"Origin: Unequal Selection and the Self-Replication of the Elite" Author: [US] Lauren A. Rivera Publisher: Ideal Country | Guangxi Normal University Press

【Editor's recommendation】

★Background does not necessarily determine your destiny, but it determines the difficulty of changing your destiny.

Can you successfully obtain a high-paying offer and enter the elite class by graduating from a prestigious university with excellent grades? This may only be the starting point of a long journey. The selection criteria of prestigious companies are more favorable to students from wealthy families. The "excellent" qualities in the eyes of recruiters often require several or even more than ten years of nurturing and cultivation. The seemingly fair competition actually becomes a boost for the elite to replicate themselves and a barrier for other groups to move upward.

★Go deep into the elite group and uncover the logic of elite selection in famous companies.

Taking three high-starting-salary industries in the United States—investment banking, consulting, and law firms—as examples, the paper analyzes in detail the process of top companies selecting new employees. Recruiters place more emphasis on subjective factors such as fit, brilliance, and drive, essentially selecting “similar people” who are compatible with themselves.

★Presenting in detail the inside knowledge that ordinary people need to know in order to cross classes.

"Origin" carefully examines each link of recruitment, including recruitment seminars, internal recommendations, resume submission, interviews and evaluations. Through rich cases, it discloses a large amount of internal knowledge of recruitment, providing possibilities for ordinary people to break cultural barriers and break through class ceilings.

★Won the Max Weber Award of the American Sociological Association, the Mary Douglas Award, the Outstanding Book Award in Sociology of Law, and the Axiom Business Book Award. It has been highly recommended by media such as The Economist, The Financial Times, The Atlantic Monthly, and Times Higher Education Research.

【Content Introduction】

When we talk about inequality, there are two questions that cannot be avoided: first, what prevents the poor from escaping poverty, and second, what helps the rich stay rich. In today's increasingly anxious world of class solidification, the latter question is even more important. Why in our society, students from wealthy families are often the ones who get high-paying jobs? What makes them pass the selection?

To answer these questions, Lauren A. Rivera went deep into the industries with the highest starting salaries in the United States - investment banks, consulting firms and law firms, interviewed hundreds of recruiters and job seekers, and conducted detailed investigations on recruitment links such as recruitment seminars, internal recommendations, resume submissions, interviews and reviews. Through a wealth of cases, she revealed how the seemingly ability-oriented selection criteria helped the elite class complete the intergenerational transmission of their dominant position. In addition to the analysis of the selection mechanism, the large amount of internal recruitment knowledge disclosed in the book can also serve as an action guide for ordinary people to break through the class ceiling.

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