A few months ago, we blogged about the work of Associate Professor Margaret Shih, whose working paper laid out the dilemmas facing the unemployed as the look to get back to work. She told our blog:
"What we found, is that stigmas override objective data. The unemployed are seen as less competent than those who are employed. There is a tendency to blame people for their misfortunes."
One of Shih's co-authors on that working paper is UCLA Anderson Ph.D student Geoffrey Ho ('13), whose research interests include the implicit cognitive and motivational influences on interpersonal and social hierarchies in organizations. He also has a stream of research exploring embodied organizational cognition.
Shih and Ho's work continues to resonate, particularly in state's such as Florida, where St. Petersburg Times staff writer Jeff Harrington notes that ""out of nearly 1 million Floridians counted as unemployed, about 33.7 percent have been looking for at least a year, the seventh-highest percentage among all states." Harrington's statistics (he notes) come from a Wall Street Journal analysis. Harrington also references Shih and Ho's study, writing "employers were predisposed against unemployed job seekers regardless of other circumstances. The bias held even if candidates had similar skill sets as their employed counterparts and no signs of problems in a previous job.
Harrington looked to Ho for comment:
"We were surprised to find that, all things being equal, unemployed applicants were viewed as less competent, warm and hireable than employed individuals." Why a person left their prior job made no difference. "Job candidates who said they voluntarily left a position faced the same stigma as candidates who said they had been laid off or terminated."
As the unemployment rate continues to hover near 10%, the work of Shih and Ho (and their colleague Anderson MBA student Daniel Walters ['11]) will remain relevant, as those who are unemployed look for work. Shih said in April that the unemployed should try to avoid being labeled as such, suggesting they take classes or go back to school while between jobs, anything to look active and proactive in the eyes of potential future employers.
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