It’s Their Fault

A flurry of posts today about connections to go along with last week’s post.

From lhote:

…on a basic level, when someone gets hooked up for a job, both egalitarianism and efficiency are damaged. The way it’s supposed to work is, if you are a superior candidate, you get the job– and your hard work/talent are rewarded. The company is then rewarded with a more competent employee. But having an “in” jeopardizes that reciprocity.

…which led to a right-on-the-money follow up from The American Scene, saying that neptoism is inescapable and networking should even be rewarded when it is fair; the real issue is that employers ought to strive to be better judges of who’s qualified to recommend new hires.  And Ygelesias also follows up…

I still stand by the point that when it comes to being a good judge of recommendations and hiring fairly in general, A Careers do it a lot better than B Careers, and there’s no reason B careers can’t improve.