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Hiring managers commonly rely on system-justifying motives and attitudes during résumé screening. Given the prevalent use of modern résumé formats (e.g. LinkedIn) that include not only an applicant's credentials but also headshot photographs, visible sources of information such as an applicant's race are also revealed while a hiring manager simultaneously evaluates a candidate's suitability. As a result, such screening is likely to activate evaluation bias. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of a hiring manager's perceptions of race-system justification, that is, support for the status quo in relations between Black and White job candidates in reinforcing or mitigating hiring bias related to in-group and out-group membership during résumé screening.

Drawing from system justification theory (SJT) in a pre-selection context, in an experimental study involving 174 human resource managers, the authors tested two boundary conditions of the expected relationship between hiring manager and job candidate race on candidate ratings: (1) a hiring manager's affirmative action (AA) attitudes and system-justifying attitudes and (2) a job candidate's manipulated suitability for a position. This approach enabled us to juxtapose the racial composition of hiring manager–job candidate dyads under conditions in which the job candidate's race and competency for a posted position were manipulated to examine the conditions under which White and Black hiring managers are likely to make biased evaluations. The authors largely replicated these findings in two follow-up studies with 261 students and 361 online raters.

The authors found that information on a candidate's objective suitability for a job resulted in opposite-race positive bias among Black evaluators and same-race positive bias among White evaluators in study 1 alone. Conversely, positive attitudes toward AA policies resulted in in-group favoritism and strengthened a positive same-race bias for Black evaluators (study 1 and 2). We replicated this finding with a third sample to directly test system-justifying attitudes (study 3). The way in which White raters rated White candidates reflected the same attitudes against systems (AA attitudes) that Black raters rating Black candidates exhibited in the authors’ first two studies. Positive system-justifying attitudes or positive attitudes toward AA did not, however, translate into the elevation of same-race candidate ratings of suitability above those of opposite-race candidates.

Although the size of the sample is on par with the percentage of Blacks nationwide in private-sector managerial-level positions ideally, the authors would have preferred to oversample Black HR managers. Given the scarcity of focus on Black HR managers, future researchers, using diverse samples of evaluators should also consider not only managers' and candidates' race but also their social dominance orientation. Moreover, it is important that future researchers use more racially diverse samples from other industries to more fully identify the ways in which the dynamics of system-justifying processes can emerge to influence evaluation bias during résumé screening.

Advances in technology pose new challenges to HR hiring practices. This study attempts to fill a void regarding the unintended effects of bias during digital résumé screening. These trends have important HR implications. Initial screening of a job applicant's credentials while concurrently viewing the individual's photograph is likely to activate subconscious evaluation bias, produces inaccurate applicant ratings. This study's findings should caution hiring managers about the potential for bias to arise when viewing job candidates' digital résumés and encourage them to carefully examine various boundary conditions on racial similarity bias effects on applicant pre-screening and subsequent hiring decisions.

The study’s results suggest that bias might be attenuated as organizational leaders engage in efforts to understand their system-justifying motives and examine perceptions of the workplace social hierarchy (i.e. responses to status hierarchies) linked to perceptions of the status quo. For example, understanding how system justifying motives influence evaluation bias will inform how best to design training and other interventions that link discussions of workforce diversity to the relationships among groups within the organization's social hierarchy. This line of research should be further explored to better understand the complex forces at work when hiring managers adopt system-justifying motives during hiring evaluations.

The authors address the limitations of prior research by examining interactions between boundary conditions in a real-world context using real human resources hiring managers and more contemporary personnel-screening practices to test changes in the direction and strength of the relationship between hiring manager–job candidate race and hiring manager evaluations. Thus, the authors’ findings have implications for hiring bias and understanding of system-justification processes, particularly regarding how, when and why hiring managers support the status quo (i.e. perpetuate inequity) even if they are disadvantaged as a result.

This paper examines personal and situational factors that may contribute to biases in hiring decisions at the workplace, focusing on willingness to hire male gay or male Jewish ultra-Orthodox Jewish job candidates.

942 Jewish participants in Israel responded to an anonymous online questionnaire regarding a scenario addressing the possible employments of two male applicants: a homosexual and an ultra-Orthodox Jew. A variety of statistical tools, including regression analysis were performed to test hypotheses.

Findings show that social dominance orientation, conservatism, gender and religiosity as well as frequency of contact with the “unlike other” impacted on hiring intention of the participants. These relationships varied in strength and direction with regard to the two applicant types in question.

