Minority perception of exclusion and promotion hurdles

•Minority perception of social exclusion can lead to promotion hurdle.•The principal can always elicit more effort from the majority candidate.•Minority candidate is only promoted if she has a sufficiently superior track record.

This paper describes a model in which, due to social exclusion, a minority candidate perceives her track record to be a less precise indicator of her suitability for promotion. These beliefs imply that the minority candidate is disadvantaged in providing effort and can only be promoted if she can make up for the effort gap with a sufficiently superior track record than the majority candidate.