[seigenblues]

ah! Finally! Clear evidence of a meritocracy at work! </snark>

Actually, in all seriousness, doesn't this suggest there's a real imbalance or opportunity here to be exploited? Companies that hire like this surely must have some other systemic blind spots, no?

[scarmig]

The question is how you organically build up to take on the banks and consultantocracies. Their ecosystem is about as far from a competitive market as you can imagine.

Their hiring practices might seem illogical, but I would disagree. They're just not hiring for what you think they are. It's fundamentally about hiring people who have a lot of cultural capital coupled with a work ethic and an above-average-but-not-spectacular amount of intelligence. This has only a weak correlation at best with ability to allocate capital, manage, or "consult." (Those latter skills are genuinely rare, valuable, and hard to identify anyways, so they're increasingly being replaced by organizational and technical solutions.)

Why that group of people? The types of organizations we're talking about are successful because they have secured a privileged place in the network of our economic and political economies. Their target hiring group is people who are consciously or subconsciously supportive of that existing network and will be effective at using and extending it.

So, if you had to name a group of people who are generally content with the status quo, familiar with the world of the rich and powerful, hard-working, and smart-enough, who would you go for? People who graduated from an Ivy League and have access to the resources to spend on things like climbing Mt. Everest or winning an Olympic gold medal in lacrosse.

[gwern]

Only if there are significant talent differences. If everyone who went to Harvard already has the same base level of talent necessary to be a success, then you might as well pick random grads (which is basically what the surveyed peoples' methodologies boil down to) because the remaining variation isn't worth measuring.

[alexhawket]

Yup their stregths are also their weaknesses. Big opportunity for a contrarian to go in and do the exact opposite of one or more of their hiring strategies.

Avoid the elite schools completely and radically cut the cost of acquiring talent (with presumably less competition for said talent). Pick out promising talent that may have been overlooked by lack of pedigree. Pick out outliers with unconvential ideas. Increase the diversity of personalities and backgrounds to increase the odds of radically new ideas. Ignore grades and come up with your own methods for testing candidates.

Many possibilities.

[pnathan]

That was the lesson I was drawing from the essay; it seems as if they hire in a monoculture. That implies to me that hiring more freaky people with as much weird as can fit into a job is likely to produce some pretty wild stuff.

[danielharan]

Yes, and huge ones at that.