Washington Monthly - September/October 2014 - 55

Far more typical are students like William, a junior at
Harvard who told us that before arriving on campus, he
"didn't know there were consulting firms like McKinsey or
Bain. I didn't know that there were big investment banks
like JPMorgan. I didn't know that those really existed or
what they did, and that wasn't a thing for me, something I
aspired to be."
Most students come to campus with vague plans
about their professional lives, along the lines of a Harvard
alum named Kevin, who said he planned to "study philosophy and go to law school and have a nice life," or Olivia,
who had chosen Stanford because she dreamed of launching a start-up. Another junior at Harvard laughingly recalled that he "thought careers in finance were like being
a bank teller, being an accountant, or something." Yet despite their utter lack of knowledge of these jobs, all four of
these students are currently pursuing or, in the case of the
two alums, have already taken their first jobs in finance or
consulting firms.
So what happened? The explanation starts with
changes in how Wall Street firms and management consulting firms go about filling their ranks. Starting in the 1980s,
these firms adopted a recruitment strategy that targeted
undergraduate students at a handful of elite colleges in a
way that other profitable, fast-growing industries-like
the energy, health care, and high-tech sectors-did not.
This wasn't so much because banks and consulting
firms had a greater demand for young brainpower. Rather, these other industries managed to find the talent they
needed-to, say, devise new medicines or software or oil
exploration techniques-from the broad array of American
colleges and universities. While happy to hire Ivy Leaguers, they didn't inordinately seek them out. Wall Street and
the consulting firms, by contrast, developed business models that relied on the appearance of brainpower in order to
win clients. This put a premium on recruiting from a handful of universities with the highest worldwide brand equity.
Top students from Purdue or UCLA might be just as good,
or even better, at putting together spreadsheets. But being
able to boast that you have a team of kids from Harvard is
important when you are trying to sell high-cost consulting
and financial services of uncertain value.
To get to those kids, the nation's top banks and consulting firms began by competing with each other to become "platinum" members of the career services programs
run by the most elite schools. Winners of this pay-for-play
competition get the best tables at campus career fairs, access to students' email in-boxes, entrée to the most impressive banquet rooms for holding information sessions and
receptions, bundled delivery of applicants' résumés, and
space and scheduled times to hold one-on-one interviews,
among other goods and services known as "recruitment."
The recruitment process gins up early in the fall term
and ends well before the academic year is over. Firms seek
to sign up recruits as soon as possible, since it cuts off com-

peting employers by removing fresh talent from the market. At the top of the calendar are firms' information sessions, which are designed to educate students not only on
the nitty-gritty of the application process (résumé-writing
workshops, dates for résumé drops) but, more importantly, on what it means personally and socially to work for a
high-prestige firm.
Marketing is heavy. Firms seek to make themselves
the inevitable choice of students through slick video presentations, excellent food (more than one interviewee
mentioned this perk), and a show of raw human talent. Investment banks and consulting firms do not send human
resources personnel to work the room; they send teams
of professionals to woo the young crowd, including recent
graduates of the very schools where recruitment is taking
place-an effective strategy for making the jobs relatable.
Most freshmen remain reasonably insulated from recruiters, but once students come back to school as sophomores they find it impossible not to notice their older
peers' "stampede to start applying" for jobs on Wall Street,

Among this year's graduating
class at Harvard, 31
percent took jobs that will
channel their energies into
derivatives, mergers, and
often destructive outsourcing.
as Nathan, a Harvard alum, put it. Whether observing seniors going through recruitment for the two-year analyst
jobs post-graduation, or juniors going through recruitment
for coveted summer internships (which with luck and hard
work can be converted to an offer for an analyst position
the following year), younger students take notice.
Nathan, who successfully landed a junior internship
and then a job at a top investment bank, told us how these
presentations simultaneously warmed him up for these
jobs and also wore him down. "At Harvard," he said, "you
always want to seize every opportunity you can," which is
why he went to the sessions offered by the firms and gathered the "glossy pamphlets," where everything "sounds
so amazing."
But it wasn't just excitement that led him to apply; it
was also, he said, "inertia." Portraying himself as "extremely risk averse," Nathan told us he hadn't made "a conscious
decision to pursue banking. It was more, I guess-I mean,
I hate to use the term 'fear of missing out.' I didn't know
what I was missing by not applying, so I ended up doing
my research and tossing my hat in." Convinced by the inWashington Monthly

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