Abstract
People from marginalized groups are often discriminated against in traditional recruitment processes. Yet as companies faced with skill shortages change their recruitment strategies, the question arises as to whether modern recruitment trends such as the use of professional social network sites, active sourcing, and recruitment assignment to external agencies are affected by implicit or explicit discrimination. In our mixed-method study, we first conducted expert interviews with different types of recruiters to explore the potential for discrimination in the modern recruitment process. We then analyzed panel data from the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) in Germany to see whether there is quantitative evidence of discrimination in modern recruitment. A content analysis of the interviews shows that active sourcing and assignment of recruitment to private agencies are potentially affected by explicit discrimination. We identified three sources of discrimination in personnel selection: recruiters’ own attitudes, explicit instructions from managers, and the recruiters’ assumptions regarding companies’ preferred candidates. The results of mixed multilevel analyses with the company as a second level resonate with the qualitative findings: companies actively approach female employees, older employees, and employees who are born in Southern/Eastern Europe less often and offer women jobs less often. The effects for gender were still significant when we included far-right voting as a moderator variable on the employee level, but the interactions were not significant. Effects for gender and older people in active sourcing were also significant and robust when controlling for income, number of children, level of school completion, and educational background. Our findings suggest that current legislation may be insufficient to protect candidates who belong to marginalized groups from discrimination in modern recruitment.
Highlights
DISCRIMINATION IN A CHANGING RECRUITMENT ENVIRONMENTFrom various correspondence tests, we know that applicants who belong to marginalized groups have a higher likelihood of being discriminated against (Lane, 2016; Zschirnt and Ruedin, 2016; Quillian et al, 2017; Baert, 2018)
The Structural Features of Modern Recruitment Processes Our analysis revealed that modern recruitment processes have a typical structure consisting of three stages (I–III) and six steps (1–6): The pre-search stage (I) starts with the job opening (1) and is followed by the recruitment assignment (2)
P1: Profile Screening on Social Network Site Is Conducted Under Limited Cognitive Resources and Is Potentially Affected by Automatic Discrimination It turned out that social network sites (SNSs) are relevant in modern recruitment processes
Summary
DISCRIMINATION IN A CHANGING RECRUITMENT ENVIRONMENTFrom various correspondence tests, we know that applicants who belong to marginalized groups have a higher likelihood of being discriminated against (Lane, 2016; Zschirnt and Ruedin, 2016; Quillian et al, 2017; Baert, 2018). Discrimination in Modern Recruitment process is still an open one. A substantial number of companies are using more active strategies and Internet recruitment to fill job openings (Roulin and Levashina, 2019). This raises the question of whether new forms of recruiting strategies are affected by discrimination as well. We conducted a mixed-method study to focus on both issues: (a) the cognitive underpinnings of hiring discrimination, and (b) discrimination in new forms of recruitment strategies. The corresponding research question reads as: RQ: To what extent are modern recruitment processes affected by discrimination against candidates who belong to marginalized social groups?
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