What is the role of education in the recruitment process? Employers’ practices and experiences of graduates from tertiary educational institutions in Estonia

Abstract

Since the 1980s, growing globalisation and economic restructuring coupled with expansion of tertiary education contributed to tremendous change in the labour market entry process in Europe. Most previous studies have been quantitative, concentrated on the supply aspect and analysed the role of education as the explanatory variable of youth labour market outcome equations. By contrast, the demand aspect has gained less attention. In this paper, using Estonia as a case study in both perspectives -employers' practices and graduates' experiences -are combined to answer the question: how employers use information provided by tertiary education credentials in the recruitment process. Semi-structured interviews with the 15 biggest employers and focus groups consisting of 63 recent graduates comprise the base data of our study. The results reveal that it is useful to examine the mechanisms why education affects recruitment processes separately among service providers and goods producers as well as in different stages of recruitment (pre-selection, getting a job offer). In all sectors, the educational credentials were used in the pre-selection process as a screening device. However, in a job offer, service providers emphasised the role of credentials as signals of trainability while for goods producers credentials informed employers about their job-specific skills.

25 Years of transformations of higher education systems in post-Soviet countries: reform and continuity

“…We will always remember the joy of working with him. Change in the number of HEI students in Belarus (thousands), 1940(Source: MORB 2001, 2013bNSCRB 2013NSCRB , 2014NSCRB , 2015) Fig. 5.…”

“…Research indicates that employers also referred to the two-tier system of Estonian higher education (see Saar et al 2013b). As there is an increasing range of higher education credentials available, employers seem to rely more on institutional status due to uncertainty about the value of various credentials.…”

“…Fig. 5.1 Change in the number of HEI students in Belarus (thousands),1940 (Source: MORB 2001, 2013b NSCRB 2013 NSCRB , 2014 NSCRB , 2015 …”

Employment of University Graduates Across the Post-soviet Space: Problems and Solutions (The Example of Kazakhstan)

“…They studied the mechanisms of interaction between the employers and the graduates of higher education institutions in the qualitative strategy (semi-structured interviews with employers and the focus groups with recent graduates), using the example of Estonia (Saar et al, 2013).…”

Relevance of qualifications and work experience in the recruiting of foreign‐trained immigrants – comparative insights from the Health and ICT Sectors in Germany and Canada

“…Previous research already indicated that country‐specific aspects (Wheelahan & Moodie, 2016) as well as sectoral specifics (Saar et al ., 2014) influence the concrete roles of signalling and screening in the recruiting process. The paper aims to answer the two following research questions: How does the aspect that the applicants come from abroad effect the recruiting process focusing on signalling and screening?…”