Affiliation-based recruitment and the accessibility of jobs in high-tech startups | WIP Seminar with Santiago Campero

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Meeting ID: 868 6749 4685

Abstract: The under-representation of certain demographic groups in the startup economy is a persistent concern. Affiliation-based recruitment, whereby founders recruit workers with whom they share professional or personal affiliations, is thought to contribute to such under-representation. Yet, affiliation-based recruitment is often conducted in conjunction with other, more open forms of recruitment, such as online recruitment. In this paper, I theorize how the extent of firms’ reliance on affiliation-based recruitment affects the hiring chances of external, unaffiliated job candidates. I argue that the more candidates sourced through shared affiliations are represented in a candidate pool, thebetter the hiring chances of external, unaffiliated job candidates in that candidate pool. I posit two key mechanisms likely to contribute to this effect. First, higher representation of affiliated job candidates mitigates the risk that the firm will discard the candidate pool as a whole after an attempt at recruiting. Second, expanded use of affiliation-based recruitment dampens the expected quality of affiliation-based recruits and therefore the advantage these candidates are conferred in screening. Using data on the recruiting of a sample of several hundred U.S.-based high-tech startups from 2008 to 2012, I find evidence consistent with these claims.

Bio: Before coming to the CIRHR, Santiago Campero was an Assistant Professor of Human Resource Management at HEC Montreal. Santiago received a BSc in Engineering from the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City, an MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley and a PhD in Management from MIT. Prior to beginning his academic career, he worked as a management consultant at McKinsey and Company. Trained as an economic sociologist, Santiago’s research explores the origins of various forms of inequality in the labor markets and organizations. His research has a particular focus on examining these issues in the context of high-tech startups, a sector that is both an important driver of job creation as well as one where certain groups of workers (e.g., women, certain ethnic groups) are persistently under-represented.

Our CIRHR Work-In-Progress Seminar series allows members of our community to discuss early-stage research. Future guest speakers include:

• Post-Selection Instrumental Variables with Invalid Instruments in a Multi-Group Setting, and an Application to the Returns to Education
  March 27, Harry Krashinsky, Associate Professor of Economics, Department of Management
   
• The Gender Wage Gap and Redistribution
  April 10, Kourtney Koebel, CIRHR Sessional Lecturer