Drinking Buddies

That national fraternity has sent almost 3,000 men into finance, according to resumes on LinkedIn, which shows no other industry employing more than 1,800. One of its most successful members, 59-year-old billionaire hedge-fund manager Paul Tudor Jones, apologized in May after telling University of Virginia students that motherhood keeps women from being focused traders.

Research by Lauren Rivera, an associate professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, has shown bankers preferring fraternity heads or other potential drinking buddies to candidates with better grades.

“People like people who are like themselves,” said Rivera, who interviewed 120 professionals involved in hiring graduates for banking, law and consulting jobs.

College women don’t always grasp that men their age are assembling connections that can matter more than schoolwork, said Erica O’Malley, who heads a diversity program at Grant Thornton LLP. She quizzed her children’s friends as they passed through her home near Chicago over the Thanksgiving break.

‘Mom, Stop’

“My daughter will be like, ‘Mom, stop,’” said O’Malley, who also heads an audit practice at the accounting firm. “They don’t really understand it.”

Her company issued a report in March showing the U.S. with the eighth-lowest proportion of female business leaders out of 44 countries. Some of the students who could help boost that ranking find themselves struggling to land work after college.

“I wish I did have more networks,” said Emily Hendrix, who plans to graduate in May after three years at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. “It would maybe make finding a job a little easier, a little less stressful.”

A resume that includes the honor council, cross-country team and Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority along with internships for the CME Group Inc., owner of the world’s largest futures exchange, and Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch unit seems robust enough to land one. Without job offers for next year, or strong leads from friends, she’s been compiling potential options into a spreadsheet listing 123 companies she’d like to work for.