7 ms·

A book on the persistence of elites is an unexpected guide to getting a good job

86 points by supercanuck 11y ago

switch007 11y ago
Alternative title: How to get a professional job. > The most important quality recruiters are looking for is “fit” > looking the part is essential. > Recruiters repeatedly told Ms Rivera that they looked for people who could be their friends as well as their colleagues > Emphasise any similarities that you can find between the two of you. Really? That seems like standard stuff required for any professional job, not the ones that might earn you enough cash to be in the "1%".
- dba7dba 11y ago
  > looking the part is essential. Are they looking for workers for actors/models?
  - WalterBright 11y ago
    The full quote is: "Staff in professional-services firms spend most of their time dealing with clients; so looking the part is essential." Which makes perfect sense in any industry where you'll be dealing with customers and clients. Ever watch a successful politician on the campaign trail? They dress to match the particular audience they'll be talking to.
davidhunter 11y ago
'Hang on their every word. And flatter their self-image as “the best of the best” and the most jet-lagged of the jet-lagged.' No thanks.
- cgio 11y ago
  Actually, no don't do it. I am interviewing for vacationers lately and many people seem to be doing that. It may work with some interviewers, but for me it looks very acted, kind of creepy and in any case irrelevant. If you want a tip for management consulting interviews, act like if you are ready to work, discuss your thought process, ask questions where you don't know something, say something that demonstrates imagination, knowledge or creativity and maybe even act a little by getting on the whiteboard as you would in a meeting. If you got the interview you are halfway there, I am assuming HR has already filtered for the best. The interviewer past me will assume even more.
  - Ecio78 11y ago
    This is more or less what happened when I was hired for my current (tech job): I was asked about a real life problem by the interviewer (my soon-to-be colleague/manager) and I explained how I would have dealt with it (my thought process etc..). I asked question when I didn't know something, and I also wrote an email few hours/one day later confirming my interest for the company and adding a couple of things that could have not been clear during the interview about my skills. And when I went there for the second interview, as I had studied a bit more on their real problem, I had the opportunity to add few more thoughts on it.
Shivetya 11y ago
either that or get into politics. between the power that writing laws and regulations, to enforcing them, you can gain a lot of support. then to top it off with a generous retirement that many public servants get you could have just a great time. I do tire of the idea of that only people who excel in business comprise the one percent, far too often those who write the laws do nearly as well economically
manigandham 11y ago
These consulting companies aren't the only "good" jobs around. What a strange article.
- vinceguidry 11y ago
  It was referencing a strange book, which profiled a strange world.
- supercanuck 11y ago
  The Economist agrees, the title of the article is "How to Join the 1%" but was changed by HN Admins to use the subtitle apparently.
dba7dba 11y ago
MANAGEMENT consultants, investment banks and big law firms are the Holy Trinity of white-collar careers. They recruit up to a third of the graduates of the world’s best universities. I believe the ratio is far higher in English speaking, white countries as they can freely join Wall Street and the supporting infrastructure. The ratio is lower in non-English speaking countries like Asia. Thus we have the strange shift of R&D and manufacturing (especially manufacturing) to Asia where brightest graduates end up in industries other than management consultancy, investment banking, and law firms. Soon the new manufacturing centers will wonder why they have to hire Wall Street when that can be done elsewhere? Especially like in China. I know I will get flak for this but the 3 career paths are not good for the nation, while it may be good for the few who are in the top 1%. While SpaceX and Tesla and Apple are great, it's not enough.
chrisdbaldwin 11y ago
I think I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.
chernevik 11y ago
I've been hired as an investment banker, and hired as an investment banker, and I can tell you this is nonsense. The IB interview process does a very good job of screening candidates for mastery of basic skills -- if you don't have a very strong grasp of accounting, valuation, free cashflow, and so on, you will not get an offer. After passing those competence hurdles, yes, personality and fit questions do matter.
- dimino 11y ago
  I'm guessing this problem is similar to the one I vaguely recall reading about regarding Google: Almost everyone who applies has the intellect required to perform well at Google. That's why intelligence isn't a good criteria for recruiters at Google to use as a differentiator. I would guess the same thing applies here (please correct me if I'm wrong, given your experience) -- almost all the folks who apply will have a fairly solid grasp on accounting, valuation, etc. (the technical/knowledge parts), especially if they're coming from Harvard/Stanford/et al. Therefore, since "knowledge" isn't a very good differentiator (everyone who gets a resumé on your desk is competent), folks in these prestigious positions have to filter for something else -- and it seems they've chosen "fit".
