Stories Employers Tell: Race, Skill, and Hiring in America

Fasenfest, David; Moss, Philip; Tilly, Chris

doi:10.2307/3090018

Cited by 61 publications

(31 citation statements)

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“…This echoes findings of previous research revealing how 'gut feeling' and intuition are influencing candidate selections (e.g. Imdorf, 2010;Rivera, 2016;Brown and Hesketh, 2004;Moss and Tilly, 2001). Yet, adding to prior literature, this study illuminates how gatekeepers actually consciously reflect on this importance of emotions.…”

Section: It Is Tricky To Judgesupporting

confidence: 88%

“…Second, in-depth research consistently points towards a manifest tension between objective selection criteria and subjective decision taking, which seems to strongly mark gatekeeping evaluation and decision logics (Imdorf, 2010;Rivera, 2016;Brown and Hesketh, 2004;Moss and Tilly, 2001;author). Employee gatekeepers not only assess the hard currencies of employability, such as credentials, experience or skills, but above all evaluate the suitability and personality of the candidates.…”

Section: Unease About the Test Of Hiringmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Justifying employee gatekeeping: a video-elicitation and comparative study on resolving moral unease during hiring

Keere¹

2023

Preprint

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Hiring is an act of evaluation that comes with much organisational and social responsibility, making it a morally sensitive situation. The way employee gatekeepers come to terms with their selections presents itself as an exemplary case to study the moral dimension of organisational life. Relying on a pragmatist perspective and a regime of valuation framework, this article uncovers how employers experience moral uncertainty and justify their choices. Through a comparison of gatekeeping in two employment fields, this study covers new ground on how decision logics and regimes of valuation play out and can be structurally conditioned. Through in-depth interviews, combined with a ranking exercise based on video-elicitation, with recruiters and hiring managers from the corporate (n:23) and cultural (n:17) fields in the Netherlands, this paper explores how evaluation processes and selections are justified. The interviews show that a sense of moral unease is common among gatekeepers, but much more prevalent among corporate rather than cultural gatekeepers. Larger organizational size, high market pressure and lower supply of candidates does not translate into moral sterility for corporate gatekeepers. Second, the study reveals that a connexionist logic enters as a powerful justificatory regime, transforming candidate selection procedures into test of confession.

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Section: It Is Tricky To Judgesupporting

confidence: 88%

Section: Unease About the Test Of Hiringmentioning

confidence: 99%

Justifying employee gatekeeping: a video-elicitation and comparative study on resolving moral unease during hiring

Keere¹

2023

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This matters because those cases may lead to labour market outcomes that are not the direct product of the informed decisions of rational optimising by employers but of an interpretive intersubjective process during which the criteria and requirements are often formed haphazardly over time. This may also lead to outcomes that are unpredictable and do not serve fairness (Moss and Tilly, 2001;Bozionelos, 2005). To better capture these processes, a theoretical framework of hiring is needed in which the decision-making process itself is seen as developmental and incremental.…”

Section: Concluding Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Matchmaking under uncertainty: how hiring criteria and requirements in professional work are co-created

Tholen

2022

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PurposeThe aim of the study is to understand how the hiring process develops in cases where there are no explicit or formal requirements. How do implicit and informal criteria and requirements impact the process of selecting the right candidate?Design/methodology/approachA qualitative approach was employed through the use of semi-structured interviews with 47 external recruitment consultants in the south of England.FindingsIn contrast to what is assumed in mainstream Human Resource Management literature, employers do not rely on a comprehensive implicit understanding of what is needed in cases where there are no explicit criteria and requirements. Instead, high uncertainty makes the development of criteria and requirements incremental and negotiable but also problematic. The analysis shows that three mechanisms compensate for the lack of certainty in the hiring process. First, interviews with applicants shape how the hiring criteria develop. Second, market signals of what is available in the labour market help construct the criteria and requirements. Third, criteria and requirements are interpreted and negotiated during interactions with recruiters and others.Originality/valueHiring without explicit requirements and criteria is often understood as rather unproblematic and/or not fundamentally distinct from hiring with them. The study shows that in these cases the process becomes more unpredictable and more open to interpretation and negotiation.

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“…A large literature continues to demonstrate that the labour market remains unequal in opportunities and is subject to various non-meritocratic forces. Many point out that the hiring process is frayed with power dynamics and imbalances (Bozionelos, 2005;Moss and Tilly, 2001) leading to unequal outcomes and opportunities such as being excluded to apply, not being short-listed for positions or made job offers (Amis et al, 2020). Acker (2006: 443) argues that disparities and control over goals, resources and outcomes, decision making, opportunities and securities drive organisations' inequality regimes, through which inequalities in class, gender and race are maintained.…”

Section: Power and Inequality Within The Hiring Processmentioning

confidence: 99%

Matching Candidates to Culture: How Assessments of Organisational Fit Shape the Hiring Process

Tholen

2023

Work, Employment and Society

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Organisational fit represents a crucial criterion in the hiring process. This article aims to understand how employers and external recruitment consultants define and apply organisational fit in professional labour markets, such as engineering, marketing and finance. It also investigates how the use of organisational fit in hiring can lead to social bias within these labour markets. It relies on semi-structured interviews with 47 external recruitment consultants who assist employers in these sectors. The article draws on Relational Inequality Theory to demonstrate how hiring managers and consultants use organisational fit to create and justify boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable candidates. Claim-making supports the rationalisation and legitimisation in the exclusion of groups of candidates. The article critically informs human resource management, business and psychology literature that perceive organisational fit as a largely benign criterion for recruitment. It also extends sociological and critical management literature by delineating three main exclusionary mechanisms in matching candidates for organisational fit.

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Stories Employers Tell: Race, Skill, and Hiring in America

Cited by 61 publications

References 1 publication

Justifying employee gatekeeping: a video-elicitation and comparative study on resolving moral unease during hiring

Justifying employee gatekeeping: a video-elicitation and comparative study on resolving moral unease during hiring

Matchmaking under uncertainty: how hiring criteria and requirements in professional work are co-created

Matching Candidates to Culture: How Assessments of Organisational Fit Shape the Hiring Process

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