CAREERS OPEN TO TALENT:

Careers Open to Talent: Educational Credentials, Cultural Talent, and Skilled EmploymentAuthor(s): Bruce Garnett, Neil Guppy and Gerry VeenstraReviewed work(s):Source: Sociological Forum, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Mar., 2008), pp. 144-164Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20110250 .

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Sociological Forum, Vol. 23, No. I, March 2008 (? 2008) DOI: 10.HH/j.1573-7861.2007.00049.x

Careers Open to Talent: Educational Credentials, Cultural Talent, and Skilled Employment1

Bruce Garnett, Neil Guppy, and Gerry Veenstra2

In the status attainment and social mobility literatures, "talent" is often conceptualized as educational attainment or mental ability. We adapt

Bourdieu's notion of embodied cultural capital and Goffman's notion of "staging a character" into another dimension of talent, what we call

"cultural talent," and hypothesize that an ability to wield cultural talent in

hiring or promotion scenarios facilitates attainment of skilled, complex jobs. Bivariate analyses and multiple regression modeling performed on data from an original survey show that educational credentials and cultural talent both

predict occupational skill and complexity.

KEY WORDS: Bourdieu; cultural capital; Goffman; skilled occupations; staging characters; talent.

CAREERS OPEN TO TALENT: EDUCATIONAL CREDENTIALS AND CULTURAL TALENT

"Careers open to talent" neatly captures an idea deeply embedded

in contemporary understandings of social mobility. The linkage of talent

to careers was originally posited in seventeenth-century Europe, an inno

vative conceptualization at a time when prosperous families routinely handed their offspring considerable economic advantage (Sennett, 2003).

1 The Canadian Institutes of Health Research funded the "Toward a Healthy British Colum

bia" research project under the auspices of Gerry Veenstra's New Investigator Career

Award (2000-2005). Ana Sandrin contributed substantially to the design and administra

tion of the survey questionnaire. We thank the members of the UBC Sociology Workshop Series who read and commented on the article. The authors contributed equally to the

writing of this article and are listed in alphabetical order. 2 Department of Sociology, University of British Columbia, 6303 NW Marine Drive,

Vancouver, British Columbia V6T1Z1, Canada; e-mail: [email protected].

144

0884-8971/06/0300-0031/0 ? 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd



Educational Credentials, Cultural Talent, and Skilled Employment 145

Although inheritance of titles, positions, and fortunes certainly continues

to this day, its influence is considerably muted (Baker and LeTendre,

2005). When it comes to successful careers and the generation of wealth, talent has essentially muscled in to shrink the power of legacy.

Sociological literatures have packaged "careers open to talent" in

novel ways. The status attainment/social mobility literature has adopted the basic premise that various labor force outcomes (careers) depend, at

least in part, on talent. Blau and Duncan's (1967) theoretical and empiri cal contribution to this literature represents a powerful statement of this

position. Using their model, mobility researchers have demonstrated that

while ascriptive family origins continue to play a role in occupational attainment, personal educational achievements and credentials?deemed

measures of individual talent?are powerful forces in determining who

gets ahead in life. Importantly, the major clout of families in shaping the

life chances of their offspring now works indirectly via the schooling of

their children.

What remains relatively unexamined in attainment/mobility research

is the multifaceted notion of "talent" itself. Most often talent is conceptu alized and measured as educational attainment, for example, years of

schooling or highest diploma or degree, although at times it is defined as

mental ability or cognitive development (Cawley et al, 2001). These are

undoubtedly important dimensions of talent. The European literature on

social reproduction, too, has stressed the centrality of educational attain

ment in mobility processes. For example, Pierre Bourdieu has argued that an academic qualification such as a master's degree is a "certificate of

cultural competence which confers on its holder a conventional constant

legally guaranteed value with respect to culture" (1986:248). Bourdieu

notes that educational credentials allow for objective comparisons of

qualification holders, performing the "magic" of imposing recognition on

people who, without this formal recognition, would be constantly required to prove themselves. For employers in particular, credentials carry impor tant signals of technical skills and abilities (Lareau and Weininger, 2003).

Bourdieu (1986) refers to academic qualifications as "institutionalized

cultural capital." However, he also highlights another dimension of talent

that has seldom been incorporated into attainment/mobility research?

what he calls "embodied cultural capital." A person's embodied cultural

capital refers to his or her accumulated knowledge of socially valued

norms, behaviors, competencies, information, and beliefs, especially those

beliefs and tastes manifested by the dominant class. A large investment

of time and personal effort is required to acquire a store of embodied

cultural capital. Strongly linked to success in the educational arena and

serving as an important resource in the labor market, embodied cultural



146 Garnett et al.

capital goes beyond technical abilities to encompass a sense of "cultiva

tion," that is, a culturally sophisticated way of conducting oneself.

