Black Holes and Purple Squirrels: A Tale of Two Online Labor Markets

Abstract

The Internet and social media have fundamentally transformed the ways in which individuals find jobs. Relatively little is known about how demand-side market actors use online information and the implications for social stratification and mobility. This study provides an in-depth exploration of the online recruitment strategies pursued by human resource (HR) professionals. Qualitative interviews with 61 HR recruiters in two southern US metro areas reveal two distinct patterns in how they use Internet resources to fill jobs. For low and general skill work, they post advertisements to online job boards (e.g., Monster, CareerBuilder) with massive audiences of job seekers. By contrast, for high-skill or supervisory positions, they use LinkedIn to target passive candidates – employed individuals who are not looking for work but might be willing to change jobs. Although there are some intermediate practices, the overall picture is one of an increasingly bifurcated “winner-take-all” labor market in which recruiters focus their efforts on poaching specialized superstar talent (“purple squirrels”) from the ranks of the currently employed, while active job seekers are relegated to the hyper-competitive and impersonal “black hole” of the online job boards.

Is cybervetting valuable?

“…Individuals who are unable to find a job may begin to question their personal deficiencies or lament their past decisions (Lopez & Phillips, 2019). These feelings of self-blame, shame, and inadequacy can plague the job search experience and discourage individuals from continuing with the process (Lopez & Phillips, 2019;McDonald et al, 2019;Sharone, 2014). Given that rejection and continued unemployment is more common among marginalized groups, such as racial minorities (e.g., McBrier & Wilson, 2004;Pager et al, 2009), individuals with marginalized identities likely experience intensified self-blame arising from pressure to portray oneself as a good "fit" with jobs and employers.…”

“…Beyond organizational interests, cybervetting has the potential to undermine the broader goal of equal employment opportunity. Many cybervetting strategies contribute to the bifurcation of the workforce into "haves" and "have nots," in ways that fail to align with meritocratic ideals (McDonald et al, 2019).…”

“…Job seekers use platforms that they perceive as best suited for accomplishing their personal branding (Scolere et al, 2018), add personal touches (e.g., stories, images) to their profiles to foster a connection with hiring agents, and constantly tailor their online profiles to the next jobs for which they are interviewing (Sharone, 2014). The commonality of individuals' fit-management strategies (Hurrell et al, 2017) is unsurprising given the frequent use of cybervetting as well as employer's increasing emphasis on hiring "perfect" job candidates (McDonald et al, 2019).…”

Jobless and Burnt Out: Digital Inequality and Online Access to the Labor Market

“…This situation raises fierce competition among job seekers with similar profiles. In contrast, for high-skilled workers in the IT sector, high demand and a limited number of job seekers have shifted competition to labour market intermediaries, who struggle to find candidates (McDonald et al, 2019). The fact that highly skilled IT employees can potentially benefit from a "privileged location" within the labour market is again related to credential/skill rents from the social class theories by Sørensen (2000) and Wright (2000).…”

“…Now, job seekers have access to a greater number of vacancies on a global scale while employers gain more and more visibility and can receive more applications (Bonet et al, 2013;Coverdill & Finlay, 2017). This situation creates larger pools of candidates competing for a limited number of vacancies, especially for the most insecure jobs (McDonald et al, 2019). In other words, employment platforms create an unfavourable imbalance in the candidates/vacancy ratio, with negative implications for individual applications.…”