What mix of information sources attracts highly educated graduates?

Despite challenges in the global economy, organisations continue to rely on top-quality graduate hires to maintain capability and feed a long-term talent pool. So they're likely to appreciate a recent piece of research that investigates how potential applicants are influenced by the information they find about an organisation.

Yasmina Jaidi and colleagues contacted 221 masters students at a French business school on two occasions, six months apart. At the first contact, just after a jobs fair, the participants were each asked to identify three organisations that they were currently considering applying to, and how they felt about their prospects for each. They also recounted how much exposure they had to the organisation via a range of information sources, and their current level of intention to pursue a job there. Then at graduation the 141 students who remained in the study were asked what behaviours they actually exhibited in pursuing these three jobs.

In terms of the information sources, the study found that organisations benefited from investment in recruitment advertising and cultivating a good word-of-mouth reputation: both of these increased participants' intention to apply to that organisation, relative to less advertising or bad word-of-mouth. However, having an on-campus presence, often seen as a powerful way to expose the company and brand to a potential workforce, actually showed a negative relationship with intention to pursue a job at the organisation, suggesting that this mechanism can have perverse deterrent effects.

When it came to publicity, neither good nor bad news influenced intentions to apply, but when it came to actually buckling down and doing it, participants put in somewhat less effort when they had heard bad news. A similar effect was found with jobs that the students felt they had little leverage in acquiring: they were undaunted in their intentions to apply but their actual actions trailed off. These findings remind us that an individual's intentions do not always translate into behaviour.

The authors note that recruiting organizations “should be careful with their on-campus activities as to avoid negative reactions among job-seeking students” - for example, “when a company is very present on-campus it may evoke a feeling of distrust and lowered credibility”. In addition, they stress the need to “be aware of the fact that investments made in recruitment communication can be neutralized by negative publicity or word of mouth”.


Jaidi, Y., Van Hooft, E., & Arends, L. (2011). Recruiting Highly Educated Graduates: A Study on the Relationship Between Recruitment Information Sources, the Theory of Planned Behavior, and Actual Job Pursuit Human Performance, 24 (2), 135-157 DOI: 10.1080/08959285.2011.554468

Hiring by online profile: perils and challenges for the networked recruiter

(This post forms part of this month's focus on younger people in the workforce.)

Whether it's holiday snaps, opinions, or your work history, it's likely that you use a social network site (SNS) to express some things about you. This is especially true for the young; membership of Facebook, the largest SNS, continues to show a skew towards ages twenty and under. It's unsurprising that recruiters might use these sites to find out more about job applicants; a 2009 poll indicates 45% of 2600 hiring managers polled had done just that. Now, a new paper by Victoria Brown and E. Daly Vaughn surveys the risks and consequences of allowing online discoveries to influence hiring decisions.

The attractions are clear: recruiters get free, quickly accessible, and otherwise hidden information about applicants. The 2009 poll suggests that 35% of the managers rejected candidates due to SNS evidence, such as unwanted habits or information that contradicts their resume. The evidence can also support candidates by corroborating resumes; employment-centred sites such as LinkedIn exist partly to perform that function.

The first issue Brown and Vaughn raise is perceived invasiveness: trawling through individual's profiles (and those of their friends, just a few clicks away) can feel like snooping. By harming the candidate's recruitment experience, now recognised as a valuable 'pre-onboarding' phase, this can undermine relations once in post.

Secondly, is it fair? An SNS user who shares freely may be sifted out in favour of a counterpart who is cannier at selecting settings, but no better at the job. Moreover, many SNS's detail non-work behaviour, and generalising from here to the workplace may be unwarranted. We can also fall prey to drawing conclusions on the bases of a small sample of 'recent activity'.

Most importantly, the observed behaviours must relate to job criteria to be justifiable for use in employment decisions. An appropriate case would be assessing uploaded images created by a graphic designer, to establish the breadth and quality of their output. But in other cases, information has to be tied to some higher-order construct.

The good news is that some evidence exists that we can construe personality reasonably well on the basis of SNS profiles. But for areas such as verbal communication, we don't have that evidence. (Personally I'm happy to lapse into Facebook patois when I'm on-site. Sincerely sharing communication conventions, or ironically playing at it? Like the Simpsons, I don't even know any more.) The authors also worry that SNS screening may be very prone to biases, given that SNS data gives ready indication of race, age, disability and other factors that shouldn't be considerations in screening decisions.

