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I am happy to hear you enjoyed working there, but personally I consider it a failure of recruiting to hire PhDs for reception and office management. I can see a vague case for the lead recruiter to have one if they're recruiting PhDs, I guess, but even that seems like overkill.

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It's a branding strategy. The psychology of Veblen goods is fascinating. See example below.

"Things changed in the 1960s, with McKinsey leading the way. In 1965 and 1966, the firm placed help-wanted ads in The New York Times and Time magazine, with the goal of generating applications that it could then reject, to establish its own eliteness."

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/02/how-mckins...

If you need ads to attract applicants in the first place then you're the opposite of elite. Your lobby should be stocked 24/7 with hungry applicants without you even having a brand presence. That's elite.

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