Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Over at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen, Will writes about Peter Orszag’s decision to take a multi-million dollar job with Citigroup shortly after leaving the Obama administration:

There’s another consequence of the revolving door phenomenon that really bothers me. My brother, who happens to be a recent college graduate, made an off-hand remark the other day about how nobody finds a job without an ‘in’ or a personal connection. At face value, this is faintly ridiculous: a white, upper-middle class kid with a degree shouldn’t be complaining about tough career prospects. But it’s a sentiment I’ve heard from many of my peers in the 20-something, college-educated demographic, and I can’t help thinking that Orszag’s new job is another data point in a line of policies and events that — while perhaps defensible individually — have created a prevailing narrative of influence/personal connections trumping ability/merit/worthiness. Maybe I’m reading too much into a few tossed-off remarks, but I’d venture that an entrepreneurial society depends to some degree on a culture that downplays influence-peddling and emphasizes individual achievement….This is all wildly speculative, of course, but I kind of wonder if a deluge of uncomfortable stories about corporate bailouts and political insiders could eventually sap some of this generation’s entrepreneurial vitality.

I don’t have any idea whether this kind of thing saps entrepreneurial vitality — I’d guess not — but I’m curious about this personal connection business. I’ve heard this relentlessly too, usually with a figure of some kind attached. For example, 80% of successful job applicants heard about the job, or got the job, or something, because they knew somebody somewhere who recommended them (or maybe just told them about it). It’s never clear where these numbers come from, or whether they only apply to white collar jobs, or whether it’s all BS, or what. But certainly a lot of people believe it.

Anyway, the reason it’s always struck me is that I’ve never gotten a job via personal connections. (Well, once, for a short-term consulting gig.) I’ve either just applied based on an ad or else been recruited. I’m not a very social person, so maybe that’s all there is to it. But then again, I’ve also hired plenty of people, and interviewed people hired by others, and very few of them came in the door via personal connections.

So: comments are open. Is my experience unusual? Or is this business of needing an “in” just an urban myth, and most people get jobs exactly the way you’d expect: by applying for them blind. Anybody have anything interesting to say about this?

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate