Academic Organizations and First Career-path Job Placements of Scientists and Engineers

• In Event: 161 - Section on Organizations, Occupation and Work Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 06. Social Capital and Networks II

Abstract

This study examines the role of higher education organizations in scientist and engineering graduates’ job search processes and early career outcomes. Drawing on social ‘embeddedness’ (Granovetter, 1995) and social identity theories (Tajfel & Turner, 1986), I propose that variation in young immigrant scientists and engineers’ embeddedness within different academic programs, which differ in terms of national origin composition, affect their identification with contemporaries as well as predecessors and therefore, the use and effectiveness of their job search strategies vis-à-vis natives. Specifically, I investigate the influence of co-national alumni on the use and effectiveness of informal friends for job search for immigrants and natives. For this study I used the new cohort cases of the 2001 Survey of Doctorate Recipients, supplemented by the Survey of Earned Doctorates 1981-2000 and other public use data sources. I find that immigrant graduates were less likely to use informal friends for job search compared to natives unless they graduated from programs with a higher presence of co-national alumni. Furthermore, while both immigrant and native graduates were more likely to rely on informal friends for job search in the presence of high proportion of co-national alumni in academic programs, immigrants still used informal contacts less compared to natives in these situations and these contacts were less effective than natives in resulting first ‘career-path’ job offers. My research extends prior research on relational demography and social embeddedness by shedding light on organizational level mechanisms that produce differential career outcomes for new labor force entrants.

Author

• Mallika Banerjee, McGill University and Cornell University