Embodied cultural capital is not simply possessed, it is enacted, demon

strated in common, everyday interaction rituals. This kind of cultivation

essentially refers to the art of mis en sc?ne (putting on a show) (Bourdieu,

1983), also resembling what Erving Goffman (1959) called "the work of

successfully staging a character." Goffman, of course, is known for high

lighting the art of impression management, the application of social tal ents that enable successful interactions in social settings. The "staging of

characters" and "putting on shows" are impression management processes

and strategies that are enacted in everyday micro interactions.

Embodied cultural capital was first used by Bourdieu (Bourdieu and

Passeron, 1990) to explain uneven scholastic achievements among children

from different social classes. Rather than accept the view that achievement

stemmed primarily from natural aptitude, Bourdieu argued that the trans

mission of valued cultural competencies to the children of the dominant

classes ensured their success in the French education system. In Distinction

(Bourdieu, 1984), he demonstrated that these kinds of cultural competen cies were also consequential for life chances beyond the classroom. In this

important work, he utilized multiple modes of empirical inquiry to argue that embodied cultural capital is distributed unequally in a social space of

social classes (which is constructed on the basis of possession of economic

capital and institutionalized cultural capital). According to Bourdieu, pos session of the right kind of cultivation enabled French elites to define and

maintain boundaries between themselves and members of lower classes.3 Bourdieu's description of a multidimensional cultural capital has not

escaped criticism. For instance, it has been suggested that, in North Amer

ica at least, it is not so much highbrow culture (the culture of the upper

class) that is important for labor market success but, rather, cultural

diversity that matters most. Erickson (1996:219) has shown that members

of the upper echelons of workplaces are not "cultural snobs but cultural

'omnivores.'" Their strength lies in having a wide variety of cultural

knowledge that they can employ appropriately, rather than a particular

type of cultivation founded on cultural knowledge located at the top of a

hierarchy. Emmison (2003) similarly notes the importance of cultural

mobility in these especially culturally fluid times. It seems reasonable

to think that familiarity with many different cultural forms, a kind of

cultural omnivorism, coupled with the ability to talk about things in the

right place at the right time, enables people to succeed in job interviews,

3 In the United States, Lareau (2003) has identified a "concerted cultivation" of a middle

class "sense of entitlement" that fosters its success.




at work, and so on. In our opinion, this approach to cultural competency

represents the essence of "staging a character," specially focused on the

ability to stage (or "ad-lib") appropriate characters for different settings. The kind of staged character that facilitates occupational success need not

be refined and cultivated in a specifically highbrow manner?a rounded,

multifaceted, and agile cultivation may matter most.4

We seek to contribute to the status attainment and social mobility literatures by applying this relatively unexplored dimension of talent to

career success in the workplace. Rather than focusing exclusively on talent

defined as educational credentials, cognitive ability, or skills fostered and

developed in the educational system, as is common in the mobility litera

ture, we additionally highlight the importance of talent in the form of par ticular kinds of embodied cultural capital, what we refer to as "cultural

talent." We investigate cultural talent in the form of cultural omnivorism

(following Erickson) and as highbrow cultivation (following Bourdieu),

using original survey data from British Columbia, Canada to investigate the degree to which the different conceptualizations of talent?creden

tialed and cultural, highbrow and omnivore?facilitate the attainment of

occupations characterized by high levels of skill and complexity.

Research Questions

Our overarching goal is to examine how fruitful a multifaceted concept of talent?encompassing both the magic of credentials and the wielding of

cultural talent?is as a predictor of occupational location. Our empirical focus in this article centers on whether occupations that depend on profes

sional-type judgments (highly-skilled jobs requiring creativity and the appli cation of abstract knowledge) are more or less frequently occupied by

people with higher levels of educational achievement and greater stores of

cultural talent. In so doing we focus on the distinction between cultural-tal

ent-omnivore (operationalized here as breadth of cultural knowledge) and

cultural-talent-highbrow (operationalized as highbrow cultural knowledge). The specific research questions guiding our analysis are:

1. What roles do educational credentials and cultural talent play in the

attainment of occupations that are characterized by complexity and

require high levels of skill? Specifically, given that educational experiences may influence cultural competencies and occupational outcomes (thereby

making empirical associations between cultural talent and occupational

4 This approach to conceptualizing cultural talent resembles Swidler's (1986) conception of

"cultural toolkits" that enable "strategies of action."



148 Garnett et al.

success spurious), does cultural talent influence the attainment of skilled

occupations above and beyond the well-established influence of educa

tional credentials?

2. Which forms of cultural talent are most useful in this regard, omnivore or highbrow?

We use an original survey data set uniquely suited to assessing the

role of various forms of talent and their linkages with skilled occupations.

Although this data set was not originally collected in order to investigate

relationships between cultural talent and occupational success, it contains

various measures of occupational skill and complexity, educational creden

tials, and a wide variety of cultural knowledge items that we have oppor

tunistically marshaled to pursue our research questions.

