Employers may see them as less prepared, but a simple intervention can flip the script
Peter Belmi, PhD ’15, fields lots of queries from his graduating students at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, where he is a professor. Many of them want career advice. But students who are the first in their family to earn a college degree have a particular question, Belmi says. “They want to know if they should include their first-generation status on their job applications.”
He talked it over with several colleagues — including his former doctoral adviser at Stanford, Margaret Neale — and the group agreed that it could go either way. Hiring managers might see it as a plus, but some research suggested that the first-gen label might carry a stigma.
“On one hand,” says Neale, a professor emerita of organizational behavior at Stanford GSB, “being first-generation fits the old Horatio Alger narrative that Americans love: the gritty underdog who overcomes hardships and bootstraps themselves up to success. It takes an exceptional person to do that.”But, according to Neale, others might believe that one’s class background leaves a mark. These young people may have grown up without the socializing influence of any college-educated role models. Perhaps their schools were under-resourced, or they didn’t have a good study situation at home.
“Basically, it’s a deficit mindset,” Neale says of this perspective. “It’s like, here are all things they lack, compared to other applicants — rather than focusing on the unique strengths that enabled them to beat the odds.”
To find out which view prevailed, Belmiopen in new window and Neale, along with Melissa Thomas-Huntopen in new window, professor at the Darden School, and behavioral scientist Kelly Razopen in new window, created a fictitious résumé and a cover letter that either mentioned the applicant’s first-gen status or did not. They then sent out this candidate’s materials in response to 1,783 entry-level job postings.
The first-gen applications were significantly less successful, receiving 26% fewer callbacks for an interview than the group that didn’t disclose the candidate’s background. “These initial results suggested that revealing your first-gen status probably isn’t a good idea,” Neale says. “But then the question was, why is that?”
To peer into the minds of these gatekeepers, the team next surveyed 285 hiring managers on their beliefs about the influence of class background. On a scale of 1 to 7, they were asked how strongly they agreed with statements like “The capabilities of people can, to a large degree, be traced back to their social origin.”
They found that a majority of the managers believed/felt that class shapes people’s traits and abilities. Sixty-two percent agreed that “even when individuals have left their original social environment, their behavior is still strongly determined by their social origin.” On average, those surveyed agreed that “generally, students from lower socioeconomic-status backgrounds are not as well equipped to succeed in business.” These findings, says Neale, call into question the assumption that education is a great equalizer and engine of mobility.
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They tested that idea in two more studies, using a large sample of 1,250 people. These were not hiring managers but college-educated, employed individuals from the general population. (Neale says prior research showed that employment gatekeepers share the same evaluation biases as the average person, so the results ought to be transferrable.)
Each was given an application from the fictitious first-gen graduate and asked to imagine they were hiring a team for a critical business opportunity. This time the researchers manipulated the decision-makers’ frame of reference, prompting them to focus either on shortcomings or strengths that might result from a first-generation student’s experience.
In one study, they suggested particular traits that first-gens would have needed to navigate four years of college — like courage, determination, resourcefulness, adaptability, resilience, and problem-solving skills. In the other, they asked the study participants to identify for themselves what those strengths might be.
Remarkably, both these simple interventions worked. Among those with a focus on shortcomings, only 26% said they would consider the first-gen candidate and the group expressed strong doubt that the applicant would have the necessary competence. Among those primed with a focus on strengths, 47% — nearly twice as many — said they would explore a job offer with the candidate.
Neale says this would be easy to implement in a business environment/setting. “It didn’t involve diversity training sessions or lectures on implicit bias; just a few suggestions on how to come at their assessment from a different direction. By nudging their mindset, participants were much more receptive to hiring first-gen graduates,” she says, “so they were more able to appreciate the strengths that first-gen candidates could bring to an employer.”
That said, it’s crucial to approach diversity in the right way. “In our work and that of others, we’re learning that trying to combat inequality by focusing on the disadvantages that people have faced can be counterproductive,” she says. “It encourages that deficit mindset, a lens of less-than that can facilitate biases.”
She points to how schools, including Stanford, have tried to help first-gen students with special programs. “While these programs have proved beneficial, focusing only on the remedial side reinforces this deficit mindset. Emphasizing the skills and abilities that these folks clearly have demonstrated can change how we think about their current and future potential.”
The bigger lesson from this research, Neale says, is that we all need to be “more intentional in how we consider the strengths and weaknesses of those around us.” We might start, she says, by listening to how Belmi’s first-gen students saw themselves. When Belmi polled them before starting this research, a majority wanted to share their first-gen status with prospective employers. They had fought through real challenges and succeeded, becoming the first in their families to receive a college diploma. “They wanted to tell their story in their job applications because they were proud of what they’d done,” Neale says. “They felt their accomplishments showed special qualities they could bring to the table.”
This piece originally appeared in Stanford Business Insights from Stanford Graduate School of Business. To receive business ideas and insights from Stanford GSB click here: (To sign up: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/about/emails)