mariana oseguera

Oseguera, Mariana. [Title removed for blind review] .

Higher education credentials have long been central to organizations’ hiring practices and job seekers’ access to white-collar occupations. Yet, the rise of new technologies has expanded access to skill-building resources, potentially increasing opportunities for candidates who acquire skills through alternative pathways. In response, some employers have removed degree requirements from job postings to signal openness to these candidates. Using a large-scale audit study with nearly 18,000 applications for software and marketing jobs, I examine how employers evaluate qualified non-degree holders based on non-degree signals of skills and fit—including years of relevant experience, employment at a prominent firm, and micro-credentials—employers’ stated degree requirements, and candidates’ gender and race. The results show that alternative-routes candidates received 28% fewer callbacks than degree holders with the same years of relevant experience, and this difference persisted even when job postings did not require a college degree. However, the gap disappeared when alternative-routes candidates had twice as much relevant experience as their degree-holding counterparts. Other skill signals had little effect on callbacks for non-degree holders. Lastly, while alternative-routes candidates did not experience different callback rates based on race or gender, the effect of degree status varied across demographic groups depending on job requirements and occupation type. Overall, this study sheds light on the boundary conditions of credentialism and has implications for firms’ human capital strategies, diversity in professional jobs across class, gender, and race, and the future of work.

Oseguera, Mariana. “Skill-Based Hiring: A Path to Better Matches and Greater Opportunity?”

In this field experiment, I investigate how firms’ skill-based hiring approaches—such as eliminating degree requirements and signaling openness to candidates who have acquired skills via alternative routes—impact the applicant pool in terms of job-required skills, educational background, race, and gender. I partnered with two firms to conduct a reverse-audit methodology as they actively hire for positions in software, marketing, and office administration. Partnering companies agreed to randomly manipulate the degree requirement sections in their job postings across three treatments: (1) postings that explicitly require a relevant college degree; (2) postings that do not specify whether a degree is required; and (3) postings that explicitly state a focus on candidates’ skills and a willingness to consider individuals without a degree. The dependent variables in this study are (a) the diversity of the applicant pool in terms of educational background, gender, and race, (b) the quality of the employer-employee match, and (c) search costs. This project is currently in the data-gathering stage!