Tag Archives | Audit Study

Do Employers Care about Past Mobility? A Field Experiment Examining Hiring Preferences in Technology and Non-Technology Jobs

Matissa Hollister, Nicole Denier, Xavier St-Denis

Sociological Science April 28, 2025
10.15195/v12.a11


Research in previous decades found that employers imposed penalties on job applicants with a past history of frequent moves across employers, and yet mobility across employers is more common in today’s economy and perhaps even a valuable career strategy. While popular discourse and some academic literature has portrayed highly mobile careers as widespread and broadly accepted, other studies have suggested that such careers may only thrive in specific pockets of the labor market, particularly high-technology jobs. We conducted a field experiment in the United States to assess employer responses to resumes with three levels of past mobility. We found significant variation in employer mobility preferences, with jobs in human resources, financial reporting, marketing, and IT penalizing high-mobility applicants. In contrast, very stable work histories were penalized when hiring software testers. Counter to expectations, high-technology employers did not broadly embrace mobility. These findings suggest that employers follow occupation-specific mobility expectations, and as a consequence must balance competing mobility orientations within their workforce. Workers, meanwhile, must face the challenges of navigating a precarious labor market while also being mindful of the impact that their cumulative mobility may have on future job opportunities.
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Factorial Survey Experiments to Predict Real-World Behavior: A Cautionary Tale from Hiring Studies

Andrea G. Forster, Martin Neugebauer

Sociological Science September 24, 2024
10.15195/v11.a32


Factorial surveys (FSs) are increasingly used to predict real-world decisions. However, there is a paucity of research assessing whether these predictions are valid and, if so, under what conditions. In this preregistered study, we sent out N = 3,002 applications to job vacancies in Germany and measured real-world responses. Eight weeks later, we presented nearly identical applicant profiles to the same employers as a part of an FS. To explore the conditions under which FSs provide valid behavioral predictions, we varied the topic sensitivity and tested whether behavioral predictions were more successful after filtering out respondents who gave socially desirable answers or did not exert sufficient effort when answering FS vignettes. Across conditions, the FS results did not correspond well with the real-world benchmark. We conclude that researchers must exercise caution when using FSs to study (hiring) behavior.
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Are Firms That Discriminate More Likely to Go Out of Business?

Devah Pager

Sociological Science, September 19, 2016
DOI 10.15195/v3.a36

Economic theory has long maintained that employers pay a price for engaging in racial discrimination. According to Gary Becker’s seminal work on this topic and the rich literature that followed, racial preferences unrelated to productivity are costly and, in a competitive market, should drive discriminatory employers out of business. Though a dominant theoretical proposition in the field of economics, this argument has never before been subjected to direct empirical scrutiny. This research pairs an experimental audit study of racial discrimination in employment with an employer database capturing information on establishment survival, examining the relationship between observed discrimination and firm longevity. Results suggest that employers who engage in hiring discrimination are less likely to remain in business six years later.

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