The authors suggest organisations should develop policies on SNS use in hiring. They recommend forbidding opportunistic online reviewing of some candidates but not others, and listing appropriate criteria, with standardised rubrics that can be used to evaluate candidates. Even then, where there is no clear evidence legitimising decisions, the authors suggest it may be better for organisations to ban the practice entirely.

Brown, V., & Vaughn, E. (2011). The Writing on the (Facebook) Wall: The Use of Social Networking Sites in Hiring Decisions Journal of Business and Psychology DOI: 10.1007/s10869-011-9221-x

An interview with Jim McKechnie on child employment

(Jim McKechnie is a professor in the Social Sciences department at the University of the West of Scotland. Following his presentation on child employment at the BPS Annual Conference, he was gracious enough to spare some time to explore the issues further; my questions are in bold. This forms part of this month's focus on younger people in the workforce.)

You've spoken of how jobs can have good and bad effects on young people who take them. What's a good example of that?

Well, take the number of hours worked: our research suggests a complex relationship with educational attainment. Students working excessive hours – more than 15 hours/week - have negative consequences in academic attainment. But those working five to six hours a week do better educationally than students who have never worked. Of course, we have to establish the causality, but it's clear that working isn't necessarily a bad thing for schooling.

Beyond the hours worked, are there types of jobs that are less worthwhile – too menial, perhaps?

We need to be cautious and not look at these jobs through adult eyes. The least demanding jobs are those in delivery: not a lot of contact with individuals, not much decision-making. But at the same time, those jobs tend to be taken by people who've never worked before as a first way in to having a full-time job.

As an early experience, it might be demanding to them, as they've never had to get up early before, they've never had to be reliable. And typically, people who start part-time in delivery work go through a sort of career path of part-time jobs, with an 'arc of demand' increasing as they move forward.

Could you talk about how employers are involved?

Well, they tend to seek child employees on the basis of flexibility, rather than cheapness – wages are typically standard, especially for post-16s. Some recognise “a breath of fresh air” that a young person brings into a workplace. For example, they see them as less pedantic than the adult part-time employees they have.

Employers are very variable in how they treat schoolchildren. One response to this would be to recognise good employers in some way. For instance, training provided is very variable. Those employers who do train see the young people as an investment for the future: “I get a good quality employee for a relatively low cost.”

In this sense, it resembles the impetus for many graduate programs.

Yes – and moreover, when these employees move on typically they introduce their friends as a 'next generation' for the business; a free screening process for the employee.

There is a growing recognition among employers that this young group of people are a valuable support system for their business, but it would pay for employers to pay more attention in some cases. It would be worthwhile for the better, more organised employers to introduce contracts when workers hit 16 to ensure they get time off for exam prep, to restrict hours so it doesn't clash with education; to say 'we acknowledge we get the flexibility, so we give something back'.

I was fascinated by your finding that around 20% of your young sample had some supervisory responsibilities.

One example we have is of an individual entering work in a shoe shop at the age of 14. who gained sufficient expertise in technology and methods that by 16 they were used to deal with and on-board new employees.

Now, we know the value of peer to peer tutoring in education, so why not take that model and apply it to business situations? You could imagine having a young person showing others the ropes may be better than a more managerial approach, and avoids potential culture clash.

How about the young people themselves – how can they get more from these early work experiences?

There's a major challenge for young workers themselves, as they tend to undervalue the experience, and don't see the full scope of what they're doing. In education, we use personal development planning to foster self-reflection on academic work. Should we extend this to work experience too?

There is a tension, however. When you talk to young people, one of the major benefits they see in paid work is a growth in their independence and autonomy – a consistent finding in the evidence base. If you try to educationalise that experience, you may be undermining one of its most valuable benefits! If you have to justify to the teacher what you've learned from work, it becomes just another kind of coursework. So we advise treading cautiously, as an opt-in opportunity for those who wish to try it.

How would you like to see the world of psychology participating in this discussion?

From an Occupational Psychology perspective, to ask whether or not we can look at this age group of workers in terms of well-researched features such as job satisfaction, quality of employment experiences, engagement, even issues like stress. There are an array of tools out there but they've been designed for adult populations. Given that an estimated 1.1-1.7m under-sixteens contribute to the economy through part-time jobs, and given we're talking about our future workforce here, this group needs some time under the spotlight.

The invisible workforce: schoolchildren in paid roles that are complex, rich and often ignored

Schoolchildren in jobs: that just amounts to the odd kid on a paper round, doesn't it? Not according to Jim McKechnie's research team from the University of the West of Scotland, who presented earlier this month at the Annual BPS Conference. McKechnie revealed that part-time paid employment was a majority experience for schoolchildren. From his own survey data – around 10% of those in secondary education in Scotland, 18500 students in all – once students move beyond their last year of compulsory education, more of them are in paid work than not.

