Qualitative Sociology, Vol 21, No.

2, 1998

Fit and Skill in Employee Selection: Insights

from a Study of Headhunters
James E. Coverdill and William Finlay

We draw upon evidence from a qualitative study of headhunters to provide

insights into the character and importance of candidate "fit" and skill for the
selection of a broad range of white-collar employees. Headhunters suggest that
the "fit" of a job candidate is assessed at two levels, one corresponding with
a general compatibility with organization-level norms, culture, and strategy, the
other corresponding more closely with traits and characteristics of the person
or persons with whom the job candidate actually interviews. Skilla factor
which is largely neglected by those who tout the importance of fitalso plays
an important and independent role in employee selection. Stalls that influence
the selection of employees from a pool of candidates tend to be highly specific
if not idiosyncratic, and take the form of what headhunters call "hot buttons."
We conclude by discussing the conceptualization, causes, and implications of
fit; we also consider how the importance of fit and hot buttons challenges the
explanatory logic of standard accounts of labor-market success.
KEY WORDS: employee selection; fit; headhunters; skill; workplace diversity.

Classical scholars as diverse as Karl Marx and Adam Smith, along with
modern thinkers such as Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Melvin Kohn, have
argued that workplace experiences have a profound and systematic effect
on thought and behavior. In addition, the "new structuralist" school of la-
bor-market research (e.g., Parcel and Mueller 1983; Farkas and England
1994) suggests that features of jobs influence rewards and career prospects,
The authors are affiliated with the Department of Sociology, University of Georgia, Athens,
Georgia.
Direct correspondence to either author at the Department of Sociology, University of Georgia,
Athens, GA 30602. E-mail can be sent to Coverdil! at jimcov@arches.uga.edu and to Finlay
at wfinlay@arches.uga.edu.

105
O 1998 Human Sciences Press, Inc.
106 Coverdill and Finlay

an influence that cannot be reduced to differences in the attributes of in-

dividual job incumbents. If jobs shape thought, behavior, and life chances,
then it is critical that we understand clearly the social processes whereby
people are matched to jobs. To date, much of the work that has been done
on the matching of people and jobs has been conducted at a fairly high
level of abstraction, providing us with key insights, for example, into the
importance of family background, gender, race, and education on occupa-
tional status attainment. Much less attention, however, has been directed
at the hiring process itself, leaving us with few insights into why one job
candidate may be preferred to other candidates with seemingly-similar
qualifications.
This article aims to advance our understanding of employee selection
by bringing additional evidence and conceptual clarity to two main issues.
The first issue stems from the emerging literature on the character and
importance of candidate "fit" for employee selection (Bills 1988; Chatman
1991; Jackall 1988; Jackson, Brett, Sessa, Cooper, Julin, and Peyronnin
1991; Kanter 1993 [1977]; Morrill 1995; Pfeffer 1989; Rynes and Gerhart
1990; Schneider 1987; Turban and Keon 1993). The concept of fit has come
to assume a central role in the study of employee selection and advance-
ment in modern workplaces. For example, several major sociological studies
of corporate life (Jackall 1988; Kanter 1993 [1977]; Moore 1962; Morrill
1995) conclude that managers strive to surround themselves with those who
"fit in" and who are the "right sort of person." Rynes and Gerhart (1990,
p. 28) note that their study of applicant fit was prompted by the frequency
with which company recruiters explained their employee-selection decisions
in terms of fit. Pfeffer (1989, p. 386) states that "the idea of 'fit' is men-
tioned extraordinarily frequently" by corporate recruiters and job appli-
cants. Chatman (1991, p. 461) notes that employee selection appears to be
based in large part on criteria such as "personal chemistry, values, and
personality traits."
While those studies have highlighted the empirical importance of fit
for employee selection, the conceptualization of fit remains underdevel-
oped. Previous studies are clear in suggesting that fit is not just another
name for general employability across employers; nor can it be reduced to
standard forms of knowledge, skill, ability, or past accomplishments.1 One
important issue that remains unclear is the level at which fit operates. Some
writers advance what we call an applicant-organization level of fit. This
conceptualization of fit involves an assessment of the extent to which job
candidates match up with the employing organization's strategies, values,
norms, and culture (e.g., Rynes and Gerhart 1990; Chatman 1991). From
this point of view, differences across interviewers in the same organization
are attributed to interviewer "errors" that stem from the difficulty of con-
Fit and Skill 107

