A large body of research has established a consensus that racial discrimination in CV screening occurs and persists. Nevertheless, we still know very little about how recruiters look at the CV and how this is connected to the discriminatory patterns. This article examines the way recruiters view and select CVs and how they reason about their CV selection choices, as a first step in unpacking the patterns of hiring discrimination. Specifically, we explore how race and ethnicity signaled through the CV matter, and how recruiters reason about the choices they make.
We recorded data from 40 respondents (20 pairs) who are real-life recruiters with experiences in recruitment of diverse employees in three large Swedish-based firms in the finance and retail sector in two large cities. The participating firms all value diversity, equity and inclusion in their recruitment. Their task was to individually rate 10 fictious CVs where race (signaled by face image) and ethnicity (signaled by name) were systematically manipulated, select the top three candidates, and then discuss their choices in pairs to decide on a single top candidate. We examined whether respondents’ choices were associated with the parts of the CV they looked at, and how they reasoned and justified their choices through dialog.
Our results show that non-White CVs were rated higher than White CVs. While we do not observe any statistically significant differences in the ratings between different racial groups, we see a statistically significant preference for Chinese over Iraqi names. There were no significant differences in time spent looking at the CV across different racial groups, but respondents looked longer at Polish names compared to Swedish names when presented next to a White face. The dialog data reveal how respondents assess different CVs by making assumptions about the candidates’ job and organizational fit through limited information on the CVs, especially when the qualifications of the candidates are evaluated to be equal.