Hello, I'm here to talk about our paper, The Substance of Style: How Social Class-Based
Styles of Interpersonal Interaction Shape Hiring Assessments at Large Technology Companies.
This paper was written by Phoebe Chua and myself, Melissa Mazmanian.
We are both from the Department of Informatics at University of California, Irvine.
Elite companies, including large tech companies, have long expressed a desire to hire the most
“talented” and “capable” applicants.
Their goal is to hire these applicants based on individual merit rather than sociodemographic
background.
We can see these companies attempting to minimize systematic biases through various efforts,
such as mandated unconscious bias trainings and the removal of applicants’ names and
genders from resumes.
However, certain biases are especially tricky to address.
An example of such bias is social class bias.
Social class bias is especially pernicious because it isn’t tracked.
Social class is not protected under employment discrimination laws.
As a result, companies and the EEOC do not collect data on employees’ social class.
This makes it more difficult for companies to recognize and address any social class
disparities in hiring.
However, social class substantially affects life opportunities and job prospects.
It is a fundamental axis of domination, in which upper-middle-class environments reproduce
power structures that marginalize working- and middle-class individuals.
To address these research questions, we interviewed 50 evaluators.
All participants were full-time CS researchers or software engineers.
They worked at tech companies that were often top seven in terms of market capitalization
in the U.S.
All participants had interviewed Ph.D.-level internship applicants, and almost all had
made final hiring decisions.
During the interviews, we asked evaluators how they assessed applicants and how they
thought applicants’ experiences or environments affect their ability to display the desired
hiring traits.
We observed whether evaluators voluntarily discussed the role of social class in hiring.
If they did not bring up this topic, we asked direct questions about it at the end of the
interview.
After completing all interviews, we used an inductive thematic analysis approach to analyze
the data.
Across the board, evaluators emphasized the key hiring criterion of “innovation potential.”
They explained that their companies rate the job performance of current CS interns and
full-time employees based on their abilities to make innovative contributions.
As Roy said:
“We provide innovation.
If you publish an academic paper and/or get running code in production, you’ve done
great.”
We find that evaluators often interpreted applicants’ comfort with expressing themselves
during power-laden interviews as signs of having innovation potential.
Specifically, evaluators reported prioritizing applicants who demonstrate what we term the
“transboundary interactional style.”
This style involves displaying an ease with artfully rearranging disciplinary boundaries,
that is, communicating how insights from different disciplines might inform their work.
It involves artfully rearranging role boundaries, that is, facilitating back-and-forth conversations
about the potential internship project.
It also involves artfully rearranging power boundaries, that is, standing up for their
opinions by voicing disagreements.
In the interest of time, this presentation will focus on how evaluators associated facilitating
back-and-forth conversations with the trait of being “innovative,” and how this element
is often socialized in upper-middle-class upbringing and education.
According to evaluators, demonstrating “innovation potential” involves displaying one’s abilities
to be a dynamic and proactive collaborator who can lead interesting conversations about
work.
Almost evaluators reported assessing applicants’ abilities to “think on their feet” and
carry a “back-and-forth conversation.”
Lance discussed what he looked for in an ideal intern candidate:
“I like people who can interact and respond on the fly.
I like the banter and back-and-forth.
It’s because I’m looking for a collaborator….
Most of my work has an innovative part, and I’m trying to maximize joint success.”
Similarly, Carol stressed the need for applicants to contribute to the conversation actively:
“I’m seeing how proactive they are.
It’s about how equal our exchange is at the appropriate time of the conversation.
A naturally curious person can do that because they’re picking up and feeding off something
I said.
Versus waiting for my question, answering it, and stopping.
It’s about me realizing this conversation has become much more interesting because I
learned something new from them.”
As Lance’s and Carol’s remarks illustrate, evaluators preferred applicants who were seen
as “proactively” contributing to the conversational flow and those who merely followed evaluators’
conversational lead.
Evaluators largely took applicants’ comfort levels with fostering an “equal exchange
of ideas” during interviews as indicators of individual personality traits that contribute
to innovative endeavors.
As her quote shows, Carol directly tied this interactional style to being a “naturally
curious person.”
Our findings are particularly troubling because none of the evaluators articulated the ties
between social class and the preferred interactional styles.
However, Past scholarship in sociology has shown that upper-middle-class individuals
are often encouraged to treat authority figures as equal conversation partners, to facilitate
back-and-forth conversations and debates.
Returning to our empirical findings, we thus argue that evaluators’ assessments of how
comfortable applicants are with facilitating witty exchanges can privilege those with upper-middle-class
interactional styles.
In our paper, we also explain how the other two elements of a transboundary interactional
style has ties to upper-middle-class practices.
Our paper contributes to HCI literature on how class-based cultural capital shapes the
hiring process.
Past literature has revealed that evaluators’ assessments often favor applicants with upper-middle-class
tastes (e.g., extracurricular interests) and resources (e.g., referrals and insider knowledge).
We expand these insights by showing that evaluators’ assessments also prioritize applicants who
demonstrate an upper-middle-class interpersonal interactional style, which we call a “transboundary
interactional style.”
This style involves displaying an ease with expressing interdisciplinary ideas; actively
facilitating back-and-forth dialogue; and voicing differing opinions during high-pressure
face-to-face conversations.
While evaluators believe they are assessing applicants’ core personality traits, as
displayed through interactional style, we suggest that the desired styles are cultivated
in upper-middle-class backgrounds.
Our findings suggest that evaluators could modify their evaluative practices to account
for social class differences in interactional styles and to reduce class-based biases.
Specifically, evaluators could explore other ways of assessing applicants’ “innovation
potential”—ways that don’t rely on high-pressure and power-laden face-to-face interactions.
working- and middle-class individuals may feel more comfortable deliberating and carefully
crafting their responses before voicing them to authority figures.
To take into account working- and middle-class interactional styles, evaluators could provide
all applicants with an overview of the potential internship project and the potential interview
questions before the interviews.
They could consider asking applicants to submit a written reflection on interesting ideas
to explore during the interview and internship.
They should examine the effects of these changes on all applicants and avoid unintentionally
imposing additional burdens on a particular group.
It is important to note that we are not arguing that applicants’ social class background
predetermines their interactional styles.
Some working-class individuals have more outgoing personalities that allow for greater comfort
during interview conversations.
Some upper-middle-class individuals have shyer personalities and prefer to take more time
to think before immediately voicing their opinions to authority figures.
Future work could investigate how the intersections between applicants’ personalities and social
class background shape the hiring process.
Further, future research could take intersectionality into account and explore how the interactions
of social class background, gender, and race shape elite labor markets.
Thanks for your attention.
Feel free to reach out if you’ve any questions or if you’d like to chat.