Bias in candidate sourcing communication: Investigating stereotypical gender- and age-related frames in online job advertisements at the sectoral level

Abstract

Job advertisements hold a wealth of knowledge for the public relations field about complex internal and external organizational dynamics. They reflect enduring social and sectoral cultural proclivities and associated stereotypes about workers. We examine the presence of stereotypical frames in job advertisements from sectors with varying gender and age social group composition. Guided by social categorization framing and the stereotype content model, we operationalize stereotypical warmth- and competence-related frames in candidate sourcing communication. Automated content analysis was conducted on a dataset of online job ad sentences (n = 308,583) from 16,135 job ads. Results indicate warmth-related frames are most observed in ads from female-dominated (vs. male-dominated) sectors and younger-dominated (vs. older-dominated and mixed-age) sectors. Conversely, competence-related frames are most observed in ads from male-dominated (vs. female-dominated and mixed-age) sectors and older-dominated (vs. younger-dominated and mixed-age) sectors. We additionally find candidate gender stereotypes may supersede age stereotypes in hiring contexts. Implications are discussed in light of socialization and structuralist forces and their influence on organizational communication in homogeneous and heterogeneous sectors.