Is there a correlation between 'poshness' and landing a job in Investment Banking?
This is my first forum post. I wanted to see what actual investment bankers think about this issue.
I see a lot of talk these days about how graduate schemes for investment banking or consultancy discriminate against people from working class backgrounds because they aren't 'posh' and therefore do not fit in with the culture of the firm. For example, there was that BBC programme a couple of weeks back called "How to Break into the Elite" where they discuss this exact problem as if it is fact. Is there any weight to this argument? Is a candidate who isn't posh really far less likely to get the job than someone who is?
I don't see many counter-arguments to this, but I think there are a few problems with it. I think a big factor is that there are huge cultural differences between the rich and poor that contribute to the divide. I come from a lower-middle class background and I had never even heard of investment banking or consultancy until recently, where as a lot of rich parents might push their children into investment banking. If I went around my neighbourhood and asked people if they knew what investment banking was I guarantee not many people would know. So surely this plays a role in the smaller numbers of working class employed in high finance.
Secondly, if there was a correlation between poshness and getting employed, why are Durham, Edinburgh, Bristol, and St. Andrews all only semi targets when they have a huge number of privately educated students? Newcastle and Buckingham also have a very high proportion of privately educated students but they are pretty much non targets. There are actually less privately educated students in the LSE and Warwick than in the first four that I mentioned, and in fact Warwick has less than Newcastle and Buckingham. However, in the LSE's case it is probably because many of the students there are international students. Still though, does that make a difference? Surely these international students aren't being discriminated against. The same argument could be made for the Big 3 firms in consulting which are almost exclusively restricted to Oxbridge and the LSE. It would seem that academic capacity plays a more significant role. I cant post a link to the statistics because this is my first post, but they are easily found from a quick google search. The statistics I found were a few years outdated but it is still useful to look at.
In the BBC documentary that I mentioned, the professor at Royal Holloway mentions that "about 34%" of those in investment banking are students who went to private school. If we go by the statistics I mentioned earlier, the average percentage of privately educated students in the target universities is 33.7%. In other words, "about 34%". So there isn't really a great amount of discrimination it would seem. The way people go on about Investment Banking I was actually shocked to see that only 34% of the people in investment banking were privately educated. Seemingly, its stuff thats happening before university that would be the bigger problem.
Those are just my two cents. I'm not arguing that there is no link to poshness, but I just don't believe it is as strong a link as people make it out to be. That said, I've never been employed in an investment bank so what do I know. I'd love to hear what other people have to think
In the U.S., not really. Can't speak to the UK.
disagree.
a large amount of folks come from coastal upper middle class/elite suburbs - many of which went to top boarding, day, magnet and high prop tax area schools.
it's pretty much the same all things considered.. though less entrenched in the US v UK thanks to the diversity of clientele in the US and arguably less visible differences in mannerisms/communication styles between the socioeconomic classes.
Here is some advice The Rock would give you: "It doesn't MATTER if there is a correlation between poshness and landing a job in IB or not! "
There is probably some correlation, but not necessarily causality. I think, at least to some extent, that London IB has some skew towards the upper- to high middle class, but there are also plenty of working-class people.
The biggest disadvantage that you have is networking. It's easier to connect with people if you are from the same neighbourhood, have summer houses in the same area or speak the same kind of language.
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