ducting an interview and assessing candidate qualifications and traits. Oth-

ers conceptualize fit as being tethered to the work group, not the organi-
zation as a whole. Bills (1988), in particular, but also Kanter (1993 [1977]),
Jackall (1988), and Morrill (1995), suggest that an applicant must also fit
with the person or persons with whom he or she will interview and work,
not just with organization-level norms and culture. This level of fit, which
we call applicant-interviewer fit, appears to be just as importantif not
more importantthan applicant-organization fit in shaping the selection
of employees. Our empirical analysis and discussion thus serve to clarify
the conceptualization of fit.
Our second aim is to explore the role of candidate skill in the selection
process. In focusing attention on the character of fit and the role it plays
in the selection of new employees, some writers have suggested that a can-
didate's skill plays little independent role in the selection process once jit
has been taken into account. For example, Kanter (1993 [1977], p. 54) argues
that uncertainty in organizations sets in motion a chain of events that leads
to the selection of workers on the basis of social similarity. In her analysis
(see also Jackall 1988, and Morrill 1995, for similar arguments), social and
interpersonal skills are the keys to effective performance on the job (pp.
57-58). Social and interpersonal skills, in turn, are proxied in the employee-
selection process by social similarities. Assessments of fit based on social
similarity thus become synonymous with assessments of the likelihood that
a candidate can "do the job." In short, fit is skill. This line of argument
implies that aspects of skill and previous experience that cannot be reduced
to social similarity play only a minor role in the selection of new employees.
We argue that Ranter's analysisand those similar to iterrs in over-
looking the important and independent role played by skill in the selection
process. Our evidence suggests that employers use general credentials and
experience to shape the composition of candidate pools. To make the "short
list," then, candidates need to meet certain very general requirements re-
garding experience (e.g., three to five years in a particular line of work or
organizational setting) and education (e.g., a college or professional de-
gree). Once a candidate pool is formed, most candidates are relatively ho-
mogeneous with respect to general skills and experiences, and they cease
to play much of a role in the actual selection of a new hire. What becomes
important at this point are what headhunters call "hot buttons." Hot but-
tons are highly particularif not idiosyncraticskills and experiences that
are sought in a new hire but which are not generally known to job candi-
dates. They serve as markers of a candidate's ability to do the job, not just
a job of the sort being filled. Importantly, our evidence suggests that hot
buttons are not reducible to social similarities or fit, hence leaving an im-
portant and independent role for skill in the employee-selection process.
108 Coverdill and Finlay

We explore these issues by drawing upon our qualitative study of head-

huntersvariously referred to as recruiters, private employment agents, ex-
ecutive recruiters, and executive search consultants.2 liiree general aspects
of the social organization of headhunting render it an important vantage
point from which to study employee selection. First, headhunters introduce
job candidates to employers and endeavor to stay between the two parties
in an effort to facilitate and broker discussions and negotiations. They gain
an insider's view of how employers conduct interviews and interpret and
evaluate the attributes and behavior of job candidates. Unlike employers,
headhunters have no obvious reason to make the employee-selection proc-
ess appear rational, even if it is not. Nor do headhunters have any reason
to make employee-selection decisions appear to be based purely on merit,
even if they are not.3 Second, nearly all headhunters nowadays (and virtu-
ally all of those in our study) are paid by employers and earn a fee only
when they make a placement. That arrangement gives headhunters a strong
monetary incentive to become rather astute students of employee selection.
In practice, that means that they strive to learn everything they can about
what an employer seeks in a new hire and who will be evaluating candi-
dates. And third, headhunters are in fact an integral component of the
employee-selection process when employers choose to use their services.
They learn about the preferences of employers and then identify and pre-
sent candidates who would appear to fit the employer's needs. They are
not, then, merely well-situated to serve as informants about employee-se-
lection practices. Rather, they are active participants whose understandings
of employer preferences and behavior are empirically consequential. A
study of headhunters thus offers an intriguing vantage point from which
to gain insights into the selection of a broad range of white collar employ-
ees.
The balance of the article unfolds in four sections. The first section
contains a description of the evidence we draw upon in this article. The
second explores how headhunters understand fit and skill and the roles
those two factors play in the selection of new employees. The third section
contains a broader discussion of the results while the fourth and final sec-
tion presents some conclusions.

