How Elite Professional Service Firms Recruit Graduates in China
Author: Ran Ren, ran.ren@st-annes.ox.ac.uk
Department: Sociology
University: University of Oxford , United Kingdom
Supervisor: Kariya Takehiko
Year of completion: In progress
Language of dissertation: English
Keywords:
Elites
, Recruitment
, Professional service firms
, China
Areas of Research:
labour market
, Economy and Society
, Work
Abstract
This dissertation provides a qualitative case study about how elite professional service firms recruit graduates in China. On the basis of content analysis of job advertisements, 73 semi-structured interviews with recruiters from headquarters of three categories of elite professional firms (ie.e state-owned financial firms, foreign financial firms and foreign consulting firms) and participant observations to campus fairs and a day of job interviews in an elite consulting firm, this thesis contains four empirical chapters focusing the process of graduate recruitment in a chronological order. The first chapter analyses how recruiters construct elite jobs; empirical chapter 2-3 analyses how recruiters screen and interpret candidates' resumes in respect to candidates' educational backgrounds and internship experiences; the final empirical chapter analyses how recruiters assess candidates' interview performance. This thesis aims to provide hard-to-access insights into a site of elite formation from the demand side of elite labour market in transiting China and contribute to the sociological literature in school-to-work transitions and graduate recruitment.
The thesis is approaching to the completion and now welcomes a professional in pertinent fields to act as an external examiner.
If interested, please feel free to contact the author via email.
