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This paper discusses the factors to consider when designing studies to measure hiring discrimination against transgender job applicants.

The paper builds on academic literature related to hiring discrimination and transgender employment to build a detailed discussion of the numerous factors and issues inherent in hiring discrimination against transgender job applicants. By isolating and describing a number of relevant considerations, the paper aims to act as a guide for future studies to build upon.

Three types of hiring discrimination studies are discussed: correspondence tests, in-person experiments and student cohort experiments. Three main categories of factors relevant to an experiment’s design are then discussed: the legal context, industry/role factors and transgender population-specific factors. A flow-chart detailing the research design decision-making process is provided.

The discussion within this paper will act as a reference and a guide for researchers seeking to address the dearth of empirical studies in the literature. The list is not exhaustive; while a number of factors relevant to transgender-specific studies are identified, there may be more that could affect an experiment's design.

Hiring discrimination against transgender people has been recorded in many surveys, but there is little empirical measurement of this discrimination. To the author's knowledge, this paper is the first to examine the experimental design decisions related to transgender hiring discrimination. In doing so, it provides contributions for two primary audiences: those researching transgender employment issues but who have never conducted a study measuring hiring discrimination; and those who have previously conducted studies on hiring discrimination, but have not done so with reference to transgender job applicants.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the mechanisms underlying hiring discrimination against transgender women.

The authors conduct a scenario experiment in which fictitious hiring decisions are made about transgender or cisgender female job candidates. In addition, these candidates are scored on statements related to theoretical reasons for hiring discrimination given in the literature. The resulting data are analysed by means of a multiple mediation model.

The results suggest that prejudices with respect to the health of transgender individuals mediate unfavourable treatment of them. However, this mechanism is compensated by a beneficial perception concerning transgender women’s autonomy and assertiveness.

Targeted policy measures are needed given the substantial labour market discrimination against transgender individuals measured in former studies. However, to combat this discrimination effectively, one needs to understand its underlying mechanisms. This study provides a first exploration of these mechanisms.

This study innovates in being the first to explore the relative empirical importance of dominant (theoretical) explanations for hiring discrimination against transgender women. Thereby, the authors take the logical next step in the literature on labour market discrimination against transgender individuals.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the mechanisms underlying hiring discrimination against transgender men.

The authors conduct a scenario experiment with final-year business students in which fictitious hiring decisions are made about transgender or cisgender male job candidates. More importantly, these candidates are scored on statements related to theoretical reasons for hiring discrimination given in the literature. The resulting data are analysed using a bivariate analysis. Additionally, a multiple mediation model is run.

Suggestive evidence is found for co-worker and customer taste-based discrimination, but not for employer taste-based discrimination. In addition, results show that transgender men are perceived as being in worse health, being more autonomous and assertive, and have a lower probability to go on parental leave, compared with cisgender men, revealing evidence for (positive and negative) statistical discrimination.

Targeted policy measures are needed given the substantial labour market discrimination against transgender individuals measured in former studies. However, to combat this discrimination effectively, one needs to understand its underlying mechanisms. This study provides the first comprehensive exploration of these mechanisms.

This study innovates in being one of the first to explore the relative empirical importance of dominant (theoretical) explanations for hiring discrimination against transgender men. Thereby, the authors take the logical next step in the literature on labour market discrimination against transgender individuals.

This study aims to analyze aspects of decision-making in recruitment. Using a choice-based conjoint (CBC) experiment with typified screening scenarios, it was analyzed what aspects will be more important for recruiters: the recommendation provided by a hiring algorithm or the recommendation of a human co-worker; gender of the candidate and of the recruiter was taken into account.

A total of 135 recruitment professionals (67 female) completed a measure of sex roles and a set of 20 CBC trials on the hiring of a pharmacologist.

Participants were willing to accept a lower algorithm score if the level of the human recommendation was maximum, indicating a preference for the co-worker’s recommendation over that of the hiring algorithm. The biological sex of neither the candidate nor the participant influenced in the decision.

Participants were presented with a fictitious scenario that did not involve real choices with real consequences. In a real-life setting, considerably more variables influence hiring decisions.

Results show that there are limits on the acceptance of technology based on artificial intelligence in the field of recruitment, which has relevance more broadly for the psychological correlates of the acceptance of the technology.

An additional value is the use of a methodological approach (CBC) with high ecological validity that may be useful in other psychological studies of decision-making in management.

There has been an increasing number of allegations of discrimination toward US employees and anecdotal indications of immigrant employee exploitation in the information technology sector. The purpose of this paper is to investigate if applicants’ work visa status causes native-born applicants to be treated differentially (less favorably) than foreign-born applicants.

A correspondence study design is used to observe differential screening processes by measuring the frequency of favorable job application responses received by foreign-born applicants compared to equally skilled native-born applicants.

Results from the study suggest that fictitious Asian foreign-born applicants who demonstrate the need for H-1B work visa sponsorship for employment receive significantly more favorable e-mail responses to job ads than US native-born applicants. Moreover, white native-born applicants are approximately 23 percent less likely than Asian foreign-born applicants to receive a request for an interview.