The explication of the phenomenon in question has both important theoretical and practical importance in a world where – concurrently – there exists increasing contact among individuals from different backgrounds and (perhaps not coincidently) increased signs of wariness of and discrimination toward those unlike ourselves. In light of economic costs related to discrimination – not to mention the personal costs to those discriminated against – organizations must better understand the dynamics of the phenomenon in question.

This is one of the first empirical examinations of the relative impact of personal and situational factors on hiring bias. In addition, it is the first study of its kind in Israel focusing on the mechanisms behind hiring bias toward gay males and ultra-orthodox males.

Physically less attractive job applicants are discriminated against in hiring decisions. In a US context, the authors tested whether appearance-altering photo-filters can exploit this bias, focusing on the moderating role of job type, gender and race as well the mediating role of two major dimensions of person perception (warmth and competence).

In study 1, 223 managers evaluated White mock applicants presented with or without a beautifying filter for either a position as a social worker or an IT specialist. In study 2, 212 managers evaluated Black and White mock applicants with or without beautifying filters for an HR specialist position.

In study 1, beautifying filters increased perceived hireability irrespective of job type, but especially when applicants were female. Both male and female applicants whose photos were filtered were perceived as more competent, but only male applicants were perceived as warmer. In study 2, beautifying filters increased the hireability only slightly for White female applicants, followed by White and Black male applicants but substantially for Black female applicants. The filters increased the perceived competence of Black (and especially Black female) applicants but not of White applicants and increased the perceived warmth of all groups except for White females. Warmth and competence partially mediated the observed effects on hireability in both studies.

In the context of widely available technological advances, the authors show that beautifying photo-filters can exploit attractiveness biases, at least at an early hiring stage. The results emphasize the importance of intersecting factors such as gender and race.

Given the conflicting attitudes that people have toward those who report wrongdoing and a lack of empirical research specifically examining subsequent hiring, it is an open question as to whether accounting professionals would want to work with former whistleblowers. The authors examine this question using an experimental design, in which participants evaluate an employment candidate before and after the person discloses having been a whistleblower. Four manipulations of whistleblowing are used in both a within-subjects and a between-subjects manipulation. The authors’ results demonstrate that accounting professionals’ intentions to recommend a candidate for hire decrease after they are informed that a strong candidate has a whistleblowing past. A candidate is viewed most negatively, however, when discovering malfeasance and electing not to blow the whistle internally. Moreover, when the whistle is blown internally and the superior takes no action, the candidate who remained silent and chose not to continue to push the issue is viewed more negatively than the candidate who proceeded to blow the whistle externally. Although a candidate having a whistleblowing past appears to pose a cautionary signal in the interview process, participants reacted more harshly when the candidate failed to act or lacked the durable moral courage to see the matter through to completion.

Introduction: Traditional recruitment system relied heavily on the applicants’ curriculum vitae (CV). This system, besides becoming redundant, has proved to be a futile exercise leading to the hiring of candidates that eventually turn out to be ‘misfits’. CVs were the only source of candidates’ data available for the recruiters a few years back. Face-to-face interviews was considered to be the ultimate solution for hiring suitable candidates. However, evidence suggests that interview scores and job performances do not complement each other. Advancement in artificial intelligence (AI) has introduced several techniques in the recruitment process.

Purpose: This chapter underscores the drawbacks of the traditional recruitment process. Evidence suggests that the traditional recruitment process is prone to subjectivity and is time-consuming. Surprisingly, despite the disadvantages, the integration of AI into the recruitment process is still slow. This chapter highlights the need to harness AI and the advantage technology could bring to the recruitment process. Some of the techniques that are garnering attention and widely used by organisations, such as chatbots, gamification, virtual employment interviews, and resume screening are described to enable the readers to understand with less effort. Chatbots and gamification techniques are described through process flow charts. We also describe the various types of interviews that could be conducted through virtual platforms and the modality by which the resume screening technique operates. Today, we are at a juncture wherein it is pertinent to acknowledge the superiority of technology-driven processes over traditional ones. This chapter will help the readers to understand the modus operandi to implement chatbots, gamification, virtual interviews and online resume screening techniques besides their advantages.

Scope: Although chatbots, resume screening, virtual interviews, and gamification are used in other areas, too, such as training and development, marketing, etc., in this chapter, we restrict solely to employee recruitment processes.

Methodology: Scoping review is used to examine the existing literature from various databases such as Google Scholar, IEEE, Proquest, Emerald, Elsevier, and JSTOR databases are used for extracting relevant articles.