THE EVIDENCE

Published literature on headhunters includes only a few kiss-and-tell

accounts by industry insiders (e.g., Sibbald 1992; Cole 1985), a dated though
insightful study by Martinez (1976), and numerous passing references to
the presence of headhunters in the labor market (e.g., Granovetter 1995
Fit and Skill 109

[1974]; Hirsch 1993). Scholarly neglect of headhunters contrasts sharply

with their prominent role in the labor market. The main industry newsletter
for headhunters claims that headhunters fill between 10 and 20 percent of
positions that draw from the external labor market (e.g., The Fordyce Letter,
July 1989). While it is difficult to get an independent confirmation of the
percentage of positions filled by headhunters, those figures correspond well
with the results of the recent National Organizations Survey, which indi-
cated that between 13 and 20 percent of firms used private employment
agencies "frequently" to find a wide variety of workers (Kalleberg, Knoke,
Marsden, and Spaeth 1996, p. 137-38). Those percentages appear to be on
the rise for upper-level managerial positions and possibly for others as well.
James Kennedy, editor and publisher of another popular industry newslet-
ter, Executive Recruiter News, claimed that in 1989 employers used head-
hunters to fill roughly 30 percent of top-level managerial positions, up from
15 percent in 1979 (as cited by Brown 1989, p. 27).
Headhunters recruit employees for a wide range of positions in a wide
range of companies. The salary range of positions filled by headhunters we
observed and interviewed is enormous, beginning with jobs paying as little
as $12,000 a year and continuing up to positions paying $100,000 a year.
Virtually all of the positions are white collar and include various levels and
types of administrative support, accounting, engineering, sales, data proc-
essing, construction (though not laborers), and insurance, to name just a
few. The companies that used the headhunters we interviewed and ob-
served include small professional practices and family businesses that lack
specialized "human resources" departments; they also include many large
corporations, some of which are among the largest corporations in the
world.4
Our data collection efforts were limited to headhunters who find work-
ers for permanent (as opposed to contract or temporary) positions and who
work on "contingency." A contingency headhunter is paid a fee by the hir-
ing companycalled the clientwhen one of the headhunter's candidates
is "placed" (or, from the company's perspective, hired). Fees are contingent
upon placements; costs incurred during a search are thus not recovered
unless the headhunter is successful in making a placement. A fee that
amounts to roughly one percent per thousand dollars of first-year's salary
(up to a maximum of 30 percent) is the industry base-line fee. Our study
thus does not include retained search firms that require a fee prior to in-
itiating a search, charge the fee even if a candidate is not hired, and typi-
cally work on only top-level searches for positions which pay, most
generally, in excess of $100,000 a year.
The two prongs of the evidence drawn upon in this article include
interviews and fieldwork.5 The interviews were conducted between 1993
no Coverdill and Finlay

and 1996 with headhunters working out of a major metropolitan area in

the southeastern United States (which we shall refer to as Southern City).
We completed 34 one- to three-hour semi-structured interviews with head-
hunters, all but one of which was tape recorded and transcribed. Only one
request for an interview was ultimately refused. The interviewees were ran-
domly selected by area of specialization from the members' directory of
the state association of contingency headhunting firms. The interviewees
represented 31 different firms and consisted of 24 white males, 8 white
females, and 2 black males. Eleven interviewees were "solo practitioners"
in one-person firms.
The interviews were conducted at the headhunter's place of business.
In the interviews we explored their careers and work as headhunters, in-
cluding the development of clients, the discovery of candidates, and the
matching of clients with candidates. In addition, we focused on their deci-
sion making, including how and why they chose to place only certain kinds
of workers or service only particular industries, the criteria they used for
deciding whether to undertake a search, and how they distinguished strong
from weak candidates. In virtually every interview, headhunters spoke at
some length with little or no prompting about factors that influenced the
selection of employees.
We also conducted over 300 hours of fieldwork. This took two main
forms. We spent approximately 150 hours at five different headhunting
firms, observing and talking to headhunters on the job. The firms consisted
of one large organization (over 100 headhunters), three small companies
(three to five headhunters), and one solo practitioner. We used these set-
tings to observe the daily activities of headhunters. Much of this involved
listening to the headhunter's side of telephone conversationsconversa-
tions they would often explain or interpret for us once a call ended. Our
second fieldwork site consisted of the various seminars, lectures, luncheons,
training sessions, and conferences sponsored by the state and national as-
sociations of contingency headhunters. These conferences and other events
allowed us to hear well-known speakers from the industry address various
aspects of headhunting and to talk with the headhunters who were in at-
tendance. Over the four-year span of the project, our presence at Southern
City events became an opportunity to both meet and speak with headhunt-
ers we had not yet encountered as well as an opportunity to follow up with
those we had interviewed, observed on the job, or met at one or more
previous events. In both fieldwork settings we either took extensive notes
during the course of the observation or, when that was not possible, as
soon as the situation permitted (no later than a couple of hours afterwards).
All fieldnotes were entered as text documents on our computers within
one day of the fieldwork.
Fit and Skill 111

