Does Driving as a Form of

Abstract

About 20% of the U.S. unemployed population has been out of the labor force for more than 6 months. The rise of the gig economy has changed the landscape of nontraditional employment opportunities for these predominantly low-skilled long-term unemployed workers. This particular type of on-demand work can be used to fill unemployment gaps and offers little to no training costs and flexible hours. Therefore, we explore whether driving as a form of gig work helps to mitigate the negative effects of long-term unemployment for low-skilled job seekers with employment gaps, and how employers evaluate workers who have held non-traditional jobs. Using a correspondence audit study with 1006 job applications, we evaluated whether a set of resumes "enhanced" with experience driving for a real-time ridesharing service received more callbacks than baseline resumes with an employment gap. We found no evidence that driving as a form of gig work increased the callback rates of applicants. In fact, we observed that in comparison to men, the callback rates for women slightly declined. Our study suggests that driving 'gigs' might not be a substitute for traditional employment on resumes for low-skilled workers. We contribute a call to CSCW to investigate methods that help to understand why real-time ridesharing services do not substitute for traditional jobs in bridging employment gaps and solutions on how to overcome it. Finally, we reflect on our use of audit studies in the new digital era and present potential CSCW and HCI contributions using this method.

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“…Our reflections on prior literature suggest that evaluators' assessments of organizational fit through referrals is potentially shaped by social class background [8,30,33,40,46,47,49]. Similar to industrial fit, previous studies have indicated that whom students know and how they use their social connections in the hiring process matter in displaying organizational fit.…”

“…While a small stream of CSCW and HCI studies have offered important insights about job recruiting [11,33], there has been a lack of attention to the interviewing practices of evaluators. Job interviews play a critical role in the hiring process of many labor markets.…”

“…Furthermore, with the exception of Chen and colleagues' study, HCI and CSCW employment research has often focused on low-skill labor markets and marginalized groups (e.g., [26,27,33,51]). While it is crucial for researchers to explore how poverty and disadvantage affect employment, inequality is fueled by both marginalization and privilege.…”

“…Based on the 2018 U.S. Census Bureau data, the Pew Research Center recently reported that the wealthiest 20% of U.S. households earned more than half of the country's total income, contributing to the widening gap between the richest and poorest households [43]. As low and high-skill labor markets have idiosyncratic interviewing practices [5], it is important for scholars to also understand how established technology companies hire highskill employees [33]. In sum, our research contributes to CSCW and HCI scholarship by focusing on evaluators' perspectives [12] and the interview process of a high-skill labor market, and specifically, technology companies.…”

“…Similar to industrial fit, previous studies have indicated that whom students know and how they use their social connections in the hiring process matter in displaying organizational fit. For example, social class homophily [33] and class-based social and extracurricular engagement [31,40,46,47] influence whether applicants might know employees at the company. Students' class-based help-seeking strategies [8,49] also shape whether they would reach out to these social connections for referrals.…”