IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ucl/cepeow/26-10.html

(Knock, Knock) Knocking on the Glass Door: Socio-economic Inequalities in Access to High-Pay Careers

Author

Listed:
  • Catherine Dilnot

    (Oxford Brookes Business School)

  • Colin Green

    (Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Department of Economics)

  • Lindsey Macmillan

    (UCL Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities)

  • Claire Tyler

    (UCL Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities)

Abstract

Access to professional jobs, particularly in large, high-wage firms, is a key determinant of career success for university graduates. Graduates from less advantaged backgrounds are less likely to gain access to these jobs. We use unique recruitment data from 17 large employers' graduate intake programmes to explore why. While applicants from lower socio-economic and ethnic minority groups are well represented among the applicant pool, they disproportionately do not receive job offers, even when considering similar applicants. Large gaps appear at the blind pre-interview screening stage. We demonstrate that this is unlikely to reflect screening on expected productivity. This raises questions about bias in screening tests and the potential for shifts towards more automated hiring tools to exacerbate existing labour market inequalities.

Suggested Citation

  • Catherine Dilnot & Colin Green & Lindsey Macmillan & Claire Tyler, 2026. "(Knock, Knock) Knocking on the Glass Door: Socio-economic Inequalities in Access to High-Pay Careers," CEPEO Working Paper Series 26-10, UCL Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities, revised Oct 2026.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucl:cepeow:26-10
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repec-cepeo.ucl.ac.uk/cepeow/cepeowp26-10.pdf
    File Function: Initial version, 2026
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • J62 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Job, Occupational and Intergenerational Mobility; Promotion
    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • I24 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Inequality

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ucl:cepeow:26-10. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Jake Anders (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/epucluk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.