DATA

Survey Sample

A mailed questionnaire survey of adult residents living in 25 commu

nities5 in the Canadian province of British Columbia was conducted in

2002. A random selection of households from each community was drawn

from the most current telephone listings using a systematic random sam

pling technique, and a survey questionnaire was then administered by mail

in a five-stage process. To select a household member randomly, the reci

pient of the introductory letter was asked to give the survey questionnaire to the person in the household aged 18 and over whose birthday was first

in the year. The survey produced 1,435 respondents in total and an overall

response rate of 56.5%. As a rough indication of how well our survey

sample matches the British Columbian population demographically, we

compared the survey sample to the population of adults aged 18 and over

in British Columbia from the 2001 Census: 47.5% of the survey sample were female and 13.4% were aged 65 and over, whereas in the province as

a whole, 51.5% of adults were female and 17.5% were aged 65 and over.

Because our analysis attempts to uncover factors that facilitate occu

pational success, possibly by making "cultivated" individuals displaying cultural talents attractive to employers who control prestigious career

opportunities, respondents who were not employed full time or part time

5 Campbell River, Comox, Courtenay, Duncan, Gibsons, Gold River, Kitimat, Ladysmith, Masset, Nanaimo, Parksville, Port Alberni, Port Alice, Port Hardy, Port McNeill, Powell

River, Prince Rupert, Qualicum Beach, Sechelt, Squamish, Tahsis, Torino, Ucluelet, Van

couver, and Victoria. See Veenstra (2005a) for more information on the communities and

survey sample sizes and response rates by community.




at the time of the survey were excluded from our analyses. We also

excluded self-employed respondents and respondents who did not provide answers to survey items comprising the dependent variable, occupational skill and complexity. The sample size was therefore 702, further reduced to 621 in multivariate models due to missing values. Regarding missing values, the two samples did not differ exceedingly from one another along basic demographic lines: 47.4% of the larger sample were female (vs. 47.8% in the smaller sample), the mean age was 41.4 (vs. 43.2), and

21.7% had a university degree (vs. 23.2%).

Demographic Variables

Age, gender, marital status, number of children, First Nations affilia tion (respondents were asked if they belonged to an Indian band),

mother's and father's educational attainment, and the employment status

(full time vs. part time) of survey respondents are described in Table I.

We acknowledge that cultural talent may influence occupational careers differently in different settings. Brown (1995) claims that organiza tional restructuring in the labor market has featured a shift in recent dec

ades from bureaucratic corporate structures to inherently insecure,

flexible, flat, and lean corporate structures. Whereas the bureaucratic career is associated with a "predictable linear progression within corporate hierarchies, flexible careers are invariably contingent and retrospective" (Brown, 1995:36). Clearly, cultural talent may operate differently in

bureaucratic and flexible settings. In light of other mobility research that also emphasizes the importance of labor market context (e.g., Kalleberg, 1988; Lin, 2001), we identified the industry setting of our employed survey

respondents and then distinguished respondents employed in the most

bureaucratically organized industries (i.e., government service, education,

healthcare, and policing and legal services) from those working in the

other, more flexible, industries.6

Occupational Skill and Complexity

We employed respondents' own descriptions of their work activity in

order to assess the skill and complexity inherent to their occupations. As

6 The flexible industries were aquaculture, band council/band administrator, construction,

farming/agriculture, finance/insurance/real estate, fish processing/fish plant, forestry/log ging, hunting/trapping, manufacturing, mining (including oil and gas), paper mill/pulp

mill, saw mill, tourism/service industry, and transportation.



150 Garnett et al.

Table I. Characteristics of Survey Respondents (Employed Sample, N = 702)

Variable Categories Distribution of Responses

Age

Gender

Marital status

First Nations

Children

Employment status

Bureaucratic/flexible

organization Personal educational

attainment

Mother's educational

attainment

Father's educational

attainment

Occupational skill

and complexity Cultural-talent-omnivore

Cultural-talent-highbrow

Cultural-talent-books

Cultural-talent-artists

Cultural-talent-magazines

Cultural-talent-sports

Female

Male

Married or common-law

Not married or common-law

First Nations

Other

Has children

No children

Full time

Part time

Bureaucratic

Flexible

Less than high school

High school

Community college or technical school

University degree: bachelor

University degree: masters

Doctorate or professional degree Less than high school

High school

Some postsecondary

Community college or technical school

University degree Less than high school

High school

Some postsecondary

Community college or

technical school

University degree

Mean = 44.4

(N =

699, SD = 10.4)

344 (47.6%) 378 (52.4) 496 (70.8%) 205 (29.2) 41 (5.8%)

661 (94.2) 514 (73.5%) 185 (26.5) 536 (76.4%) 166 (23.6) 236 (35.3%) 432 (64.7) 42(6.1%)

