What's Missing From the College Transcript?

This chapter describes a qualitative study of how organizations use information to evaluate and hire graduating students into entry-level positions from one pre-professional undergraduate program. The study investigates how campus recruiters and hiring managers make sense of student job applicants' cognitive, non-cognitive, and technical abilities from data presented in résumés, academic transcripts, and through various interview techniques. The findings provide insight into the opportunities and challenges to incorporating alternative representations of learning—Comprehensive Learner Records—into the recruitment and hiring process. The findings also reveal how information about learning and learners is used to establish pipelines for recruiting and hiring recent college graduates. The study informs the design of future assessment and credentialing infrastructures, with the goal of expanding how “learning” is measured, defined, and represented in higher education to enhance diversity, equity, and opportunity for learners.

Roads to Success: The Career Attainment Experiences of Lawyers With Visual Impairments in South Korea

Problem: Disability issues have long been a topic at the margins of HRD research and have rarely been examined outside the United States context or with a focus on a specific disability type. Additionally, largely due to a homogeneous national culture, people with disabilities in South Korea experience unique barriers in career development. Solution: The authors report the findings of a multiple case study on the career attainment experiences of lawyers with visual impairments in South Korea. Data analyzed from interviews with five participants showed that various individual (perseverance, identity as a person with a visual impairment, self-advocacy, and strategic mindset) and social (family and peer support, reasonable accommodation, precedent, and having a leader with a vision for inclusion) factors contributed to their career attainment. Stakeholders: The findings of this study can aid organizational leaders, hiring managers, HRD practitioners in charge of providing reasonable accommodations, and educators of people with disabilities.

Before and After Ban the Box: Who Complies with Anti-Discrimination Law?

Ban the Box (BTB) laws are an anti-discrimination policy intended to promote employment for persons with criminal records. However, research on law and organizations shows that firms often fail to comply with legal directives or engage in symbolic compliance that fails to alter day-to-day business practices. We consider whether BTB contributed to attitudinal or behavioral shifts among hiring managers and changes in job applications. We analyze a unique set of in-depth interviews (N = 30) and entry-level job applications (N = 305) collected from the same workplaces in 2008 and 2016, assessing the impact of state BTB legislation. We find: (1) that one in five organizations were noncompliant, with noncompliance twice as likely among employers who discriminated against applicants with criminal records pre-BTB and that widespread lack of knowledge and lack of enforcement of BTB appears to affect noncompliance; (2) organizations maintained considerable continuity in hiring practices and attitudes between 2008 and 2016, regardless of personnel changes and statewide implementation of BTB; and (3) post-BTB, strong warnings about criminal background checks at later stages of the hiring process emerged as an alternative source of gatekeeping. These findings contribute to the law and organizations literature by highlighting the importance of enforcement and limits of law for combating discrimination.

The Role of LinkedIn Profile on Hiring Preference: Evidence from Bangladeshi Employers

This empirical paper aims to identify the role of LinkedIn, a profession based social networking site (SNS) on overall hiring preference (HP) in Bangladesh. As the independent components, the author considered LinkedIn profile richness (LPR), LinkedIn skill endorsement (LSE) and self-presentation on LinkedIn (SL). The author collected primary data based on 391 survey responses. For descriptive statistics, the author utilized SPSS (version 24) and for examining the hypotheses, he utilized structural equation modeling technique through AMOS 24. After a careful and thorough analysis, it was found that all the independent components have significant positive roles over HP. This empirical paper is expected to be a founding guideline for the jobseekers having active LinkedIn profiles. Further, it can also guide the hiring managers to formulate and implement an efficient social media policy (SMP) for hiring.

Recruiting strategic human capital from MNCs—Does hiring MNC managers enable exporting in domestic firms?

Exporting is a central growth strategy for most firms and managers with international experience are instrumental for export decisions. We suggest that such managers can be hired from Multinational Corporations (MNCs). We integrate theory from strategic human capital research into models explaining export decisions. We theorize that hiring managers from MNCs increases the odds of domestic firms to start exporting and this effect depends on the similarities between hiring firms and MNCs. We hypothesize that young firms will benefit comparatively less from hiring MNC managers. In contrast, firms with internationally diverse workforces and with high degrees of hierarchical specialization will benefit the most from hiring MNC managers. We test and support these hypotheses for 474,926 domestic firms in Sweden, which we observe between 2007 and 2015.

Job Seeking and Daily Workforce Experiences of Autistic Librarians

Anecdotal accounts suggest that librarianship is a rewarding career for some autistic adults, though no empirical evidence exists to support such claims. Additionally, barriers may exist for autistic librarians, both in job seeking and in on-the-job experiences. As autistic adults are un- and underemployed more than their neurotypical peers, it is important to understand the role that libraries can play in supporting their employment. In this qualitative study, ten librarians with graduate degrees, who self-identify as autistic, describe their experiences in job seeking and daily working experiences in the library field through interviews in multiple formats. Results indicate issues around disclosure and accessibility, and that librarians thrive when their skills are prioritized and when they feel like they are helping or doing meaningful work. Additionally, these librarians find their way into the profession through exposure to libraries and take comfort in working with like-minded people. Finally, autistic librarians in this study describe the hope that hiring managers and library supervisors have at least some knowledge and understanding of autism, along with the willingness to learn more.

Returning to work after maternity leave

Purpose This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies. Design/methodology/approach This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context. Findings Despite increasing diversity and inclusion in the workplace, subtle subconscious biases and neosexist viewpoints persist, especially toward women returning to work following a maternity career-break. Hiring managers may view such women negatively; they perceive them to be less committed due to the challenges of working while balancing family responsibilities. Organizations offer various family-friendly initiatives such as support programs to help women return to work and maintain a work-life balance. Completing a support program helps to provide more information about skills and abilities following a break, which can help reduce ambiguities and discriminatory views when evaluating a woman’s resume. Originality/value The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

Evaluating Self-Presentation: Gatekeeping Recognition Work in Hiring

This study investigates how employee gatekeepers decode cultural signals applicants send out during job selection procedures. By focusing on declarative and non-declarative cultural signals such as leisure activities and presentation style, this article examines how recruiters and hiring managers do their gatekeeping recognition work. This is done by in-depth interviewing of 40 HR managers and recruiters, from the cultural and corporate sector in the Netherlands, using a video-elicitation method. The interviews revealed (1) the importance of a fun-factor, (2) that leisure activities not only serve as status markers or indicators for competence but enter as important interactional tools, (3) that gatekeepers look for authentic self-presentation but that this varies between fields and the perceived gender of the candidate. In addition, the comparative design uncovered significant sector variations. Corporate gatekeepers are characterized by the way they decoded sport activities as a signal for a work mentality, valued self-presentation in terms of representativeness and repeatedly relied on competence as an evaluative principle. Cultural gatekeepers, on the other hand, used leisure activities more often as way of cultural matching and were more drawn to a fun-factor while displaying a clear disdain for formal presentation styles.