What Does a Job Candidate’s Age Signal to Employers?

Hannah Van Borm (), Ian Burn and Stijn Baert

Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium from Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration

Abstract: Research has shown that hiring discrimination is a barrier for older job candidates in many OECD countries. However, little research has delved into why older job candidates are discriminated against. Therefore, we have conducted an online scenario experiment involving recruiters to empirically investigate 15 potential stigma related to older age drawn from a systematic review of the literature. We found that older age particularly signals to recruiters that the applicant has lower technological skill, flexibility, and trainability levels. Together, these perceptions explain about 41% of the effect of age on the probability of being invited to a job interview. In addition, we found that the negative association between age and invitation probability is smaller when recruiters work for firms with a higher percentage of older employees.

Keywords: hiring; statistical discrimination; age; stereotypes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J14 J23 J24 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 45 pages
Date: 2019-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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http://wps-feb.ugent.be/Papers/wp_19_984.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: What Does a Job Candidate's Age Signal to Employers? (2021)
Working Paper: What Does a Job Candidate's Age Signal to Employers? (2019)
Working Paper: What Does a Job Candidate’s Age Signal to Employers? (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rug:rugwps:19/984

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