332 (48.0) 167 (24.2) 107(15.5) 22 (3.2) 21 (3.0)

218 (32.8%) 222 (33.4)

88 (13.2) 86 (12.9) 51 (7.7)

295 (44.8%) 139(21.1) 55 (8.4) 96 (14.6)

73 (11.1) Mean = 3.69

(N =

702, SD = 0.76)

Mean = 26.4

(N =

702, SD = 10.9)

Mean = 2.43

(N =

702, SD = 3.6)

Mean = 8.92

(N =

702, SD = 5.2)

Mean = 6.07

(N =

702, SD = 3.2)

Mean = 2.90

(N =

702, SD = 2.1)

Mean = 8.49

(N =

702, SD = 5.0)

Reitz (2001) observes, existing taxonomies of occupational prestige or sta

tus often possess considerable within-category variation in the set of skills

required for occupations. In addition, the most current Canadian occupa tional prestige measure is now more than 20 years old (Blishen et al,




1987). As such, we chose to understand occupational skill and complexity through the meanings that respondents give to their work rather than

through broad, externally imposed and possibly dated classifications that

may mask skills and complex thinking. We utilized five survey items, each scored on a five-point Likert scale ranging from strongly disagree to

strongly agree.

1. My job requires a high level of skill.

2. My job requires creativity. 3. My job requires that I learn new things. 4. My job requires abstract knowledge about the ideas behind my work. 5. My job produces highly complex problems that require a high level of abstract theory to solve.

We created an occupational skill and complexity index by summing the responses to these five items, with higher scores representing more

skilled occupations. Scale reliability analysis produced an acceptably high Cronbach's alpha value of 0.83. Our measure of occupational skill and

complexity correlated fairly well with personal income (tau b = .237,

p < .001, N = 675) and the Pineo (tau b =

.310, p < .001, N = 623)

and Blishen (tau b = .294, p < .001, N =

623) occupational prestige measures. The overall mean score for the skill/complexity index was 3.69. To further illuminate the nature of our index, we calculated mean scores

for the most popular occupations in the data set. We obtained mean scores of 4.33 for 31 self-identified teachers in the sample, 4.19 for the electricians (N

= 1), 3.92 for the registered nurses (N

= 10), 3.68 for the

millwrights (N =

8), 3.54 for the administrative assistants (N =

7), and 3.15 for the cooks (N

= 8).

Talent

Seven variables assessing talent, both credentialed and cultural, were

constructed. Educational credential attainment was created in six ordered

categories from a questionnaire item assessing the highest level of educa tion an individual had completed (Table I).

Our conceptualization of cultural talent, like recent North American

investigations into the manifestation of cultural capital more generally, stresses the importance of cultural knowledge. Lamont and Lareau (1988) question whether participation in cultural events, along the dominant

operationalization of cultural capital in North American studies, is an

adequate indicator of cultural capital in that setting. Erickson (1996), too, has demonstrated the utility of cultural capital in various social relations



152 Garnett et al.

in a Canadian context; crucially, she operationalized cultural capital as

familiarity with cultural artifacts. We follow Erickson's route in our

empirical analysis of the relationship between talent and career success.

The cultural talent variables were created from a series of 71 survey items assessing familiarity with various works of literature, artists, maga

zines, and sports figures (see Table II). The works of literature encom

passed a wide range of classic and popular books, Canadian and

international, whereas the artist names included obscure and well-known

artists, sculptors, and painters, Canadians and non-Canadians. The maga

zines encompassed a range of topical areas, from architecture to finance,

science, and current affairs, while the sports figures spanned both popular and less well-known sports, for example, boxing, cricket, figure-skating, football, hockey, motor-racing, and wrestling. With respect to literature,

respondents were asked to identify from a list of 15 books those that they had heard of, coded 1, and those that they had read, coded 2 (and coded

0 otherwise). Regarding familiarity with art, respondents were asked to

indicate which artists' names they recognized from a list of 18 names, coded 1 (heard of the artist) and 0 (had not heard of the artist) in each

case. Each magazine was coded 1 if the magazine was read and 0 other

wise; each sports figure item was coded 1 if the name was recognized and

0 otherwise.

We created a measure of cultural-talent-omnivore by summing

together scores for all the books, artists, magazines, and sports figures items listed in Table II. Although we do not have a priori reason to believe

that this index should necessarily be internally consistent, the alpha value

for this index of 71 items was very high at 0.90.7 This measure represents a

rough and proximate measure of breadth of cultural knowledge. Literature and art are traditional domains of the highbrow (Lynch,

2004). We used a "rarity" argument to identify the highbrow cultural

knowledge items contained in the list of books and artists presented to

respondents, arguing that a cultural form familiar to a small segment of

the population is more likely to be highbrow than is a form known to

almost everyone (Erickson, 1991). Here, the total survey sample of

TV = 1,435 was employed to indicate rarefied knowledge within the entire

population (Table II). If fewer than 30% of the total sample of respon dents had heard of a book, it was deemed highbrow culture: seven books

fit these criteria. Highbrow artists were defined as those of whom fewer

than 30% of the total sample of respondents had heard: 11 artists fit this

7 Because respondents were awarded two points for having read a book, the books variables

carried more weight in the cultural knowledge measures than did the other variables. This

imbalance was deemed appropriate because of the deeper familiarity with a cultural form

that comes from reading a book vs. simply recognizing a name.




