ABSTRACT

Do employers prioritize university prestige above an applicant’s skills in the hiring process? To distinguish between the effect of human capital in the hiring process from the effect of the name of the graduating university—while controlling for networking effects—2,400 fictitious applications were submitted to IT and accounting jobs in the US, UK, and Australia. The resumes belonged to fictitious citizens, both female and male. For each sector of the labor market, two resumes were designed. One resume had a high skills match with the generic requirements of entry level jobs in each sector. A second resume had a low skills match with the same requirements. For each country, one high-ranked university and one non-high-ranked university were selected to signal prestige. The name of the graduating university and the sex of the applicant were randomly assigned on otherwise identical resumes. High skills match applications were 79 percent more likely to receive a callback than low skills match applications. University prestige and sex were not statistically significant predictors of callbacks. These findings suggest that human capital, and not university prestige, predicts callback outcomes in skill intensive sectors of the labor market for entry-level applicants with a bachelor’s degree.

摘要

在招聘过程中，雇主是否将大学声望置于申请人技能之上？为了区分招聘过程中人力资本的影响和毕业大学名称的影响——同时控制网络效应——向美国、英国和澳大利亚的 IT 和会计工作提交了 2,400 份虚构申请。这些简历属于虚构的公民，包括女性和男性。对于劳动力市场的每个部门，都设计了两份简历。一份简历与每个部门的入门级工作的一般要求具有很高的技能匹配。第二份简历具有相同要求的低技能匹配。每个国家都选择一所排名靠前的大学和一所非排名靠前的大学来表明声望。毕业大学的名称和申请人的性别被随机分配在其他相同的简历上。高技能匹配申请收到回电的可能性比低技能匹配申请高 79%。大学声望和性别不是回调的统计学显着预测因子。这些研究结果表明，人力资本而非大学声望可以预测具有学士学位的入门级申请人在劳动力市场的技能密集型部门的回调结果。