The ins and outs of hiring pipelines

Abstract

Every fall, a steady stream of student and postdoctoral resumes flows into the inboxes of hiring managers across the chemical industry. After email exchanges and Skype calls, job seekers will make their way to on-site interviews. And then something very predictable happens: certain companies will hire people from the same universities they always have, leaving behind those who don’t fit the companies’ desired pedigree. I began thinking about this phenomenon of established pipelines after reading an article about the late US Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia. In a conversation with a law student, Scalia admitted that since the student did not attend an elite institution, it was unlikely that she would be hired as one of the few clerks that Supreme Court justices assign to help write opinions. Scalia also mused that although one of his best law clerks was not actually from one of those elite law schools, he