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I don't see any subtle cues here. An important skill for a lawyer is to know how to present facts in the most favorable light. Take the study's James Clark. He

I don't see any subtle cues here. An important skill for a lawyer is to know how to present facts in the most favorable light. Take the study's James Clark. He won a "University award for outstanding athletes on financial aid", but it would be just as accurate for him to say simply that he won a "University award for outstanding athletes". Why not mention financial aid? Because it's not something that makes him a better lawyer. It doesn't serve the purpose of the resume. I can just see someone reading the resume and imagining all the dumb things James would write in a court filing and what the result to the client would be.

sxyuan 10y ago
That sounds plausible enough - except the authors also undertook a follow-up study to determine the cause of the difference. The attorneys they surveyed could have pointed to a lack of competence displayed in the resume writing, as you suggest. Instead, they identified culture fit as the distinguishing factor.
- EliRivers 10y ago
  "culture fit" really has become the code of our time for "looks funny / speaks differently / isn't the same as us".
EliRivers 10y ago
I suspect a naive applicant might think that demonstrating he required financial aid, and thus made good despite coming from a poor background, would have demonstrated that he's a better choice than someone who had it much easier but achieved the same results. He must surely be a harder worker and/or smarter. For better or for worse, though, it turns out these law firms (as many firms) like to hire people the same as themselves so much that it can swamp their liking to hire based on ability. Which is short-sighted on their part, really; a smart, hard worker could be taught to blend in with these people in a month, someone would struggle to learn how to be smart and industrious in a month.
- rlanday 10y ago
  You really think that after spending ~20 years of your life with a working-class background, you can learn to fit in with a bunch of rich people in a month? I’m extremely skeptical that I would be able to develop the cultural habits to fit in with e.g. a bunch of truck drivers even after driving a truck for a month.
  - EliRivers 10y ago
    In the office and at a handful of employment social functions, yes. If you wanted to fit in with a bunch of truck drivers, driving a truck for a month wouldn't do it at all. It would have to be active study and practice of fitting in; not truck driving. Speech patterns and accent, gestures and mannerisms, dressing the same, hair cut and shaving, appropriate topics of conversation and the correct opinions to offer on those subjects, experiences to pretend to have had and fraudulent stories about those experiences, pastimes to pretend to engage in outside the office and another handful of fraudulent stories about them. Food to like, how to eat it, places to say you've eaten that food before. Confidence tricksters are all about this. People see what they expect to see and mentally discount things that don't fit. Inside a law office (and indeed, anywhere else), to fit in as a fresh graduate, there is nothing apart from how you look, how you talk, and what you talk about (and as a fresh grad, you'd actually have the genuine level of legal knowledge expected, so there'd be no problem getting by on the actual work). Fortunately, we are to a large extent who we pretend to be. Say something enough times, you'll start to believe it. Start getting it right and pretty soon you won't be pretending to fit in anymore.

sxyuan 10y ago

That sounds plausible enough - except the authors also undertook a follow-up study to determine the cause of the difference. The attorneys they surveyed could have pointed to a lack of competence displayed in the resume writing, as you suggest. Instead, they identified culture fit as the distinguishing factor.

EliRivers 10y ago
"culture fit" really has become the code of our time for "looks funny / speaks differently / isn't the same as us".

EliRivers 10y ago

I suspect a naive applicant might think that demonstrating he required financial aid, and thus made good despite coming from a poor background, would have demonstrated that he's a better choice than someone who had it much easier but achieved the same results. He must surely be a harder worker and/or smarter. For better or for worse, though, it turns out these law firms (as many firms) like to hire people the same as themselves so much that it can swamp their liking to hire based on ability. Which is short-sighted on their part, really; a smart, hard worker could be taught to blend in with these people in a month, someone would struggle to learn how to be smart and industrious in a month.

rlanday 10y ago
You really think that after spending ~20 years of your life with a working-class background, you can learn to fit in with a bunch of rich people in a month? I’m extremely skeptical that I would be able to develop the cultural habits to fit in with e.g. a bunch of truck drivers even after driving a truck for a month.
- EliRivers 10y ago
  In the office and at a handful of employment social functions, yes. If you wanted to fit in with a bunch of truck drivers, driving a truck for a month wouldn't do it at all. It would have to be active study and practice of fitting in; not truck driving. Speech patterns and accent, gestures and mannerisms, dressing the same, hair cut and shaving, appropriate topics of conversation and the correct opinions to offer on those subjects, experiences to pretend to have had and fraudulent stories about those experiences, pastimes to pretend to engage in outside the office and another handful of fraudulent stories about them. Food to like, how to eat it, places to say you've eaten that food before. Confidence tricksters are all about this. People see what they expect to see and mentally discount things that don't fit. Inside a law office (and indeed, anywhere else), to fit in as a fresh graduate, there is nothing apart from how you look, how you talk, and what you talk about (and as a fresh grad, you'd actually have the genuine level of legal knowledge expected, so there'd be no problem getting by on the actual work). Fortunately, we are to a large extent who we pretend to be. Say something enough times, you'll start to believe it. Start getting it right and pretty soon you won't be pretending to fit in anymore.