Discrimination in recruitment is not only unfair but also harmful to organizations that end up with a less capable candidate than they would have had if their processes were fairer.  Research from ETH Zurich highlights how immigrants are just as vulnerable to discrimination in recruitment as women and ethnic minorities.  Interestingly, however, and somewhat depressingly, the level of discrimination immigrants face seems to depend on seemingly random factors, such as the time of the day.

We like to believe that recruitment is a purely meritocratic process whereby our skills, experience, and education are what get us ahead.  Of course, the reality could scarcely be more different and things like ethnicity, origin, and gender often play a significant role in who gets hired and who doesn’t.

Unfair hiring

The researchers gathered anonymized data from the Job-Room recruitment platform, which is one of the most popular in Switzerland.  The platform has around 150,000 profiles of job seekers.

When recruiters place a vacancy on the site they outline the specific criteria candidates must meet to apply for the role.  As with most other platforms, they then receive a list of suitable candidates and can assess their profiles.  These profiles contain not only information about the expertise of the individual but also their nationality, gender, and language skills.  Then, if the recruiters are interested, they can easily contact the individual and invite them in for an interview.

The researchers examined this process over a ten-month period to understand which candidates were given an interview and then ultimately recruited for the role.  They believe that their approach gives them a unique insight into how both gender and origin influence the likelihood of a candidate being contacted for an interview or not.

A realistic assessment

They argue that the correspondence studies traditionally used to assess discrimination have various problems, not least due to the cost of administering it.  It’s an approach that sees fictitious resumes sent to recruiting managers, with the information identical except for certain interesting characteristics, such as the gender or ethnicity of the candidate.

“Our method allows us to study discrimination across different professions and points in time, and to analyze the entire search process on the platform,” the researchers explain. “We know which candidates are displayed to recruiters, when and for how long recruiters view a profile, if they click on the contact button – and we observe millions of such decisions.”

The researchers found that immigrant jobseekers were 6.5% less likely to be invited for an interview than their Swiss peers, even with otherwise identical resumes.  Such discrimination was especially evident among job seekers of African, Asian, Middle Eastern, and Balkan origin.

The likelihood of discrimination

Previous research has shown that judges were far more likely to administer a guilty verdict towards the end of the day when their reserves are at their lowest, and a similar finding emerged in this study too.

They found that the foreign origin of an immigrant applicant was more harmful as lunchtime approached and then again towards the end of the day.  At these times, recruiters would skim over applications far faster, which would result in them falling back on biased heuristics more.

“This result suggests that unconscious biases, such as stereotypes about minorities, also contribute to discrimination,” the researchers explain.