It may be common, but does it matter? From one perspective it's a problem: given finite time, any non-school activities supplant time that should be spent on education. For some, it's a blessing, providing opportunities and learning experiences unavailable in the education system. And for those such as McKechnie's group, it's a balance: any adult job has a mixture of positive and negative aspects, and the same is bound to be true for children as well.

The team surveyed the types of roles taken by children to explore the charge that they are generally menial and unstretching,. They found that, rather than paper routes, the sample worked substantive jobs in service industries, including retail, (28%), catering (28%) and delivery (18%), with smaller numbers in other domains such as care work and cleaning. Moreover, participants reported a range of activities within roles, with 70% dealing with customers and surprisingly, over 20% engaged in some kind of supervisory activities.

To look closer at this, each candidate was given a 'demandingness' score based on the activities within their job. Demanding jobs were more likely to be taken by those in higher school years, and by females rather than males, but features such as socio-economic status, academic attainment, and truancy didn't have any influence. As McKechnie puts it, there is “nothing atypical about taking a demanding job”.

McKechnie observed that taking survey data from youngsters may pose additional methodological challenges, a theme picked up by his colleague Amanda Simpson. Her study used multiple methods to gather information from 32 working youngsters, combining observation with interviews and also asking participants to record the activities they were involved in at various points in the day, prompted by mobile phone notifications.

The study suggested that the jobs, even many seemingly basic ones, involved a range of activities and opportunities to gain and develop both soft and technical skills. However, the children often initially showed limited awareness of these, though they gained more insight through the event recording procedure. To some extent, the 'invisible workforce' are only partially visible even to themselves.

In the next post, we spend some time with Jim McKechnie to discuss the significance of this research for the workplace.

What ingredients sweeten Sunday working?

I hope you're having a relaxing weekend. If so, spare a thought for those busy at their jobs, serving in shops, making our meals, or mending wounds. Lacking a sacrosanct day of rest – in much of the West at least – we expect this work to get done... but are reluctant to be the ones doing it. Sunday is the day most workers avoid if they can help it; now, a new study suggests ways to sweeten this bitter pill.

James Martin and colleagues contacted union members working in a retail food chain that often requires Sunday shift-work, using a survey to gather responses from 2000 employees. The researchers were interested in how an employee's satisfaction with their current work schedule relates to other factors, after taking into account considerations such as base pay rate and hours worked.

They found that unsurprisingly people were happier to work Sundays when this came with a salary premium; however, the premium needed to be at least moderate in scale ($2/hour extra, rather than $1/hour). In addition, Sunday workers with more control over their overall schedule were more acceptant of their schedules, as were workers with longer organizational tenure. The latter probably reflects the fact that time in a job offers more opportunities to get out of, negotiate, or make peace with schedules that pose inconveniences.

Martin's team also explored what future benefits could entice Sunday workers into taking further Sunday shifts, and found that this depended on how the workers currently felt. For those already satisfied with their working pattern, the notion of a raise in the Sunday premium was attractive; those currently fed up with their current schedule were much harder to please financially. These individuals thawed towards future Sunday shifts when it came with the prospect of more power over the rest of their schedule: to flex and amend it to fit circumstances, or simply to have more say over it in the first place. It's worth noting that these analyses give insight into how to handle incremental change – working more or fewer Sundays – but have less to say about the introduction of wholly new working schedules, as they did not assess attitudes in non-Sunday workers.

Organisations that depend on work completed in non-standard schedules have to account for the fact that we prefer to do other things with our nights, evenings, and weekends. This research reminds us that although financial incentives do still appeal, we would do better to provide employees more say in when they work. And if you're working today, I hope you have some time off soon when it suits you.



Martin, J., Wittmer, J., & Lelchook, A. (2011). Attitudes towards days worked where Sundays are scheduled Human Relations DOI: 10.1177/0018726710396248

Leaders considered more ethical when their moral horizons are wider than their followers

Ethical leadership is defined through its actions, by communicating ethical messages, applying sanctions to wrong-doers, and role-modelling appropriate conduct. Employees who perceive their leaders as ethical put in more effort and are more prepared to speak up and report issues at work. Now, some fascinating research suggests that judgements of ethical leadership themselves depend upon the level of cognitive moral development: not only in the leaders, but the employees as well.