  - smm2000 11y ago
    It's just not true that almost everyone who applies to Google has intellect required to perform well. Easily 50% of people who gets to onsite loop are not able to do Fizzbuzz. Phone screens are just sad. If you think that everyone who applies to IBs has solid grasp on accounting, valuation, etc - you are way overestimating average Ivy League student.
  - chernevik 11y ago
    Most applicants can't get past the competence checks. Candidates who could get past the competence checks could get dinged for fit questions, but there weren't so many of them that we could be terribly choosy. Maybe Goldman can be. There just aren't that many people who are that smart, that skilled, and that willing to work that hard. Now that's entry-level. Who is promoted and succeeds, that's a different question. Fit questions matter a lot more there. But even then I think the key skill was the ability to see problems from a client's perspective, and from a senior banker's. The folks who can execute with those perspectives in mind, those are the ones who do very well. Investment banks, at least at the entry levels, are meritocracies. If you can understand what it means to deliver, and deliver, you'll do well. But that understanding is trickier than it looks. Now there is a networking effect to this process. But it's more about getting information about what skills the banks will be looking for, and where to get that information, and the standards that they're looking for. This stuff isn't written down in manuals, you have to extract it from other people. If you don't know that stuff, you don't know what targets you have to hit.
rayiner 11y ago
> Whether in consulting, investment banking or the law, firms use revenue-generating staff rather than human-resources people to decide who has the right stuff. This is one of the positive aspects of professional services recruiting that I think other companies should emulate. It's crazy that engineers have to get through non-engineer filters to get hired.
- juliangregorian 11y ago
  Do they? I can only remember interviewing with 2 or 3 HR people in my career, and I mostly work as a contractor (meaning I interview a lot).
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  The takeaway is not that HR is involved, but that engineers are not seen as "revenue generating." To rather too much corporate management, engineering is a blue collar job. It happens to require computers instead of metal and power tools, but it's still not "revenue generating" in the strategic, legal, or financial-industries sense. Obviously not all management is like this. But there's still a whiff of working-with-your-hands contempt for engineers from many people who work primarily with money and power. And the cultural differences, and differences in motivation, shouldn't be underestimated.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    Well, whatever managers think of engineering, they surely don't think HR is revenue-generating; HR is practically the definition of "overhead".
- rifung 11y ago
  I was always under the impression that the HR people were there to get you to want to join if you got an offer, not to determine whether you would get hired or not.
  - rhino369 11y ago
    Outside of very focused tech companies, HR being the first line interview is very common.
Procrastes 11y ago
> For all the talk of the world becoming dominated by a “cognitive elite”, in reality it appears it is nothing more than a “confidence elite”. They don't call it a "confidence game" for nothing.
qiqing 11y ago
Consider these paragraphs: "One candidate in Ms Rivera’s sample passed the interview by adopting the persona of a successful consultant that he knew at that firm. Even if you do not go that far, you must at all costs avoid appearing nerdy or eccentric: there are plenty of jobs with tech companies for those types. The old-fashioned belief still prevails that playing team sports, especially posh ones like rowing, makes for a rounded character.... This overwhelming emphasis on style rather than substance may seem an odd way to select members of the 1%. But those at the top of the consulting, investment-banking and legal professions know that the most prized possession in uncertain times is not brainpower, but self-confidence. For all the talk of the world becoming dominated by a 'cognitive elite', in reality it appears it is nothing more than a 'confidence elite'." It would seem that someone with a past in one of these firms who actually had a good 'fit' there would make a poor fit for most tech startups. [1] So then I back look at this sentence, "The top ranks of governments and central banks are sprinkled with Goldman Sachs veterans. Technology firms, though they are catching up fast, have nothing like the same grip on the global elite." Our tide is rising, and they can wait in their confident complacence. They'll never see it coming. 1. http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html
- dropit_sphere 11y ago
