Unraveling implicit knowledge in information technology jobs

Job seekers are used to looking at job postings published on the main websites like Glassdoor and Google Jobs. Typically, an online job posting provides a piece of text that describes the job in a more qualitative way. Most job seekers, who would have to view hundreds of postings every day, tend to pay attention to the explicit information exposed by the textual description, such as required skills, salary, and benefits, which are information that the author wishes to convey to the job seekers directly. However, this would lead to overlook of a large part of implicit information which is hidden deeper in the linguistic characteristics of the textual description, such as readability of the text, status of the employer, and domain-unrelated concerns of the text. These implicit aspects of the job description can give job seekers knowledge into the job culture and personal characteristics of future colleagues, helping them to prepare for job interviews more efficiently, and integrate into future job environment more smoothly. Using text mining methods, this study extracts various types of implicit information/knowledge of a collection of more than 24 thousand job postings and depicts the implicit characteristics of IT-related jobs compared to non-IT jobs. Analysis results show that IT-related and non-IT job descriptions have distinct profiles in terms of implicit characteristics

Evaluating 'Prefer not to say' Around Sensitive Disclosures

As people's offline and online lives become increasingly entwined, the sensitivity of personal information disclosed online is increasing. Disclosures often occur through structured disclosure fields (e.g., drop-down lists). Prior research suggests these fields may limit privacy, with non-disclosing users being presumed to be hiding undesirable information. We investigated this around HIV status disclosure in online dating apps used by men who have sex with men. Our online study asked participants (N=183) to rate profiles where HIV status was either disclosed or undisclosed. We tested three designs for displaying undisclosed fields. Visibility of undisclosed fields had a significant effect on the way profiles were rated, and other profile information (e.g., ethnicity) could affect inferences that develop around undisclosed information. Our research highlights complexities around designing for non-disclosure and questions the voluntary nature of these fields. Further work is outlined to ensure disclosure control is appropriately implemented around online sensitive information disclosures

Implicit Contracts, Unemployment, and Labor Market Segmentation

We analyze the impact of imperfect contract enforcement on the emergence of unemployment. In an experimental labor market where trading parties can form long-term employment relationships, we compare a work environment where effort is observable, but not verifiable to a situation where explicit contracts are feasible. Our main result shows that unemployment is much higher when third-party contract enforcement is absent. Unemployment is involuntary, being caused by firms' employment and contracting policy. Moreover, we show that implicit contracting can lead to a segmentation of the labor market. Firms in both segments earn similar profits, but workers in the secondary sector face much less favorable conditions than their counterparts in primary-sector jobs.incentives, implicit contracts, unemployment, fairness, dual labor markets

Seeking Solutions to Financial History Discrimination

Employers’ use of credit reports to evaluate prospective job applicants has generated considerable scrutiny in the popular press and academic literature, but few proposals for reform. This Article explores three possible ways of reducing the risk of financial history discrimination in the employment setting. First, imposing inquiry limits on employers’ use of credit reports, a policy recently adopted or under consideration in the majority of states, is unlikely to be effective, since states’ inquiry limits are currently narrowly drafted and therefore advance few anti-discriminatory objectives. In addition, inquiry limits cannot prevent self-interested individuals from voluntarily revealing their credit histories and other financial history information, a shortcoming that triggers the game-theoretic “unraveling” process. Second, most attempts to improve consumers’ participatory role in employers’ evaluation processes can only superficially combat financial history discrimination, since these efforts are likely to produce unreliable information, and they may have a regressive impact. Given the limitations of these options, the Article considers to what extent a third approach—encouraging employers to use an empirically derived, statistically sound evaluation method to scrutinize applicants—can combat discrimination. Although an empirical method—an adaptation of credit scoring methodologies for use by employers—is imperfect, it can help to reduce the likelihood of implicit bias and stereotyping that is inherent in employers’ current subjective analyses of the raw data in credit reports. While antidiscrimination initiatives have traditionally focused on withholding information from decision-makers, where suppression of information is impracticable, the contrary approach may be more likely to advance sustained reform efforts

Inertia and Change in the Early Years: Employment Relations in Young, High Technology Firms

[Excerpt] This paper considers processes of organizational imprinting in a sample of 100 young, high technology companies. It examines the effects of a pair of initial conditions: the founders\u27 models of the employment relation and their business strategies. Our analyses indicate that these two features were well aligned when the firms were founded. However, the alignment has deteriorated over time, due to changes in the distribution of employment models. In particular, the \u27star\u27 model and \u27commitment\u27 model are less stable than the \u27engineering\u27 model and the \u27factory\u27 model. Despite their instability, these two blueprints for the employment relation have strong effects in shaping the early evolution of these firms. In particular, firms that embark with these models have significantly higher rates of replacing the founder chief executive with a non-founder as well as higher rates of completing an initial public stock offering. Some implications of these findings for future studies of imprinting and inertia in organizations are discussed

Research and Applications of the Processes of Performance Appraisal: A Bibliography of Recent Literature, 1981-1989

[Excerpt] There have been several recent reviews of different subtopics within the general performance appraisal literature. The reader of these reviews will find, however, that the accompanying citations may be of limited utility for one or more reasons. For example, the reference sections of these reviews are usually composed of citations which support a specific theory or practical approach to the evaluation of human performance. Consequently, the citation lists for these reviews are, as they must be, highly selective and do not include works that may have only a peripheral relationship to a given reviewer\u27s target concerns. Another problem is that the citations are out of date. That is, review articles frequently contain many citations that are fifteen or more years old. The generation of new studies and knowledge in this field occurs very rapidly. This creates a need for additional reference information solely devoted to identifying the wealth of new research, ideas, and writing that is changing the field

Labor Matching Behavior in Open Economies and Trade Adjustment

This paper develops a model of costly trade and team production to examine the matching behavior of skilled workers in an open economy. Trade liberalization leads to a redistribution of rents across firms that differ in export status. When heterogeneous workers can bargain effectively and capture these rents, trade liberalization changes the supply of skilled production teams available for hire. Trade is shown to rationalize the matching behavior of workers, causing skill-upgrading within firms and infra-marginal improvements to firm-level productivity. Gains in productivity via skill-upgrading are distinct, and complementary, to the gains realized as low productivity firms exit and high productivity firms expand. All firms experience changes in skill composition, rather than just those on the margin of exit or exporting. Openness benefits those employed at exporting firms, however the likelihood of benefiting from trade is not necessarily increasing in skill. Wages in the open economy are tied to both worker skill and job type.Worker Heterogeneity, Wage Bargaining, Trade Adjustment, Matching