Actual Hiring Research Articles

A view from below: industrial re-structuring and women's employment at four Russian enterprises

The labor market in Russia has changed significantly during the last decade. This transformation has resulted in notable changes in employment and unemployment patterns, and in labor mobility, flexibility and insecurity. One critical question is whether these changes signal important differences in labor market outcomes by gender. The approach taken here is to focus on the Russian industrial enterprise. In our study, we find that women experience different internal labor market opportunities and external job prospects than men and those differences in experience are reflected in the actual hiring practices at our firms, with men substituting for women, and women finding it particularly difficult to negotiate the increasingly closed labor market in Russia. At the same time important differences persist among women, differences that do not exist for men.

The Paradox of Soft Skills versus Technical Skills in is Hiring

This paper calls attention to a paradox in the recruiting and hiring literature in IS and offers a possible reconciliation of the paradox based on recent advances in behavioral decision theory. The paradox is the contradictory demand for IT/IS technologies as advertised job skills in contrast to soft skills as actual or implicit hiring criteria. The specific purpose of this research is to introduce a model that may explain and reconcile the use and importance of both technical skills and soft skills in the hiring of IS personnel. This model utilizes a variant of emerging behavioral decision theory, called Image Theory to develop a two-stage process of IS hiring where the first stage utilizes technical skills for filtration and the second stage utilizes soft skills for the choice in actual hiring. This model of IS hiring decision making may serve as a starting point for future research on the demand for IS job skills.

Employer Demand for Welfare Recipients by Race

This article examines employer demand for welfare recipients using new employer survey data. The results suggest that demand is high but sensitive to business cycle conditions. Factors including skill needs and industry affect prospective employer demand for recipients, while other characteristics that affect their relative supply to employers (e.g., establishment location) influence whether such demand is realized in actual hiring. The conditional demand for black and Hispanic welfare recipients lags behind their representation in the welfare population and seems affected by employers’ location and indicators of preferences. Thus, many demand‐side factors limit the employment options of welfare recipients, especially minorities.

Public Relations Executives View the Curriculum: A Needs Assessment

problem with public relations education is this: When you've taken one public relations course, you've taken them both. Despite such derisive comments, which was offered by a participant in the survey to be discussed here, public relations is the fastest-growing area of study of all the communication-related disciplines. More incoming freshmen express interest in studying public relations than print or broadcast journalism, according to The Freedom Forum (Overby, 1996); and for the first time since tracking began in 1991, public relations students now outnumber advertising students, 15,352 to 14,607 (Ross & Johnson, 1997). Schools with established mass communication are expanding their public relations components to cope with the demand, and many schools without public relations curricula are either initiating them or seriously considering doing so. In the rush to meet the demands and wishes of incoming students, colleges and universities run the risk of ignoring the verities of the marketplace (O'Dwyer, 1993; Hendrix, 1992), and of discounting input from the women and men expected to hire the increased numbers of graduates and who have been the abilities of some graduates of public relations programs (Wright & Turk, 1990). That questioning exists in all disciplines, to be sure, and the friction between teachers and practitioners is no greater in public relations than in other fields. Indeed, the Public Relations Division of AEJMC has a business-education liaison function specifically aimed at fostering cooperation, and public relations at a number of schools -- Boston University, Florida, Georgia, and Ball State, to name a few - have professional advisory boards. Yet, there is some friction. A report by the Institute for Public Relations Research and Education criticized public relations professionals for not encouraging and not using scholarly public relations research being done by educators (Wright & Turk, 1990). Practitioners return the sniping. Gibson (1992-1993) said, Criticism of public relations education remains strident. A respected PR executive muses, `Somehow, PR schools have found a way to keep students in class for four years without teaching them anything useful. ... How do educators pull off this delicate balancing act?'(p. 45). In an effort to further bridge the gap between educators and practitioners, to determine what the marketplace values in public relations education, a survey was conducted of senior level public relations executives in for-profit organizations. Statement of delimitation Many surveys on public relations education have looked at the field as a whole and given equal weight to the opinions of practitioners in all segments of a discipline moving toward increased specialization (Seitel, 1995, p. 471). It was felt that a needs assessment focusing on one segment would provide more specific information on the kind of training needed to prepare students for work in that segment. Although agencies and non-profit organizations also provide a wealth of opportunities for public relations graduates. the forprofit segment was chosen because; (a) the author's background in and familiarity with that segment; (b) the fact that the top jobs at agencies normally go to practitioners servicing corporate clients; and (c) the trend among non-profit organizations to add business-like functions such as marketing communication to their PR staffs. By surveying the top men and women in the for-profit sector, the study reached the people who ultimately are responsible for staffing public relations departments, even if underlings do the actual hiring. Since they are either a part of or close to the dominant coalition of some of the world's leading organizations, the public relations executives know what organizations expect from their public relations operations and the people in them. Obtaining the input of top public relations professionals can give educators a better understanding as to how expanding and burgeoning PR can help students qualify for jobs in what will become an even more competitive job market. …