Two aspects of our analysis and presentation of the evidence should

be noted. First, our analytic strategy was to identify what we saw as the
most common and theoretically important ways headhunters viewed the
employee-selection process. Our focus here on the role and character of
fit and skill in the employee-selection process is not an attempt to force
our evidence to speak to issues that have already surfaced in the literature.
In contrast, it quickly became obvious that the matter of candidate selection
was a highly salient issue for headhunters; moreover, headhunters saw fit
and skill as central to candidate selection. Second, our presentation of the
evidence is couched in terms of observations and interpretations that tend
to be typical of the headhunters we interviewed and observed. We do not
claim that all headhunters express exactly the same thoughts about the ways
employers select candidates. We do claim, however, that our portrait cap-
tures what is typical of the behavior and interpretations of headhunters,
and points to some important aspects of the employee-selection process
that have been overlooked in previous studies.

THE CHARACTER AND IMPORTANCE OF FIT AND

SKILL IN THE SELECTION OF EMPLOYEES

Fit and Employee Selection

Our evidence provides strong support for the idea that employers' as-
sessments of applicant fit are critical in determining which applicants they
select. Headhunters rarely use the word "fit," per se. They often speak of
the importance of "chemistry" and sometimes of "personality," terms used
interchangeably as synonyms for what academics call fit. These terms were
used to denote an employer's highly subjective evaluation of the quality
and ease of interaction with a candidate. Many headhunters spoke of chem-
istry in terms of rapport, the sense that one can understand anotherand
be understoodwithout undue effort.
Virtually every headhunter we spoke to or observed underscored the
critical importance of chemistry in the selection process. For example, one
claimed that "I've found that 80 percent of every hire is chemistry, regard-
less of the technical specs." Another put the estimate somewhat lower:
"Let's face it, out of a placement if you were to break it down to a hundred
percent of it, the technical side of it represents fifty percent. Once you get
that, the rest is personality." Most headhunters spoke of chemistry in more
general terms, suggesting that it is the key to hiring decisions. The following
description of the role of chemistry is typical:
112 Coverdill and Finlay

Every, every, every placement is a chemistry placement. And don't let anybody ever
tell you any different, okay. You can put three people or four people in front of
somebody, and they're going to hire the one that they have that rapport with, all
other things being equal. If they're all qualified, they all have the degrees, the
background, the skill level that they're looking for, they're going to go with the
one that they feel the best about; and that's chemistry. And that's the thing that's
the crucial element.

