The ideal job applicant and the influence of religious belief

Sammanfattning: The Jewish population has been exposed for hate crimes throughout history all over the globe, and in recent years, antisemitism has increased significantly worldwide. The phenomenon of religious discrimination is a widespread prevailing issue in today's Sweden, not least within recruitment. This does not only affect the Jewish population, but also Muslims to a large extent, where both of these religious minorities have a much harder time becoming employed than Christians. Thus, it was deemed crucial to examine how recruiters interpret such discrimination within hiring processes in Sweden. Particularly, the authors were interested in examining antisemitism as of its absence in research and literature. In order to investigate this, a qualitative study was executed, where 13 semi-constructed in-depth interviews were conducted with recruiters and recruiting consultants. The empirics suggest that Muslims are at greater risk of being subjected to religious discrimination. This can be explained by the fact that Muslims tend to deviate geographically, culturally and visually from the Swedish norm, at least more than their Jewish counterparts. This in turn is problematic since the empirics point towards that recruiters tend to prefer job applicants like themselves. Through cognitive biases and sensemaking, job applicants are compared to a fictional ideal worker, where religious minorities seem to contradict with such a description. Thus, these indications explain why religious discrimination occurs as well as how recruiters interpret it.