Attractiveness and Income for Men and Women in Management1

It is commonly believed that attractive people are more successful, but the empirical support for this belief is mixed. A number of role‐playing, laboratory studies have demonstrated that more attractive men are more often hired, but the laboratory data for women are less consistent. Few studies have explored the effects of attractiveness on actual hiring and starting salaries for men or women. Even less work has been done on the impact of attractiveness once on the job. It was predicted that there would be positive effects for attractiveness and that the effects would be stronger as people worked longer on their jobs. To test this prediction, a sample of 737 male and female MBA graduates from the years between 1973 and 1982 was used to explore how facial attractiveness relates to starting and later salaries. Results indicated that more attractive men had higher starting salaries and they continued to earn more over time. For women, there was no effect of attractiveness for starting salaries, but more attractive women earned more later on in their jobs. By 1983, men were found to earn $2600 more on the average for each unit of attractiveness (on a 5‐point scale) and women earned $2150 more. Implications for research in this area are discussed.

Estimating the Determinants of Employee Performance

Employers often wish to know whether the factors used in selecting employees do in fact allow them to choose the most qualified applicants. Because the performance of those not chosen is not observed, sample-selection bias is a likely problem in any attempt to validate employee-selection criteria. With minor modifications, the recently-developed techniques for dealing with sample-selection problems can be used in this context. Using data on applicants for first-line supervisory positions and ratings of on-the-job performance of those hired, ordinary least squares estimates of the determinants of performance are compared with maximum-likelihood estimates which correct for selection bias. The correction for selection bias produces some appreciable improvements in some variables' coefficients, though the corrected estimates remain insignificant at conventional levels. Differences in the firm's stated and actual hiring criteria are also noted.

Objective obstacles in hiring disabled persons -- the employers' point of view.

In the comprehensive rehabilitation process, one of the most accepted criteria for success or failure is the suitable placement of the client in the open employment market. The present study examined employer's attitudes toward hiring disabled persons. The sample consisted of 233 employers in the public and private sectors of the Israeli economy, and the method entailed interviewing each employer about his attitudes toward the risks of employing disabled persons, his actual hiring practices, and his expected response to financial aid for surmounting technical obstacles (architectural barriers and inappropriate work methods and tools). Interpretation of the results indicated that employers' reluctance to hire disabled employees was often explained by the existence of technical obstacles. However, when the possibility of financial aid for eliminating these obstacles was proposed, the employers responded with reservation. Although Israeli has mandated legislation requiring the employment of disabled war veterans, not all employers were aware of this, and almost half of those who were did not employ disabled persons. Evidently, legislation does not suffice in order to ensure actual hiring of disabled persons. In order to increase compliance with the law, and to encourage hiring of disabled persons who are not war veterans, it was suggested that more information be provided to the employers on the possibilities of employing disabled persons, with emphasis placed on the positive aspects of the disabled worker's true potential. Additional methods that should be applied to encourage employment include appropriate vocational training of disabled persons themselves and demonstration before the employers of the practical conditions under which successful employment is possible.