PERSON ENVIRONMENT FIT: Lägger rekryterare fokus på olika aspekter av begreppet, beroende på den arbetssökandes etniska ursprung?

Sammanfattning: Recruitment plays an important role in an organization on many different levels. A recruiter can, depending on his or her leeway, be considered to have a major influence on the business. An experiment was conducted to find out if real recruiters are focusing on different aspects depending on the job applicant’s ethnic background. Established hypotheses were examined on the basis of the person-environment concept and some of its subcategories. A questionnaire with two different types of priming was used to see if there was a difference between the different groups’ answers. The participants were asked to list up to 10 competences and aspects that they considered were important when judging a job applicant. The manipulated condition aimed to the judging of a job applicant with a different ethnic background, while the other condition was kept more neutral. The results showed two significant differences where aspects related to person-culture fit were mentioned more often in the manipulated condition, while aspects regarding person-job fit were mentioned more often in the neutral condition. Person-organization fit was also investigated and slightly more often mentioned in the manipulated condition. The person-environment fit concept and its subcategories can be viewed from both a complementary fit and a supplementary fit perspective, where differences between individuals in a workplace can be seen as either positive or negative. These two perspectives are different ways to explain the differences that this experiment shows. Either you look for differences to complement the already existing workforce, alternatively because differences are considered undesirable.