In today’s humbling job market, we would like to think that no job is “better” than another, that prestige is purely superficial and that fulfillment matters more than titles or company logos. These statements — while comforting and usually well-intentioned — are also incomplete. For many industries, prestige structures the flow of opportunity. Unfortunately, ignoring that reality makes navigating the job market even harder, especially for students trying to break in.
Prestige has always been attached to work. Certain roles have long carried higher social status, economic security and even symbolic authority. What has changed in recent years is not the existence of career prestige, but the intensity of its visibility. Platforms like LinkedIn allow people’s professional identity to be constantly on display, which has turned people’s career paths into far more public-facing narratives.
Prestige, however, isn’t confined to a singular definition. There is prestige to be found in certain roles and prestige in company names — both of which are conflated. A more prestigious role at a lesser-known company may require more skill than a generic role at a more popular firm, but it’s up to the hiring managers to determine which is more valuable. And, in the age of AI screening in recruiting processes, it might often be that company name recognition that gets your foot in the door.
It might feel unfair, but the reality is simple: You are not the one giving yourself your next job — it’s the hiring managers and the executives. To them, prestige matters, whether we like it or not.
This is where I see the harm in telling young people, “It doesn’t matter where you work.” For someone trying to move laterally or upward in a competitive field, dismissing prestige doesn’t make the struggle easier. In popular industries among Northeastern students, like finance, law, tech and media, prestigious work experience functions as a mini vetting process. A well-known firm on a resume signals that a legitimate party has already invested in you.
Those name-recognition vetting processes have grown stronger as elite education becomes more widespread. Universities like Northeastern are producing more and more competitive applicants as they expand their educational initiatives and professional networks. When nearly every applicant comes from an accredited university, those credentials lose their differentiating power. Then, prestigious work experience becomes the next filter. It offers employers an expectation, whether it’s correct or incorrect, about what a junior employee can do, how they can learn and how they might function on a team.
That is not to say that prestigious jobs are inherently “better” jobs. In fact, prestige often captures only one narrow dimension of quality. It is also deeply relative. Prestige matters more in client-facing industries, where perception is a large part of the product. It matters less in fields where outcomes speak for themselves or skills are demonstrated without someone else needing to vouch for them. Not everyone wants to work a prestigious job, and in many careers, it doesn’t necessarily matter.
But in industries where it does matter, it matters quite a bit.
We can ask ourselves a simple question: If prestige isn’t important, why do we put company names on resumes at all? Why not just include the role, its responsibilities and the accomplishments you achieved in it? It is because the company name carries information. It’s a proxy for scale, selectivity and reputation. Although we may wish it worked differently, pretending those signals don’t exist doesn’t help candidates navigate the system.
We can, however, acknowledge this to be true while also accepting that prestige is not a universally relevant measure of human worth.
For a lot of the students at Northeastern either applying for co-op or looking for full-time opportunities, when it comes to prestige, it’s important to understand that clarity is far more important than false reassurance. Understanding when it matters and why it matters allows for better decision-making than holistically ignoring the issue.
Whether we like it or not, prestige is not an illusion — and, in some cases, it is part of the infrastructure.
Honor Seares is a fifth-year history and economics combined major. She can be reached at [email protected].
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