Table II. Cultural Knowledge Items (Full Sample, N = 1,435)

Books % Heard of Magazines % Read

Out of Africa

Oliver Twist

The Pelican Brief

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Pride and Prejudice

Sophie's Choice The Wealthy Barber

The Handmaid's Tale

The Stone Angel Two Solitudes

Kamouraska

Sunshine Sketches

Sophie's World

What's Bred in the Bone

The Golden Notebook

Artists

Emily Carr

Pablo Picasso Robert Bateman

Andy Warhol

The Group of Seven

Salvador Dali

Degas

Georgia O'Keefe

Henry Moore

Cornelius Krieghoff A. J. Casson

Mary Pratt

Marie Cass?t

Michael Snow Harold Town

Joyce Wieland

87.6

86.5

76.9

75.6

74.0

58.5

57.6

46.1

27.8

19.4

12.8

12.7

11.1

8.6

6.4

% Heard of

93.3

85.9

83.1

71.8

65.0

58.9

43.6

25.9

23.3

18.7

17.3

11.6

10.7

6.1

4.3

3.9

Macleans

Time

Chatelaine

Newsweek

Sports Illustrated

The Financial Times

Cosmopolitan The Economist

Scientific American

Penthouse

Architectural Digest

Saturday Night The New Yorker

Harper's Forbes

Harvard Business Review

Sports Figures

Elvis Stojko Michael Jordan

Eric Lindros

Jennifer Capriati

Shae-Lynn Bourne

Roger Clemens

'Stone Cold' Steve Austin

David Duvall

Danny McManus

Bobby Allison

Brett Favre

Patrick Carpentier Joe Thornton Jim Furyk Rob Boyd Felix Trinidad

Shannon Stewart Todd Martin

Hunter Hurst Helmsley Vin Baker Don Bradman

53.1

41.8

26.2

20.3

16.6

14.3

11.3

8.9

7.9

6.1

5.5

4.9

4.9

3.6

3.1

1.2

% Heard of

93.9

92.0

84.3

58.5

53.7

52.3

50.0

39.7

34.4

29.8

27.2

26.3

24.9

22.4

21.3

18.5

17.0

14.1

10.4

6.9

4.8

criterion. These highbrow books and artists items were merged to create a

single index of cultural-talent-highbrow (Cronbach's alpha = 0.85 among

the 1,435 respondents).8 8

Elsewhere, Veenstra (2005b) performed a principal components factor analysis on the 71

knowledge items, utilizing various class position indicators to predict several of the resul tant cultural knowledge factors. The less-well-known books clustered into one factor, while the less-well-known artists clustered in another. The clustering of knowledge items in this

way lends support to our contention that a rarity argument utilizing a 30% cutoff may

identify highbrow cultural knowledge forms.



154 Garnett et al.

Finally, we considered cultural genre, toward the goal of determining whether a cultivation (a cultural talent) that enables occupational success

comes in the form of familiarity with literature, art, popular culture (as

displayed in current magazines), or sports. We created four new cultural

talent indices from the original set of 71 cultural knowledge items: a

cultural-talent-books index constructed by summing the books variables

produced alpha =

0.85, a similarly-constructed cultural-talent-artists

index produced alpha =

0.85, a cultural-talent-magazines index had an

alpha of 0.62 and a cultural-talent-sports index had an alpha of 0.89 (in all cases N =

1,435).

RESULTS

Zero-Order Relationships Between Talent and Occupational

Skill/Complexity

We begin our investigation with zero-order relationships between

talent and occupational skill and complexity (Table III). Educational

attainment was fairly strongly and significantly related to occupational skill, while the cultural-talent-omnivore and cultural-talent-highbrow vari

ables were somewhat less effective at predicting occupational skill (the cul

tural-talent-genre variables were even less effective). We note that the

effects on occupational skill of both forms of talent were perhaps stronger for women than for men. This follows a typical pattern where women

often experience greater need to earn their places in the workforce through individual talent than do men. For instance, Boyd (1985) and Wanner

(2000) have shown that educational attainment influences the career paths of women more than those of men in Canada.

