White hiring agents’ organizational practices and out-group hiring

Prevailing accounts of variation in race–sex hiring largely emphasize applicants’ characteristics and, to some extent, employers’ preferences. In contrast, this study considers how organizational practices, workplace formality, and job characteristics influence the race and sex of white hiring agents’ most recent hires. Analyses using data from roughly 2000 work establishments confirm that the relationship between organizational practices and out-group hiring, the hiring of applicants not like a hiring agent in terms of race and/or sex, is not simple. Findings imply that the mechanisms linking race and sex out-groups to jobs differ, so certain formal organizational practices will only partly reduce differences in hiring outcomes across race–sex groups. The effects of employee referral use, soft skill screens, skill requirements, and a job’s starting wage on out-group hires differ for female and male hiring agents. These results suggest that sex differences in social networks and women’s and men’s different location on employers’ labor queues influence the hiring process.