Poster #153 - Inequalities in applications and offers to graduate recruitment programmes

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Abstract

Previous research has shown that disadvantaged young people are less likely towork in professional occupations than their advantaged peers, even conditional ontheir education. Yet until now little has been known about the reasons for this- are they applying for professional entry-level roles and not being hired, or arethey not applying in the first place? Using unique recruitment data from 17 largeemployers’ graduate programmes, we are able to answer this question for the firsttime. We find that applicants from lower socio-economic and ethnic minority groupsare well represented among the applicant pool, but disproportionately do not receivejob offers, even when considering similar applicants. Half of the gap in job offersbetween working class and professional background applicants appears during theonline phase of the process, with the other half arising at the face-to-face stages.While much of the gap can be explained by prior attainment, there are still largesocio-economic gaps in offer rates within university groups. For ethnic minoritygroups, the majority of the gap in offer rates emerges at the application sift andonline test phase, rather than at the face-to-face stage.

Author

• Lindsey Macmillan, University College London
  Presenting Author