Getting the desired candidate: an exploration of the covert strategies

Many people across the world believe that employment decisions are based on merit, on factors related to job knowledge, skills or abilities. People believe that decisions are biased or discriminatory if based on demographic criteria such as gender, race, caste, community, creed etc… unrelated to the job.

The aim of this study is to explore the covert motives that might exist amongst senior managers when recruiting their desired candidates.

Sixty senior managers belonging to two international corporations based in western India participated.

Using the Theory of Planned Behavior as the theoretical foundation qualitative data was obtained through in-depth interviews with the sixty participants and analyzed using content analysis.

Content analysis based on the Theory of Planned Behavior revealed five main strategies of covert recruitment practices: fulfilling vested interests, obligation creation, cultural bias, mirror reflection and status enhancement. The research findings indicate that 25% of those interviewed used premeditated strategies when recruiting their desired candidates which they concealed from coworkers. However in order to generalize the findings of the present study, a study with a larger sample size across different industries need to be done.

Covert actions were central to employee recruitment in these settings and are likely fundamental to a more complete understanding of managers' recruitment behaviors beyond the context of this study.