What is the role of education in the recruitment process? Employers’ practices and experiences of graduates from tertiary educational institutions in Estonia

Abstract

Since the 1980s, growing globalisation and economic restructuring coupled with expansion of tertiary education contributed to tremendous change in the labour market entry process in Europe. Most previous studies have been quantitative, concentrated on the supply aspect and analysed the role of education as the explanatory variable of youth labour market outcome equations. By contrast, the demand aspect has gained less attention. In this paper, using Estonia as a case study in both perspectives – employers’ practices and graduates’ experiences – are combined to answer the question: how employers use information provided by tertiary education credentials in the recruitment process. Semi-structured interviews with the 15 biggest employers and focus groups consisting of 63 recent graduates comprise the base data of our study. The results reveal that it is useful to examine the mechanisms why education affects recruitment processes separately among service providers and goods producers as well as in different stages of recruitment (pre-selection, getting a job offer). In all sectors, the educational credentials were used in the pre-selection process as a screening device. However, in a job offer, service providers emphasised the role of credentials as signals of trainability while for goods producers credentials informed employers about their job-specific skills.