Biglaw Hiring Bias? Men With High-Class Hobbies More Likely To Get Summer Associate Interviews Than Women
It takes only a few seconds to scan a résumé, but it can take years to recover from a discriminatory hiring decision.
Only one of them will get a job…
If you’re trying to land a summer associateship at a Biglaw firm and you think listing some of your high-brow hobbies on your résumé will help you out, it most likely won’t — unless you’re a man.
According to a study conducted by Lauren Rivera (Northwestern University) and András Tilcsik (University of Toronto) and published in the American Sociological Review, résumés signalling privilege and wealth resulted in a 16 percent callback rate for men, which was more than four times the rate for privileged women, less-privileged women, and less-privileged men combined. In the first round of their study, Rivera and Tilcisk sent fake résumés to 316 top Biglaw firms in the hopes of receiving interviews for their fictitious job seekers. The Atlantic describes the résumés that were created:
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[A]ll the fake résumés indicated that applicants went to selective second-tier law schools, but were still at the top of their class. Their academic and professional experiences were identical, but there were a few variations that signaled their level of privilege. For example, higher-class applicants volunteered as mentors to first-year law students, while lower-class applicants volunteered as mentors to first-generation college students. One fictitious student won a university athletic award, while another won a university athletic award for students on financial aid. Then came the section of the résumé people often spend the least effort on, even though it reveals so much to employers: extracurricular activities and interests. In the experiment, privileged applicants listed expensive, exclusive sports like polo and sailing, and mentioned a penchant for classical music. Less-privileged applicants preferred country music and track-and-field sports.
Out of the 22 interview invitations received, Rivera and Tilcisk found that the air of belonging to a higher social class seemed to penalize female applicants, only benefiting male applicants. This seems to reek of inadvertent discrimination. In all, higher-class men got 13 invitations, higher-class women got three invitations, lower-class men got one invitation, and lower-class women got five invitations.
In a follow-up study, Rivera and Tilcisk surveyed 210 lawyers and asked them to evaluate the same fake résumés based on criteria including the applicant’s professional drive and fit with the Biglaw firm’s culture and clientele. Those lawyers were then asked whether they would recommend an applicant for a job interview. Here, higher-class men were viewed as being more committed to their careers and better fits for Biglaw culture than higher-class women, and were more likely to be recommended for interviews.
Still think this is mere coincidence as opposed to hiring bias? Read this:
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[Rivera] and Tilcsik interviewed 20 attorneys who had direct experience hiring at some of the firms in their résumé audit, and found that this group held several assumptions about gender roles that shaped their decision-making. Almost all the lawyers interviewed perceived privileged women as less committed to legal practice, because of concerns that they would soon leave their careers to become stay-at-home mothers. The women were described as lawyers who were secretly “looking for a husband” or “biding time” before leaving their careers altogether. On the other hand, lower-class women were viewed as “hungry,” and were predicted to work hard for the money because they had “law-school debt to pay” and “mouths to feed.”
The group of attorneys also tended to believe that class background was an important determinant of whether an applicant would fit in. … [M]ore privileged male applicants were repeatedly commended for their extracurricular activities and were viewed as being a great fit for the culture of a large law firm.
It takes only a few seconds to scan a résumé, but it can take years to recover from a discriminatory hiring decision made by someone with preconceived notions about gender roles in a law firm setting. The legal profession can surely do better than this, and we must try our hardest to make sure progress is made.
Privilege Helps Men—but Not Women—Get Fancy Jobs [The Atlantic]
Like polo and sailing? Listing it on a law firm resume helped men but not women, study finds [ABA Journal]
Staci Zaretsky is an editor at Above the Law. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments. Follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.
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