If you include an “impairment description” in job applications, will it impact you getting the job or not? In this article, the author draws on research from Norway to show how disability disclosure may negatively impact employment outcomes.
Check out the abstract below, and then click through to the main article to learn more:
Exploring Disability Disadvantage in Hiring: A Factorial Survey among Norwegian Employers
Peer-reviewed research by: Stine Berre
The role of disability in producing disadvantage in employers’ hiring assessments was explored in a factorial survey, where a random sample of Norwegian employers (n = 1341) evaluated fictional job-seeker profiles. The results revealed that including an impairment description in a job-seeker profile significantly decreased the likelihood that employers would want to hire a candidate.
The degree of disadvantage varied with the type of impairment. Being eligible for a wage subsidy scheme improved employers’ assessments of candidates while including information about other types of support measures did not. Furthermore, when an impairment description was introduced into a job-seeker profile, other crucial characteristics of the job seeker lost some or all of their impact on employers’ assessment scores. These findings are interpreted as disability becoming a ‘master status’ when employers make hiring assessments.
Click here to read the full open-access article, published in 2023 in the journal Work, Employment and Society.
Full Reference //
Berre, S. (2023). Exploring Disability Disadvantage in Hiring: A Factorial Survey among Norwegian Employers. Work, Employment and Society.
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
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