Because of the chosen method, the research results may lack generalizability. The hypotheses should be tested further by targeting more geographical locations, a variety of industries and using qualitative methods in future research.

The paper includes implications for hiring managers who wish to reduce their liability for employment discrimination and foreign-born job seekers wishing to manage their expectations of the recruitment process.

This paper fulfills an identified need to empirically study how the work visa status of job seekers affects early recruitment as increasingly more anecdotal evidence of immigrant exploitation and discrimination in the technology sector is reported.

The purpose of this paper is to test the impact of selected characteristics of jobseekers on employers’ decisions regarding potential hires (direct and probabilistic signals). The main focus of the study is to test the impact of jobseekers’ participation in selected active labour market programmes on employers’ hiring decisions for three positions: unskilled worker, skilled worker and administrative employee. Other characteristics tested include age, gender, presence of children in the household, state of health, experience of short- and long-term unemployment and indebtedness.

This study analyses data from a representative survey of employers with five or more employees in the Czech Republic. The survey was conducted in December 2020 using stratified random sampling, combining online questionnaires and personal interviews. The study includes 1,040 employers and uses the factorial survey experiment (FSE) design.

The results of the FSE suggest that the perceived positive impact of completing one of the activation programmes depends on the position for which the candidate is being recruited. While for the unskilled job category, the completion of any of the tested schemes (training, subsidised jobs or public works) had a positive effect; for the skilled job category, only the training and subsidised jobs schemes had a positive effect; and for the administrative job category, public works programme even had a negative effect.

A somewhat limiting factor in the context of this study seems to be the definitions of the positions tested (unskilled and skilled workers and administrative staff). The decision-making of the respondents was somewhat restricted by such broadly defined categories. Typically, studies with FSE designs have a focus on a specific sector of the economy, which allows for a better definition of the positions or jobs under test. The relationship between position and the impact of individual characteristics is clearly a matter for further research.

The results of the study confirm that completion of the activation programme, as well as other candidate characteristics, constitute differentiating signals for employers that influence their hiring decisions. At the same time, there is evidence that the training programme and the subsidised jobs programme are effective in terms of increasing participants’ chances of employment.

The demand side should be included in the evaluation of activation policies. The design of the FSE provides an appropriate way to test the impact of activation measures on the decision-making of employers.

What do principals look for when hiring teachers? The purpose of this paper is to extend the knowledge concerning what aspects of teacher quality are in demand among the individuals who administer schools and make hiring decisions.

Rather than employing interviews or surveys, the authors utilized a conjoint instrument that assembled teacher characteristics into fictitious applicant profiles. Participating North Carolina public school principals (n = 467) then chose among the computer-generated options and regression analysis allowed the authors to identify preferences in the aggregate.

Principals in this study preferred applicants with classroom experience, but those with 15 years were no more preferred than those with 5. They also preferred applicants with more education, but an advanced degree was no more preferred than a bachelor’s from a highly selective institution. Preference for teachers who are committed to state standards varied with schools’ performance on state tests.

Conjoint analysis is a useful tool for measuring preferences but is underutilized in research on education administration. This paper contributes not only to the body of knowledge about school principal behavior but also to the field’s familiarity of research techniques.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how HR professionals use social networking website information to evaluate applicants’ propensity to engage in counterproductive work behaviors and suitability for hire.

Using an experimental design, 354 HR professionals participated in a two-part study. In part 1, participants viewed a fictitious resume and rated the applicant’s likelihood to engage in counterproductive work behavior as well as likelihood of a hiring recommendation. In part 2, participants viewed a fictitious social networking website profile for the applicant and repeated the ratings from part 1. The authors analyzed their responses to determine the effect viewing a social network website (SNW) profile had on ratings of the applicant.

Unprofessional SNW information negatively affected ratings of applicants regardless of applicants’ qualifications, while professional SNW profile information failed to improve evaluations regardless of qualifications.

Anecdotal reports suggest that many employers use SNW information to eliminate job applicants from consideration despite an absence of empirical research that has examined how SNW content influences HR recruiters’ evaluation of job applicants. This study represents one of the first attempts to understand how HR professionals use such information in screening applicants. The findings suggest that unprofessional SNW profiles negatively influence recruiter evaluations while professional SNW profile content has little to no effect on evaluations.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the role of employers in creating employment gaps among women returning to the labor market after parental leaves of different durations.

The authors use a controlled correspondence field experiment that orthogonally manipulates parental leave length and the quality of fictitious female job candidates. The experiment is complemented with a survey among human resource managers.

High-quality candidates receive more interview invitations when applying after a short parental leave, while low-quality (LQ) candidates receive more interview invitations when applying after a typical three years long parental leave. Survey results suggest that the difference in invitations between short and typical leave treatments is driven by a social norm that mothers should stay home with children younger than three. Productivity gains from employing a LQ job applicant with a shorter career break might not be high enough to outweigh the adverse social norm effect.

The presented results point toward the strong effect of prevailing social norms on job search prospects of women returning to the labor market after parental leave.

A correspondence experiment has not been used before to study the relationship between time spent on leave and the labor market prospects of mothers. It also extends research on social norms to the domain of hiring decisions.