This chapter draws on in-depth interviews to consider what meanings hiring professionals attribute to nonstandard, mismatched, and precarious employment histories. It does so by mapping the terrain of meanings attributed to different employment experiences. Some of the meanings that employers extract from these types of work experiences clearly violate ideal worker norms and lead to negative perceptions of job applicants' soft skills and personality. Alongside these meanings and signals, however, significant uncertainty is induced in hiring professionals when they encounter workers with these types of employment experiences. In reconciling this uncertainty, hiring professionals turn largely to individualized explanation, rather than structural ones, and make it clear that they “need a narrative” from job applicants that explains their employment experiences, a narrative that workers rarely have the opportunity to provide.