  I'm not certain I agree. Yes, the hacker ethos will easily create more wealth than this posturing dreck. But only if all that productivity is directed towards the right problems. And often those problems are not profitable-looking ones---which means you probably won't be working on them as an employee. As an academic, or independent, perhaps, but hopping onto craigslist doesn't net a whole lot of world-changing opportunities. And it's in those very opportunities that there's enough froth to upset the established order. Saying no to money requires...confidence. So keep working, keep learning.
- cgio 11y ago
  Our tide is rising even within these firms. If you look at their strategies it's now all about diversity and the power of combining different viewpoints. They are not looking for diverse stakeholder managers, they understand that the new economy is driven by people who in the past they would only meet by chance in a lab as they were inspecting a factory. And they want some of these people (potentially the least capable? I cannot judge, I am one), because it's all about client relationships, and you have to fit with the clients, not your peers. Compare that to a few years ago, when even dress code was more or less a uniform. I don't want to disappoint you, but they are not complacent and they have seen it coming since the last 10 years. These organisations are built to their core to manage shifts like that. Whether they will succeed this time is to be seen. But they have weathered such changes in the past, usually boosting their performance out of the broader change.
lordnacho 11y ago
This is spot on. There isn't anything inherently difficult about what entry-level professionals (as defined in the article) get up to. You'll be doing powerpoint slides or reading documents until you fall asleep, but it's a skill that many, many more people have than are needed. Basically anyone can bone up on a few accounting ratios (what is xyz technical term?), read a book about brainteasers (100 people on an island...ugh), and read the general news (tell me something interesting?). So who do you pick? You have all these well-educated, similar people. So of course you go for the ones you like. You ask them stupid brainteasers and stock questions (what's your greatest weakness? Where do you see yourself in 5 years?) and just see who will say something you like. They are just as capable as the ones you don't like. This is also the reason you need to have gone to a top uni: why bother looking for a skill that everyone has? Nobody ever got fired for hiring IBM. Oh, one exception: the children of the powerful. A buddy of mine worked in investment banking and there were a number of kids whose parents were CEOs of known firms, or other important people. Those kids are going to be able to do the job at hand as well as the future job of getting business. It does tighten the pyramid for the other capable kids, but they know the game. Contrast that with a job where the skill is roughly as available as the demand. Where it is possible that the random guy off the street cannot do it (eg iOS developer). What do you do then? Well, now you can't just show up to the interview unprepared. You need to spend time asking real, discriminating questions (How do optionals work in Swift?). You also might need to balance your opinion about the person's character with your need to have that skill in house.
- Falcon9 11y ago
  Nice Halt and Catch Fire reference. Why does it make any sense that these jobs with ridiculous numbers of qualified candidates would "get to be" the 1%, as opposed to those others you mention (iOS developer)? Not asking you specifically, lordnacho. Just a question to the universe that's probably as useful as asking "why me?" whenever anything at all happens. Still though.
  - lordnacho 11y ago
    iOS dev guy does not tie his self image to his net worth. You can buy his services with an interesting job. He also is not a hard bargainer, and just giving him enough to be comfortable will work. Finance guy has been told his whole life to work hard. He goes into finance because he can't think of anything better to do (why don't interesting companies go to recruitment fairs? WTF?), but he does have this one trump card which is he went to Harvard. Having no particular interest, he goes for the highest paying job.
dropit_sphere 11y ago
Clickbait for engineers?
- somedangedname 11y ago
  10 job hunting tricks that the elites don't want you to know! You won't believe number 3!
umutisik 11y ago
What about having the necessary knowledge and skills, having good grades and good recommendation letters?
neuro_imager 11y ago
Although, I have my suspicions that this article is designed as click-bait, I will add my 5c: "Those at the top of the consulting, investment-banking and legal professions know that the most prized possession in uncertain times is not brainpower, but self-confidence." "The most important quality recruiters are looking for is “fit”: they would sooner choose an easy-going person with a second-class mind than a Mark Zuckerberg-type genius who rubs people up the wrong way." This is exactly why these industries are ripe for disruption. Unfortunately, medicine/healthcare operates like this also to a large degree. The world will be in infinitely better place when this changes and second rate poseurs are replaced by legitimately competent and valuable alternatives.
ianstallings 11y ago
I'm half convinced that telling everyone you only hire the elite is actually to convince everyone working for you that they are elite and in turn will perform better. IMHO it's the same reason that Google has those crazy interviews and claim they only hire the best. It's motivational bullshit.

