Employing an experimental design, we investigated how Norwegian managers' (N ¼ 78) evaluations and intended hiring decisions varied with job applicants' ethnic background (immigrant vs. native Norwegian mainstreamer) and the degree to which the candidates' self-presentation fitted Norwegian cultural norms (level of cultural fit). The participants viewed video clips of applicants whose ethnicity and self-presentation was manipulated. Irrespective of ethnic background, low cultural fit candidates were evaluated as less similar, less likable, less likely to perform well, and as more poorly fitting the managers' organization. However, low and high cultural fit candidates were evaluated as exhibiting similar levels of person-job fit. Logistic regression analyses showed that low cultural fit candidates were about six times less likely to be hired than high cultural fit candidates. In practice, immigrant applicants are more likely to exhibit low cultural fit. It is concluded that emphasis on cultural fit could easily have a disproportionate effect on immigrants' chances of being hired, notably if fit is not predictive of job performance.

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This study examined the impact of immigrant job applicants' private domain acculturation preferences on managers' evaluations of person-organization (P-O) fit and hiring decisions. We employed an experimental design and presented Norwegian managers (N = 74) with video-clips of three job applicants. One of the applicants' (target) ethnicity (Norwegian vs. Turkish) and private domain acculturation preferences (separated, assimilated, and integrated) were manipulated across four experimental conditions. Among the three applicants, the target applicant was presented as the best qualified. The results showed that the separated target was perceived as less similar to existing organizational members and the organization (i.e., lower supplementary P-O fit) than the three other targets, and as less valuable in terms of being different (i.e., lower complementary P-O fit) than the assimilated and the integrated targets. The separated target was rated significantly lower on hirability than the native and integrated targets. Despite the different hiring ratings, all targets received equal ratings on person-job (P-J) fit. The findings imply that managers placed a stronger emphasis on P-O fit than formal work competence when evaluating the separated target. Because private domain acculturation preferences can be deemed irrelevant for immigrant applicants' job performance, our results suggest a biased employment decision against the immigrant applicant expressing private domain cultural maintenance preferences.

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