There may well be an underlying subconscious tendency to employ one's own, but surely any employer worth his/her salt would overlay that with the imperatives of the job in hand. And then there is the availability of appropriate staff in the local market, company policies about recycling jobs within existing "at danger" staff (something I generally support), and all sorts of other parameters that affect the makeup of any workforce.

Which is why I was so pleasantly surprised to be told after I was accepted into my new dayjob that my folk and songwriting angle actually helped, because one of the criteria had been "to have a feeling for the human angle, not be a dyed-in-the-wool company person. We have plenty of those already". Now, that was very openminded, I thought, for the position of CIO. Most employers would not have considered this a viable criterion, and many would have thought it a negative trait.