Cognitive moral development is a concept originally devised by Lawrence Kohlberg that concerns our moral horizons: is 'right and wrong' merely about how we fare in life, or can it mean more? Kohlberg suggested our moral cognition begins at a 'pre-conventional' stage where all we value is self-interest, then potentially develops to a law- and norm-centred 'conventional' stage, and finally can climb to a 'post-conventional' perspective, that is driven by universal principles of right and wrong. In a recent article, Jennifer Jordan and colleagues recognised that this quality could have something to say about perceptions of ethical leadership.

Their research recruited 28 executives and 129 of their direct reports, who all completed a standard test of moral development. The direct report also gave their opinion of the executive's ethical leadership. The data was then combined into all possible pairs, where each pair comprised an executive and one of their reports.

How did those executives seen as ethical do on the moral reasoning test? They scored highly; specifically they scored higher than their direct reports. That is, when leaders thought with somewhat bigger moral horizons than their followers, they were seen as most ethical. Jordan's team had predicted just this, based on an observation from social learning theory that the best way to model behaviours to others is to stand out from the crowd: sophisticated, novel moral reasoning can grab attention in a way that dutiful consistency will not.

How do the followers appreciate these perspectives if they don't make sense to them? Well, the leader has to find a way to make them sensible. Luckily, post-Kohlberg researchers agree that individuals at higher levels can choose to speak 'the same ethical language' as others when necessary, offering a bridge between the two ways of thinking.

So should leaders be distinct from their employees to be effective? It depends what outcomes you are after. If you want employees to have higher job satisfaction, evidence suggests it's actually better for the leader to closely share their values, meaning everyone is comfortably on the same page. Yet as the authors note, “divergence leads to better outcomes when it is important for leaders to stand out and be noticed”.

To close, here's a telling detail from the study: in over half the pairs, the executive actually had the lower score in moral development. While we can debate whether it's better for a leader to be part of the moral mainstream or forging ahead, either is surely preferable to bringing up the rear.

Jordan, J., Brown, M., Trevino, L., & Finkelstein, S. (2011). Someone to Look Up To: Executive-Follower Ethical Reasoning and Perceptions of Ethical Leadership Journal of Management DOI: 10.1177/0149206311398136

Drinking habits of freelance musicians are a response to job demands

When we pore over biographies of Cobain, Mozart, or Shakur, are we getting a true insight into the psychology of musicians? Doubtful; dealing with rare figures whose musicianship is confounded with celebrity, the psychological autopsy is inadequate for understanding this ancient and valued profession. The stereotypes it can reinforce, such as the 'mad genius', are often dispelled by more rigorous investigation: a study of psychopathology in a sample including artists, writers and scientists revealed that composers had almost the lowest rate.

And how about the other stereotype, that musicians love to get trashed? It's true that jazz greats often got high, but their reasons were more varied than simply hedonism; many used drugs to deal with pressure from the job and from peers. A recent study suggests our current jazz and string musicians, in a similar spot, find themselves deep in the drink.

Melissa Dobson from the University of Sheffield conducted interviews with eighteen freelance musicians, half string players and half jazz musicians. Reviewing these reveals that a key professional capability for these musicians is social expertise with peers. If looking to draft in a cellist for an event, differences in talent between candidates may be too minor to matter for the audience, so the job may swing to whoever's a better laugh to hang with during the breaks. In their informal economy, musicians know the power of these fickle decisions and do what needs to be done to maintain a reputation that they “get on with people”.

Typically, that involves drinking. Partly a generational legacy, as hard drinking is tied into the subcultural furniture, it's also a fact of the environment, as venues for live music typically serve alcohol. It fills dull gaps between sets in unfamiliar places, and after the show offers a form of psychological detachment from work. Ultimately, it's socially self-perpetuating: if everyone drinks, then you need to develop a habit too. Some interviewees had mixed feelings about this: “lots of players that haven't been offered jobs.... [are those who] won't really go out for the whole sort of socializing thing... a bit sad, but that's sort of the way it works”.

As well as alcohol, the interviews revealed the highly political nature of the freelance music world, where musicians both compete against and depend upon each other for work, and can find themselves trading disparaging judgements on absent peers to shore up their in-crowd position - another form of social currency.

Melissa Dobson concludes that the professional training that musicians undertake focuses on technical development over the challenges of navigating a freelance career, leaving them to figure out how to maintain reputation through a 'hidden curriculum' that operates out of sight of the convervatoire. Is this the only form of professional training that this critique applies to?

Dobson, M. (2010). Insecurity, professional sociability, and alcohol: Young freelance musicians' perspectives on work and life in the music profession Psychology of Music, 39 (2), 240-260 DOI: 10.1177/0305735610373562