Screening, Skills and Cultural Fit: Theorizing Immigrant Skill Utilization from an Organizational Perspective

Abstract

This article examines the issue of skill utilization among highly skilled immigrants in Canada from an organizational perspective. It argues that bringing insights from organizational sociology more strongly into discussions of skill utilization—which tend to focus on returns to immigrant capital (human, social, cultural) or employer discrimination—would provide greater understanding of how, when and the extent to which each one of these factors matters for immigrant hiring within a particular employment sector. In order to illustrate this point, it draws on empirical material from 20 interviews with hiring managers at information and communication technology (ICT) companies in the Greater Toronto Area to show that there is organizational-level variation among firms in three key aspects of hiring that are relevant to discussions of immigrant skill utilization: definitions of ‘skills’, notions of ‘cultural fit’ and screening processes. The article concludes by pointing to avenues for further study and considering implications for settlement policy.