Sunday, May 26, 2013

College: The Lacrosse Pipeline to Wall Street

The pipeline from NCAA Lacrosse to Wall Street is widely suspected, but not often documented. Here are two articles that document the strength of the connection – and reasons for the connection – between these two, highly competitive, activities:

Here are two quotes from the Bloomberg article:

• Before Dom Starsia talks about national titles, he unfolds a two-foot-wide spreadsheet that gives University of Virginia recruits a look at life after lacrosse. VLAN, or the Virginia Lacrosse Alumni Network, is a 300-person database of former male and female players who work in finance and other fields and are willing to help cub Cavaliers get there, too. “Banker, equity guy, trader, analyst -- I don’t even know what those jobs are,” says Starsia, whose teams have produced four national championships and 13 Final Fours over his 21 seasons in Charlottesville. “But I do know it’s an impressive list.” 

• Appelt, 44, a 1991 Virginia graduate, said he wants to bolster his business by helping athletes whose package of time management, competitiveness and ability to cope with failure make them ideal candidates for success in the financial-services industry.

Similar Lacrosse Networks are in place at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Duke and a number of other strong academic schools. 

The story via examples:
Bloomberg News article

And here's one from academia, citing cultural similarity between recruiter and candidate as the reason for the pipeline. Minor familiarity with statistics is helpful for this article.

Hiring as Cultural Matching






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