Employers’ Implicit Bias Against Wheelchair Users in Recruitment

Applicants mentioning of a disability have a major impact on employers’ recruitment practice, yet previous research provides surprisingly little knowledge about employers’ selection of candidates for an actual job interview. Literature shows that especially education and work experience is highly valued by employers, although this seems not to be the case if the applicant has a disability. The employer perspective on the inclusion of people with disabilities in the labor market has received increased attention in recent years as employers are gatekeepers to the labor market. This study concerns recruitment of wheelchair users and includes 29 qualitative interviews with 34 employers who was previously part of a national field experiment. While the field experiment demonstrates a significant disparity in the call-back rates, the interviews with employers aimed to understanding the biases in the recruitment process. Thus, the interviews provide qualitative knowledge of the employer’s perceptions of applicants and how this affects their recruitment behavior. Through a thematic analysis and thorough coding process, this study identifies different representations of stereotypical beliefs and implicitness of employers’ recruitment practice. The results demonstrate that employers’ recruitment practice is not solely based on the rational evaluation of skills and credentials, but also includes unconscious and unendorsed biases. The findings are interpreted within the theory of implicit bias.