Women and men in the employment/recruitment process – opinions of recruiters

Abstract

Recruitment is, on the one hand, organiza - tional practice with a clearly useful character, on the other, it takes place in organizations that are products of culture steeped in the dominance of power and gender relations. Employee search, expectations directed to - wards them, assessment of their competences, attributes, skills, behaviors, etc. are largely implemented through socio-cultural contexts. People operating in these contexts automati - cally classify others by sex, which, in combina - tion with existing stereotypes, is the primary cause of gender inequality in the professional sphere. The purpose of this article is to charac - terize the perception of women and men by people responsible for recruiting employees to the organization and to translate this per - ception into the practice of hiring/recruitment. The article presents the results of the author’s own research, which had qualitative nature and were carried out using the technique of individual in-depth interview among persons responsible for the recruitment process of employees to the organization (i.e.: employ - ers, representatives of agencies responsible for recruitment in the organization, represen - tatives of human resources departments or other persons responsible in a given entity for hiring employees). Efforts have been made to obtain answers to the questions about their perception about: the causes for occupational segregation, employee characteristics, CVs and self-presentation of women and men. An important element of the study was to us to find out the opinions of those responsible for employment on the impact of the family situation of applicants on their assessment as potential employees.