86 points by supercanuck 11y ago

Alternative title: How to get a professional job. > The most important quality recruiters are looking for is “fit” > looking the part is essential. > Recruiters repeatedly told Ms Rivera that they looked for people who could be their friends as well as their colleagues > Emphasise any similarities that you can find between the two of you. Really? That seems like standard stuff required for any professional job, not the ones that might earn you enough cash to be in the "1%".

dba7dba 11y ago
> looking the part is essential. Are they looking for workers for actors/models?
- WalterBright 11y ago
  The full quote is: "Staff in professional-services firms spend most of their time dealing with clients; so looking the part is essential." Which makes perfect sense in any industry where you'll be dealing with customers and clients. Ever watch a successful politician on the campaign trail? They dress to match the particular audience they'll be talking to.

davidhunter 11y ago

'Hang on their every word. And flatter their self-image as “the best of the best” and the most jet-lagged of the jet-lagged.' No thanks.

cgio 11y ago
Actually, no don't do it. I am interviewing for vacationers lately and many people seem to be doing that. It may work with some interviewers, but for me it looks very acted, kind of creepy and in any case irrelevant. If you want a tip for management consulting interviews, act like if you are ready to work, discuss your thought process, ask questions where you don't know something, say something that demonstrates imagination, knowledge or creativity and maybe even act a little by getting on the whiteboard as you would in a meeting. If you got the interview you are halfway there, I am assuming HR has already filtered for the best. The interviewer past me will assume even more.
- Ecio78 11y ago
  This is more or less what happened when I was hired for my current (tech job): I was asked about a real life problem by the interviewer (my soon-to-be colleague/manager) and I explained how I would have dealt with it (my thought process etc..). I asked question when I didn't know something, and I also wrote an email few hours/one day later confirming my interest for the company and adding a couple of things that could have not been clear during the interview about my skills. And when I went there for the second interview, as I had studied a bit more on their real problem, I had the opportunity to add few more thoughts on it.

Shivetya 11y ago

either that or get into politics. between the power that writing laws and regulations, to enforcing them, you can gain a lot of support. then to top it off with a generous retirement that many public servants get you could have just a great time. I do tire of the idea of that only people who excel in business comprise the one percent, far too often those who write the laws do nearly as well economically

manigandham 11y ago

These consulting companies aren't the only "good" jobs around. What a strange article.

vinceguidry 11y ago
It was referencing a strange book, which profiled a strange world.
supercanuck 11y ago
The Economist agrees, the title of the article is "How to Join the 1%" but was changed by HN Admins to use the subtitle apparently.

dba7dba 11y ago

MANAGEMENT consultants, investment banks and big law firms are the Holy Trinity of white-collar careers. They recruit up to a third of the graduates of the world’s best universities. I believe the ratio is far higher in English speaking, white countries as they can freely join Wall Street and the supporting infrastructure. The ratio is lower in non-English speaking countries like Asia. Thus we have the strange shift of R&D and manufacturing (especially manufacturing) to Asia where brightest graduates end up in industries other than management consultancy, investment banking, and law firms. Soon the new manufacturing centers will wonder why they have to hire Wall Street when that can be done elsewhere? Especially like in China. I know I will get flak for this but the 3 career paths are not good for the nation, while it may be good for the few who are in the top 1%. While SpaceX and Tesla and Apple are great, it's not enough.

chrisdbaldwin 11y ago

I think I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.

chernevik 11y ago

I've been hired as an investment banker, and hired as an investment banker, and I can tell you this is nonsense. The IB interview process does a very good job of screening candidates for mastery of basic skills -- if you don't have a very strong grasp of accounting, valuation, free cashflow, and so on, you will not get an offer. After passing those competence hurdles, yes, personality and fit questions do matter.