Multivariate Predictors of Occupational Skill/Complexity

Next, we created multivariate models on occupational skill in order

to control for demographic variables that might influence both talent and

occupational skill. For example, age might influence occupational skill (if

mastery of skills grows with time and experience in a given business or

sector of industry) and cultural talent (to the degree that cultural knowl

edge and familiarity accumulates over time), making their association

spurious. Table IV displays results from a series of multiple linear regres sions on degree of occupational skill and complexity for the N = 621

respondents who answered all the pertinent survey questions. The first




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model contains only the demographic controls, the second adds educa

tional credentials to the basic demographic model,9 and the third addition

ally incorporates the cultural-talent-omnivore variable. The remaining models successively incorporate the cultural-talent-highbrow and cultural

talent-genre variables in place of cultural-talent-omnivore.

After controlling for the other demographic variables, we found that men were more likely than women to occupy jobs with higher skill levels, as were respondents with a father with a university degree, who were full

time employees, or were employed in a bureaucratic context (Model 1, Table IV).

Personal educational credentials were strong predictors of occupa tional skill/complexity after controlling for the demographic variables

(Model 2) and made a sizeable contribution to the explained variance (the

adjusted R2 increased by .077 from Model 1 to Model 2). (We suspect that

the effect on occupational skill of father's education evident in Model 1

reflects its influence on educational attainment and hence occupational skill.) Educational credentials apparently facilitate entry into occupations

necessitating professional judgments and decision making, as the research

literature has long demonstrated.

When using cultural-talent-omnivore as the sole measure of talent

(model not shown), the model's R2 was .135 (adjusted R2 = .121), lower

than when educational credentials were used (although the increase in

variance explained from Model 1 was still sizeable). Upon controlling for

the demographic variables and educational credentials, cultural-talent

omnivore remained a significant predictor of occupational skill (Model

3).10 This finding shows that cultural-talent-omnivore assessed is associ

ated with attainment of skilled occupations above and beyond the effect

of educational credentials. Academic credentials and cultural-talent-omni

vore seemingly influence this particular form of occupational attainment. But is a widely based cultural knowledge the most appropriate form

of cultural talent (following Erickson), or might a highbrow or sophisti cated knowledge be more helpful when it comes to succeeding in

the workplace (following Bourdieu)? Table III shows that the zero-order

9 Years of schooling made lesser contributions to the multivariate models than did the six

part credentials version of educational attainment (results for years of schooling are not

shown). 10 Because the zero-order relationships between cultural-talent-omnivore and occupational skill differed to some degree for men and women in Table II, we added an interaction term between gender and cultural talent to Model 3?it was not statistically significant and so was not included in the model. An interaction term between cultural-talent-omni vore and organizational setting (bureaucratic vs. flexible) did not make a significant contribution either. This means that the main results from our analysis of the effects of

cultural-talent-omnivore for occupational skill and complexity are not gender specific or

specific to organizational context (bureaucratic vs. flexible).



158 Garnett et al.

relationships between cultural-talent-highbrow and occupational skill were very similar to those manifested by cultural-talent-omnivore and

occupational skill. Upon controlling for demographic characteristics

and educational attainment, the cultural-talent-highbrow variable was

also statistically significant (Model 4, Table IV). It seems, therefore, that cultural talent operationalized as cultural knowledge in either highbrow or

omnivore form may be influential for occupational success.

Finally, might the right kind of cultural talent be based on familiarity with literary and artistic themes or perhaps instead on knowledge of

sports or familiarity with popular culture, and so forth? From the zero

order relationships between the genre-specific indices and occupational skill presented in Table III we note that the cultural-talent-books, -artists, and -magazines variables were all significantly related to occupational skill, whereas the cultural-talent-sports variable was mostly unrelated (for both women and men).

We ran separate regression models for the cultural-talent-genre vari

ables, controlling for the demographic variables and educational creden

tials in each case (in manner analogous to Model 3). The beta and

p values for cultural-talent-books and cultural-talent-artists were similar to one another but, in contrast with the zero-order findings of Table III,

cultural-talent-magazines appeared to be the best predictor of skilled

occupations. (Cultural-talent-sports remained irrelevant.) We interpret the

reduction of importance of familiarity with authors and artists from the

zero-order models to the multivariate models to reflect the effect of educa tional attainment on such knowledge. Thus cultural-talent-books and

cultural-talent-artists both possessed predictive capacity for occupational skill/complexity above and beyond the ownership of academic credentials,

although both cultural talent measures were muted by their interrelation

ships with educational attainment. This was not precisely the case with

cultural-talent-magazines, which better held its predictive power net of

educational credentials. Finally, cultural-talent-sports was mostly irrele vant for facilitating attainment of highly skilled and complex occupations.

DISCUSSION

We began our investigation with the well-established premise that

talent is critical in shaping career trajectories. We sought in this article, however, to broaden the dominant understanding of talent in the status

attainment and social mobility literatures, typically assessed by variables linked to formal education (most often as either years of schooling or

credentials) and sometimes conceptualized as cognitive development.




