Résumé screening heuristic outcomes: an examination of hiring manager evaluation bias

• Published in: Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, 2023-02, Vol.42 (1), p.104-134
• Main Authors: Moore, Ozias A., Livingston, Beth, Susskind, Alex M.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Affirmative action; Applicants; Appropriateness; Attitudes; Behavior; Bias; Black white relations; Boundary conditions; Candidates; Consciousness; Credentials; Decision making; Dominance; Employment; Evaluation; Group identity; Hierarchies; Hiring; Human resource managers; Human resources; Hypotheses; Inequality; Information sources; Ingroup bias; Job applicants; Job requirements; Justification; Managers; Membership; Perceptions; Photography; Race; Racial bias; Racism; Ratings & rankings; Resource managers; Scarcity; Self interest; Social response; Social structure; Technology; Tests; Workforce
• ISSN: 2040-7149; 2040-7157
• DOI: 10.1108/EDI-04-2021-0115

PurposeHiring managers commonly rely on system-justifying motives and attitudes during résumé screening. Given the prevalent use of modern résumé formats (e.g. LinkedIn) that include not only an applicant's credentials but also headshot photographs, visible sources of information such as an applicant's race are also revealed while a hiring manager simultaneously evaluates a candidate's suitability. As a result, such screening is likely to activate evaluation bias. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of a hiring manager's perceptions of race-system justification, that is, support for the status quo in relations between Black and White job candidates in reinforcing or mitigating hiring bias related to in-group and out-group membership during résumé screening.Design/methodology/approachDrawing from system justification theory (SJT) in a pre-selection context, in an experimental study involving 174 human resource managers, the authors tested two boundary conditions of the expected relationship between hiring manager and job candidate race on candidate ratings: (1) a hiring manager's affirmative action (AA) attitudes and system-justifying attitudes and (2) a job candidate's manipulated suitability for a position. This approach enabled us to juxtapose the racial composition of hiring manager–job candidate dyads under conditions in which the job candidate's race and competency for a posted position were manipulated to examine the conditions under which White and Black hiring managers are likely to make biased evaluations. The authors largely replicated these findings in two follow-up studies with 261 students and 361 online raters.FindingsThe authors found that information on a candidate's objective suitability for a job resulted in opposite-race positive bias among Black evaluators and same-race positive bias among White evaluators in study 1 alone. Conversely, positive attitudes toward AA policies resulted in in-group favoritism and strengthened a positive same-race bias for Black evaluators (study 1 and 2). We replicated this finding with a third sample to directly test system-justifying attitudes (study 3). The way in which White raters rated White candidates reflected the same attitudes against systems (AA attitudes) that Black raters rating Black candidates exhibited in the authors’ first two studies. Positive system-justifying attitudes or positive attitudes toward AA did not, however, translate into the elevation of same-race candidate rating