dimino 11y ago
I'm guessing this problem is similar to the one I vaguely recall reading about regarding Google: Almost everyone who applies has the intellect required to perform well at Google. That's why intelligence isn't a good criteria for recruiters at Google to use as a differentiator. I would guess the same thing applies here (please correct me if I'm wrong, given your experience) -- almost all the folks who apply will have a fairly solid grasp on accounting, valuation, etc. (the technical/knowledge parts), especially if they're coming from Harvard/Stanford/et al. Therefore, since "knowledge" isn't a very good differentiator (everyone who gets a resumé on your desk is competent), folks in these prestigious positions have to filter for something else -- and it seems they've chosen "fit".
- smm2000 11y ago
  It's just not true that almost everyone who applies to Google has intellect required to perform well. Easily 50% of people who gets to onsite loop are not able to do Fizzbuzz. Phone screens are just sad. If you think that everyone who applies to IBs has solid grasp on accounting, valuation, etc - you are way overestimating average Ivy League student.
- chernevik 11y ago
  Most applicants can't get past the competence checks. Candidates who could get past the competence checks could get dinged for fit questions, but there weren't so many of them that we could be terribly choosy. Maybe Goldman can be. There just aren't that many people who are that smart, that skilled, and that willing to work that hard. Now that's entry-level. Who is promoted and succeeds, that's a different question. Fit questions matter a lot more there. But even then I think the key skill was the ability to see problems from a client's perspective, and from a senior banker's. The folks who can execute with those perspectives in mind, those are the ones who do very well. Investment banks, at least at the entry levels, are meritocracies. If you can understand what it means to deliver, and deliver, you'll do well. But that understanding is trickier than it looks. Now there is a networking effect to this process. But it's more about getting information about what skills the banks will be looking for, and where to get that information, and the standards that they're looking for. This stuff isn't written down in manuals, you have to extract it from other people. If you don't know that stuff, you don't know what targets you have to hit.

rayiner 11y ago

> Whether in consulting, investment banking or the law, firms use revenue-generating staff rather than human-resources people to decide who has the right stuff. This is one of the positive aspects of professional services recruiting that I think other companies should emulate. It's crazy that engineers have to get through non-engineer filters to get hired.

juliangregorian 11y ago
Do they? I can only remember interviewing with 2 or 3 HR people in my career, and I mostly work as a contractor (meaning I interview a lot).
TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
The takeaway is not that HR is involved, but that engineers are not seen as "revenue generating." To rather too much corporate management, engineering is a blue collar job. It happens to require computers instead of metal and power tools, but it's still not "revenue generating" in the strategic, legal, or financial-industries sense. Obviously not all management is like this. But there's still a whiff of working-with-your-hands contempt for engineers from many people who work primarily with money and power. And the cultural differences, and differences in motivation, shouldn't be underestimated.
- tptacek 11y ago
  Well, whatever managers think of engineering, they surely don't think HR is revenue-generating; HR is practically the definition of "overhead".
rifung 11y ago
I was always under the impression that the HR people were there to get you to want to join if you got an offer, not to determine whether you would get hired or not.
- rhino369 11y ago
  Outside of very focused tech companies, HR being the first line interview is very common.

Procrastes 11y ago

> For all the talk of the world becoming dominated by a “cognitive elite”, in reality it appears it is nothing more than a “confidence elite”. They don't call it a "confidence game" for nothing.

qiqing 11y ago

Consider these paragraphs: "One candidate in Ms Rivera’s sample passed the interview by adopting the persona of a successful consultant that he knew at that firm. Even if you do not go that far, you must at all costs avoid appearing nerdy or eccentric: there are plenty of jobs with tech companies for those types. The old-fashioned belief still prevails that playing team sports, especially posh ones like rowing, makes for a rounded character.... This overwhelming emphasis on style rather than substance may seem an odd way to select members of the 1%. But those at the top of the consulting, investment-banking and legal professions know that the most prized possession in uncertain times is not brainpower, but self-confidence. For all the talk of the world becoming dominated by a 'cognitive elite', in reality it appears it is nothing more than a 'confidence elite'." It would seem that someone with a past in one of these firms who actually had a good 'fit' there would make a poor fit for most tech startups. [1] So then I back look at this sentence, "The top ranks of governments and central banks are sprinkled with Goldman Sachs veterans. Technology firms, though they are catching up fast, have nothing like the same grip on the global elite." Our tide is rising, and they can wait in their confident complacence. They'll never see it coming. 1. http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html