Findings: Automation and analytics in recruitment and selection remove bias which is otherwise increasingly found in manual hiring processes. Also, previous studies have observed that candidates engage in impression management tactics in traditional face-to-face interviews. However, through automated recruitment processes, the influence of these tactics can be eliminated. AI-based virtual interviews reduce human bias. It also helps recruiters to hire talents across the globe. Gamification improves the candidate’s perception of the work and work environments. Through gamified techniques, the recruiters can understand whether a candidate possesses the required job skills. Chatbots are an interactive technique that can respond to interviewees’ queries. Resume screening techniques can save the recruiter’s time by screening and selecting the most appropriate candidates from a large pool. Hence, the chosen candidates alone can be referred to the next stage of the recruitment cycle. AI improves the efficiency of the recruitment process. It reduces mundane tasks. It saves time for the human resources (HR) team.

This chapter lays out a research agenda in the sociology of work for a type of data and organizational intermediary: work platforms. As an example, the authors employ a case study of the adoption of automated hiring platforms (AHPs) in which the authors distinguish between promises and existing practices. The authors draw on two main methods to do so: critical discourse analysis and affordance critique. The authors collected and examined a mix of trade, popular press, and corporate archives; 135 texts in total. The analysis reveals that work platforms offer five core affordances to management: (1) structured data fields optimized for capture and portability within organizations; (2) increased legibility of activity qua data captured inside and outside the workplace; (3) information asymmetry between labor and management; (4) an “ecosystem” design that supports the development of limited-use applications for specific domains; and (5) the standardization of managerial techniques between workplaces. These combine to create a managerial frame for workers as fungible human capital, available on demand and easily ported between job tasks and organizations. While outlining the origin of platform studies within media and communication studies, the authors demonstrate the specific tools the sociology of work brings to the study of platforms within the workplace. The authors conclude by suggesting avenues for future sociological research not only on hiring platforms, but also on other work platforms such as those supporting automated scheduling and customer relationship management.

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.

In response to calls to reduce the gender gap in the salesforce, this study aims to examine the effect of candidate gender, manager gender and industry to explain gender bias in salesperson recruitment during screening and skill assessment.

This paper tested the hypotheses using observational data from a national sales competition in the USA, where managers evaluated student candidates for entry-level sales positions.

This research finds gender bias during screening using the dyadic perspective. Specifically, female managers evaluate male candidates more favorably than male managers do during screening. Further, managers of service companies evaluate female candidates more favorably than managers of goods companies during screening. However, this paper finds no such effects during candidates’ skill assessment.

The findings indicate the importance of using dyadic research techniques to assess gender bias.

Managers should not use short interactions to screen candidates.

Implicit bias exists when candidates and managers interact during screening. To reduce gender bias in recruitment the candidates and managers should interact for a longer duration.

This study draws upon a unique setting, where the candidates interact with the managers for screening and skill assessment. Implicit bias exists when candidates and managers interact for screening under time pressure. This paper finds no evidence of gender bias in skill assessment. This study finds that female managers are more prone to bias when evaluating male candidates than male managers. Prior work has not examined industry-based bias; this paper provides evidence of such bias in candidate screening.

As the global workforce ages, organizations face unprecedented challenges, especially managing effective communication between generations. The phenomenon of middle ageism (i.e. discriminating against middle-aged employees based on their age) has become more prevalent. The authors examined how contextual settings and communication affect attitudes toward middle-aged employees and hiring intentions.

Data were collected from 537 employees from various organizations, via questionnaires. The moderated mediation model was analyzed using Hayes' PROCESS models.

Results showed that attitudes toward middle-aged employees mediated the relationship between social climate of shared codes and language and hiring intentions. Social climate was positively related to attitudes toward their adaptability, but negatively to attitudes toward their ability. Also, decision-makers' own perceived employability moderated the relationship between attitudes toward employees' adaptability and hiring intentions, and the indirect relationship between social climate and hiring intentions.

Since age diversity is expected to become one of the most dominant diversity classifications in the very near future, coping with middle ageism constitutes a growing challenge for managers and HR staff. The findings indicate that in order to enhance sustainable employment and prevent discrimination, organizations need not only maintain a supportive climate for older employees, as an affirmative action, but also ensure better communication in terms of sharing codes and language that enhance positive attitudes toward middle-aged colleagues.

In an era where diversity and inclusion dominate human resource management decision making, this study contributes to the literature on the underexplored domain of age diversity.