Parents Hire $4,000 Sorority Consultants to Help Daughters Dress and Impress During Rush (creative destruction and how the economy just keeps creating new types of occupations & professions)

Getting into sororities is nearly as tough as entry to top universities; ‘Be trendy but not too trendy, modest but not too modest, fit in but be unique’

The economy keeps creating new kinds of jobs. Like online dating profile consultant, "Wedding Hashtag Helper," dating coaches and private Disney tours guides. Yes, machines like computers might destroy jobs but they can also create new ones (there is more below on this process of "creative destruction" after the links to related posts).

For more on the occupation in today's title see this article by Tara Weiss of The WSJ. Excerpts:

There is a "Georgia-based sorority-consulting firm, It’s All Greek to Me."

"Addicks [Trisha Addicks, who runs the firm] offers a $600 seminar for women and their mothers to learn the basics about getting into a sorority; $3,500 buys unlimited access to sorority mentors who advise aspirants through every step. She is part of an industry emerging in recent years that sells tips and emotional support to women who want to avoid missteps that threaten first impressions. Sorority consultants cover such topics as what to wear, how to act, what to say and the wisdom of scrubbing potentially off-putting social media posts."

"Getting into sororities has become nearly as competitive as acceptance to top universities. Applicants are asked to write essays, give their grade-point average and report whether they did volunteer work or played high-school sports. Women submit application packets with as many as 30 letters of recommendation"

"Some sororities require that applicants record video responses to their questions." 

"Damron [Stacia, another consultant] tells clients that they need a social-media presence but warns that sorority members will scour a recruit’s posts. She suggests that women erase images of themselves in very skimpy outfits or with alcohol. Instead, they should pile up posts about family, friends, hobbies and volunteer work. “It’s about telling a story to help the sororities get to know you,” said Damron. Her fees run as high as $4,000 for on-call service during rush."

"Last year, 125,000 women sought a spot in sororities at the 500 campuses that provide data to the National Panhellenic Conference, and between a quarter and a fifth of them either quit or didn’t get accepted."

Related posts: 

Who wrote your potential love's online dating profile? (maybe they outsourced it to a professional who specializes in that) (2016)

New Profession Of "Wedding Hashtag Helper" Might Be An Example Of Creative Destruction At Work (2022)

Are dating coaches who help you with texting modern Cyrano de Bergeracs? (2023)

Do You Need a Fixer for Your Disney Vacation? Third-party companies tout advanced knowledge for private tours of complex amusement parks that can cost $1,000 and up (2023)

 

Creative Destruction

See Creative Destruction by Richard Alm and W. Michael Cox. Excerpt:

"Joseph Schumpeter
(1883–1950) coined the seemingly paradoxical term “creative destruction,” and generations of economists have adopted it as a shorthand description of the free market’s messy way of delivering progress. In Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (1942), the Austrian economist wrote:

The opening up of new markets, foreign or domestic, and the organizational development from the craft shop to such concerns as U.S. Steel illustrate the same process of industrial mutation—if I may use that biological term—that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism. (p. 83)

Although Schumpeter devoted a mere six-page chapter to “The Process of Creative Destruction,” in which he described capitalism as “the perennial gale of creative destruction,” it has become the centerpiece for modern thinking on how economies evolve."

But also see this link which suggests that the idea goes back even before Schumpeter to other scholars: Creative Destruction in Economics: Nietzsche, Sombart, Schumpeter by Hugo Reinert and Erik S. Reinert.

"Abstract

This paper argues that the idea of ‘creative destruction’ enters the social sciences by way of Friedrich Nietzsche. The term itself is first used by German economist Werner Sombart, who openly acknowledges the influence of Nietzsche on his own economic theory. The roots of creative destruction are traced back to Indian philosophy, from where the idea entered the German literary and philosophical tradition. Understanding the origins and evolution of this key concept in evolutionary economics helps clarifying the contrasts between today’s standard mainstream economics and the Schumpeterian and evolutionary alternative."