dropit_sphere 11y ago
I'm not certain I agree. Yes, the hacker ethos will easily create more wealth than this posturing dreck. But only if all that productivity is directed towards the right problems. And often those problems are not profitable-looking ones---which means you probably won't be working on them as an employee. As an academic, or independent, perhaps, but hopping onto craigslist doesn't net a whole lot of world-changing opportunities. And it's in those very opportunities that there's enough froth to upset the established order. Saying no to money requires...confidence. So keep working, keep learning.
cgio 11y ago
Our tide is rising even within these firms. If you look at their strategies it's now all about diversity and the power of combining different viewpoints. They are not looking for diverse stakeholder managers, they understand that the new economy is driven by people who in the past they would only meet by chance in a lab as they were inspecting a factory. And they want some of these people (potentially the least capable? I cannot judge, I am one), because it's all about client relationships, and you have to fit with the clients, not your peers. Compare that to a few years ago, when even dress code was more or less a uniform. I don't want to disappoint you, but they are not complacent and they have seen it coming since the last 10 years. These organisations are built to their core to manage shifts like that. Whether they will succeed this time is to be seen. But they have weathered such changes in the past, usually boosting their performance out of the broader change.

lordnacho 11y ago

This is spot on. There isn't anything inherently difficult about what entry-level professionals (as defined in the article) get up to. You'll be doing powerpoint slides or reading documents until you fall asleep, but it's a skill that many, many more people have than are needed. Basically anyone can bone up on a few accounting ratios (what is xyz technical term?), read a book about brainteasers (100 people on an island...ugh), and read the general news (tell me something interesting?). So who do you pick? You have all these well-educated, similar people. So of course you go for the ones you like. You ask them stupid brainteasers and stock questions (what's your greatest weakness? Where do you see yourself in 5 years?) and just see who will say something you like. They are just as capable as the ones you don't like. This is also the reason you need to have gone to a top uni: why bother looking for a skill that everyone has? Nobody ever got fired for hiring IBM. Oh, one exception: the children of the powerful. A buddy of mine worked in investment banking and there were a number of kids whose parents were CEOs of known firms, or other important people. Those kids are going to be able to do the job at hand as well as the future job of getting business. It does tighten the pyramid for the other capable kids, but they know the game. Contrast that with a job where the skill is roughly as available as the demand. Where it is possible that the random guy off the street cannot do it (eg iOS developer). What do you do then? Well, now you can't just show up to the interview unprepared. You need to spend time asking real, discriminating questions (How do optionals work in Swift?). You also might need to balance your opinion about the person's character with your need to have that skill in house.

Falcon9 11y ago
Nice Halt and Catch Fire reference. Why does it make any sense that these jobs with ridiculous numbers of qualified candidates would "get to be" the 1%, as opposed to those others you mention (iOS developer)? Not asking you specifically, lordnacho. Just a question to the universe that's probably as useful as asking "why me?" whenever anything at all happens. Still though.
- lordnacho 11y ago
  iOS dev guy does not tie his self image to his net worth. You can buy his services with an interesting job. He also is not a hard bargainer, and just giving him enough to be comfortable will work. Finance guy has been told his whole life to work hard. He goes into finance because he can't think of anything better to do (why don't interesting companies go to recruitment fairs? WTF?), but he does have this one trump card which is he went to Harvard. Having no particular interest, he goes for the highest paying job.

dropit_sphere 11y ago

Clickbait for engineers?

somedangedname 11y ago
10 job hunting tricks that the elites don't want you to know! You won't believe number 3!

umutisik 11y ago

What about having the necessary knowledge and skills, having good grades and good recommendation letters?

neuro_imager 11y ago

Although, I have my suspicions that this article is designed as click-bait, I will add my 5c: "Those at the top of the consulting, investment-banking and legal professions know that the most prized possession in uncertain times is not brainpower, but self-confidence." "The most important quality recruiters are looking for is “fit”: they would sooner choose an easy-going person with a second-class mind than a Mark Zuckerberg-type genius who rubs people up the wrong way." This is exactly why these industries are ripe for disruption. Unfortunately, medicine/healthcare operates like this also to a large degree. The world will be in infinitely better place when this changes and second rate poseurs are replaced by legitimately competent and valuable alternatives.

ianstallings 11y ago

I'm half convinced that telling everyone you only hire the elite is actually to convince everyone working for you that they are elite and in turn will perform better. IMHO it's the same reason that Google has those crazy interviews and claim they only hire the best. It's motivational bullshit.