing the Interview: The Candidate's Story 147
8 Concluding the Interview: The Final Acts 183
9 Talking It Out: Deliberating Merit 211
10 Social Reconstruction 253
11 Conclusion 267
Afterword to the Paperback Edition 287
Appendix A Who Is Elite? 291
Appendix B Methodological Details 295
Appendix C List of Interviews 311
Notes 319
References 351
Index 369