Bourdieu's notion of embodied cultural capital and Goffman's interac

tional conceptualization of "staging a character" provide a broader vista

for thinking about "cultural talent." We argue that cultural talent can be

fruitfully understood in terms of cultural competencies and impression

management strategies enacted in micro interactions.

Not surprisingly, given the long history of mobility research support

ing this finding, we found that educational credentials were a predictor of

the extent to which occupational skill and complexity characterize career

placement. Nevertheless, cultural talent also made a contribution to

explaining this dimension of career placement, above and beyond posses sion of formal educational certificates and degrees. As such, cultural talent

can be thought of as a "productive resource" (Lin, 2001) operating along side educational credentials. Indeed, our analytic strategy may actually

mask the full power of cultural talent; by first controlling for educational

credentials in our multivariate models we may have parceled out some of

the effect of cultural talent. In effect, to the degree that cultural talent

intervenes between education and occupational skill, we may have artifi

cially reduced the magnitude of the relationship between cultural talent

and skill?the contribution of the cultural talent variable to our multi

variate models represents a skinnier story than might have otherwise

obtained.

We contend that this cultural dimension of talent allows individuals

to stage the kinds of characters?to perform, to put on the right kinds of

shows?that enables them to successfully compete for skilled positions. A

traditional reading of Bourdieu would suggest that knowledge of high brow culture would best indicate the kind of cultivation that facilitates

acquisition of an occupation characterized by skill and complexity. Our

findings parallel Erickson's (1996) in that advantage may also accrue to

cultural omnivores, those conversant with popular and highbrow culture.

The more varied the base of cultural knowledge one has, the better able

one will be to "ad-lib" appropriately in different workplace settings, be

they the human resources office, the lunch room, or the board room.

Nonetheless, we do not wish to understate the relevance of highbrow culture in the North American context. First, of course, highbrow culture

proves significant in our multivariate analyses, but second, our analysis of genres indicates the importance of knowledge of literature and art in

particular?two cultural forms persistently accorded highbrow status in

the long history of studying culture (Lynch, 2004)?in predicting more

complex and skilled occupations. This finding contrasts starkly with the

irrelevance of sports knowledge?perhaps the most egalitarian of the four

genres under discussion?for providing occupational advantage. Following Erickson (1996) again, sports knowledge may allow one to stage the type



160 Garnett et al.

of character that coordinates well with others in the workplace, but it

likely does little to enable the surpassing of others in occupational attain ment. The more well-read and artistically savvy person can put on a better

show when the stage is set for occupational advancement. Magazine

knowledge in particular appears to be among the more valuable of the

genres. Although magazines probably do not contain the depth of books or paintings, they are current in a way books and paintings clearly are

not. In the accelerated pace of late modern society, one of the most valu

able workplace talents may be to stage a character that is hip, relevant, and au courant.

Careers in the Making: The Importance of Trustworthiness and Social

Similarity

We claim that cultural talent in the form of an ability to stage characters is relevant for career trajectories. But exactly how does cultural

talent in the form of cultural knowledge and competencies affect attainment

of skilled and complex occupations? We think that cultural talent plays an

important role at times of hiring and promotion for such positions within

organizations by virtue of incumbents' abilities to stage characters that

generate perceptions of trustworthiness and social similarity, abilities that

need not necessarily stem from educational experiences or encompass the

wielding of credentials.

This argument would be immediately crippled if educational measures

were a perfectly valid and encompassing measure of talent and if employ ers primarily used educational credential information and assessments of

cognitive ability when making hiring and promotion decisions. Employers

report paying little attention to such matters, however, stressing instead a

range of other factors (e.g., Miller and Rosenbaum, 1997; see review by

Bills, 2004).n These other factors include experience, job history, and

personal qualities (Bills, 1988; Mencken and Winfield, 1998; Moss and

Tilly, 2001; Mouw, 2003). As Petersen et al (2000:764) argue, "subjective assessments carry great weight in hiring." They undoubtedly influence

promotions as well.

11 The status attainment and human capital research traditions clearly demonstrate that

despite what employers might report to interviewers, education is often used to make key

hiring and promotion decisions. Multivariate analyses routinely show that education

and/or mental ability is a strong predictor of career success, acting perhaps as a key sig nal or filter (Bills, 2004). However, the sizeable variance unexplained by these models

points to unmeasured factors, and possibly to unmeasured aspects of talent.




And how are such subjective assessments derived? With regard to hir

ing, it has been suggested that "word of mouth" is a prevalent recruitment

strategy (Petersen et al, 2000). This likely occurs because word-of-mouth channels carry high-quality information. "Trusted information" flows

through personal connections, connections that provide quality, depend able judgments in the eyes of employers because they can rely on the "word" of their associates. Based on ethnographic work, Kanter (1975) provides one of the most robust accounts detailing why these mechanisms are integral to smooth workplace operation. Building explicitly on Wilbert

Moore's description of a "bureaucratic kinship system," she argues that the modern corporate workplace relies heavily on team players, colleagues

with strong peer acceptance. As Elliot and Smith (2004:369) describe it, the "underlying idea is that communication, discretion, and trust are facil itated by social similarity." Weeden and Grusky (2005:150) similarly argue that "employers and other gatekeepers filter applicants on the basis of individual-level attributes, thus creating ... homogeneity by matching the traits of new recruits with those of current employees," at least in part to

promote "workplace harmony."12

This suggests that the social similarity of occupational incumbents with managers and executives in corporate contexts ought to be high. The recruits that managers and senior executives seek for such jobs are people

who share with them the "right stuff (Mencken and Winfield, 1998), and what is important in hiring is ensuring that new hires will fit in with their

peers. To investigate this idea, Miller and Rosenbaum (1997) interviewed 51 employers in Chicago, inquiring about the information used to make

hiring decisions for entry-level positions in the primary labor market.

They concluded that decisions were made primarily on "trustworthy" information about candidates. For employers, trusted information came

through personal interviews or via the testimonials of close associates

(e.g., key employees, network contacts). Miller and Rosenbaum (1997:504) report employers being skeptical of the trustworthiness of "applicant's teachers, employment agencies, tests, and applicant's past employers."

Trusting "gut instincts" was prevalent. Some evidence suggests that similarity and trust may be more impor

tant in skilled settings than in less skilled ones. Elliot and Smith (2004) used face-to-face interview data from the Multi-City Survey of Urban

Inequality (1992-1994) to examine the extent of ascriptive matching between workers and their immediate supervisors. They concluded that

most superiors prefer to fill power positions that they supervise with

12 "Rational bias theory" presents a social psychological variant of this argument. According to this approach, people believe they can work most effectively with others who share similar interests and a "common culture" (Erickson et al, 2000:297; see also Roth, 2004).



162 Garnett et al.

people who are ascriptively similar to themselves. Why? Because of

"trust" relations. Supporting Kanter's reasoning, where supervisors need

to rely on the decision making of their subordinates, trusting them to

exercise autonomy and discretion wisely, social similarity is at its highest

(Elliot and Smith, 2004).13 To conclude, subjective assessments?especially those that reflect

trustworthiness and social similarity?undoubtedly influence hiring. Cer

tainly, "social capital" is relevant here, to the degree that social networks are important means for generating trust and confirming social similarity.

Especially for workers in skilled occupational settings, we argue that cul

tural talent?the ability to "stage a character"?is also influential, during

hiring and for promotion as well. Human capital in the form of educa

tional credentials may get one's foot in the door, and social capital in the

form of well-placed social connections may communicate assurance of

trustworthiness for employers, but we claim that an ability to successfully

stage a character who appears to "have the right stuff is also important to career trajectories, especially in highly skilled, complex occupational contexts.

Our conclusions and interpretations are speculative, necessarily so

given the nature of our data and analysis. It is especially important to

acknowledge that our survey data do not directly capture the ritual enact

ment of cultural capacities?ethnographic work is required to access this

level of detail (Hallet, 2003; Lareau, 2003). We also cannot rule out

reverse causality. We have taken an important theoretical step in linking the micro bases of stratification to the longstanding traditions of mobility research, and our results are consistent with some ethnographic accounts

of workplace dynamics. Nevertheless, it may be that longitudinal data will

show that entry into occupations high in skill and complexity facilitates

the development of cultural talent, talent that either develops or is further

honed as one learns to be successful in such work. However, to the extent

that cultural talent is a deeply engrained flair that takes time to nurture

and mature, as Bourdieu and others have argued, then the lines of causal

ity posited here seem reasonable.

If Menken and Winfield (1998) are correct in claiming that displaying the "right stuff is important for occupational success, it is perhaps not

surprising that an advantage is accorded to those with the widest variety of cultural talent in staging appropriate characters. As we suggested

13 Staging a character, or "face work," is critical in many jobs (e.g., waiting tables) where

rewards are directly related to performance. Our point is that in occupations where dis

cernment, tact, and standards are important, trust of character among co-workers, and

especially supervisors, is reinforced by cultural talent. This talent helps in demonstrating that you have the "right stuff."




above, some of this cultural talent could be gained through experiences in

the educational system. Still, a broadened conception of talent helps

explain the disconnect between employers who claim that credentials are

not the most important factor in hiring and the fact that such credentials

remain strong predictors of occupational attainment (e.g., Bills, 2004). Credentials are a critical part of the career success story, but talent, at

least in the eyes of those making decisions about people's occupational careers, also includes cultural competencies, especially the talent to stage a

character appropriate for a complex occupation. As working muscle, tal

ent has multiple fibers.

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