It is important to stress that education, experience, and skill were not dis-
missed by this or any other headhunter we interviewed or observed. Those
factors play an important role in shaping the composition of the candidate
pool. They also enter the selection decision in the form of "hot buttons,"
a topic we explore in a later section. What this headhunter stresses, how-
ever, is that if a pool contains two or more qualified candidates, then it is
chemistry, not qualifications per se, that determines which one gets the nod.
Chemistry operates at two basic levels. The first level implies that or-
ganizations have particular cultures, norms, or strategies with which appli-
cants will need to mesh (e.g., Rynes and Gerhart 1990; Chatman 1991).
Fit or chemistry at this level implies an applicant-organization compatibility.
Consider first the idea that someone who might be qualified to perform a
given line of work might fit well with one organization but badly with an-
other. Headhunters argue that most employers list various "specs" (short
for specifications) that must be met in order for a person to be given even
initial consideration. For example, a headhunter who specializes in restau-
rant and retail positions described the specs for a position he was trying
to fill as requiring two years of experience as a general manager of a Hous-
ton's or a TGI Friday's restaurant (or some other restaurant with at least
a million dollars in sales). Candidates with that background may nonethe-
less be unsuitable in the employer's eyes because they do not fit the or-
ganizational culture:
The owner of some restaurants that we will go to, man they drill, they're like drill
sergeants, and that's what they want. They want someone who's going to whip these
waitresses and waiters into shape, and come hell or high water, it's my way or the
highway. These other restaurants, you know, hey, we want to be happy and be fun.
We do this and we do that, and when someone makes a mistake we want to retrain
them. Well, you send that military guy to that kind of company, well, this guy's
way off base. Well, what do you mean? He's got the specs. It's not going to work.

In this case, applicant-organization fit hinges on what might be called

managerial orientation. A laid-back style would fit in some cases but not
in others. Owners appear to be the main decision-makers in the restaurants
with which this headhunter works; in those workplaces, new hires must fit
the owner's preferred managerial orientation.
In other situations, fit at the applicant-organization level can involve
ways of thinking and acting that are more subtle than a particular mana-
gerial orientation. Jackall's (1988) discussion of the importance of taken-
Fit and Skill 113

for-granted understandings clearly represents a more complicated and sub-

tle form of fit than is suggested by an employer's self-conscious preference
for candidates who embrace a particular managerial orientation. In his
analysis of managers, Jackall described as the "critical virtue" a manager's
ability to make others "feel comfortable" through an "easy predictable fa-
miliarity that comes from sharing taken-for-granted frameworks about how
the world works" (1988, p. 56). A second example of applicant-organization
fit emphasizes the importance of these more subtle taken-for-granted
frameworks:
There are just certain tendencies that companies will make. So you start to develop
that correlation where if you're trained this way, this company, that training is a
dead fit over here. Part of it is knowing how many people over the years have
taken, let's call it strategic positions in there, therefore, the philosophies of the
companies become the same, so when the guy interviews, it's like he's reading the
textbook back to them. They feel very comfortable. They like them.

The notion of "comfort" expressed by this headhunter is quite similar to

the idea of comfort in Jackall's analysis. In this case, however, comfort
stems from similar corporate backgrounds, not social similarity, a factor
that tends to dominate Jackall's discussion.
Headhunters suggest that a second level at which chemistry operates
may be at least as important in the selection process as the compatibility
between an applicant and an organization's culture and norms. Headhunt-
ers routinely seek out information about both the organization and the per-
son or persons who will be conducting the interview and making the
selection decision (headhunters call the decision maker the "hiring author-
ity"). They collect information on the interviewers because they believe that
the candidate must develop good chemistry with these people in order to
have any chance of being selected. Fit at this applicant-interviewer level has
two main components. The first centers on the personality traits of the
interviewers and, especially, of the hiring authority. Similar personalities,
in short, are thought to enhance applicant-interviewer chemistry. Consider
one headhunter's discussion of the importance of personality traits for ap-
plicant-interviewer chemistry:
We're trying to find a personality match. If I have a very nebbish character [a hiring
authority], he's very introverted and I'm dealing with a guy [a potential candidate]
who's very extroverted on the other side, well that's not going to work. Why waste
my time even if he's qualified.... Likes hire likes. So much for diversity. Likes hire
likes. That's reality. But I try to get somebody who has similar features, similar
background, similar personality as the person who's interviewing them. That's the
ideal goal if you can do it.

This statement is especially important hi light of the fact that it was made
by a headhunter who places highly technical computer specialists whose
"personalities" would not appear to be directly related to effective per-
114 Coverdill and Finlay

formance on the job. Nonetheless, "nebbishness" is a trait that will enhance

fitand hence employabilityin this particular company with this particular
hiring authority.
The second component of fit at the applicant-interviewer level involves
a variety of background experiences and current traits and interests that
may help a candidate to establish and maintain rapport with the interview-
ers and the hiring authority. These traits are more strongly connected to
social similarity than they are to personality, although there is some overlap
between the two. Consider a headhunter's description of the kinds of non-
work-related characteristics he believes are important in generating good
applicant-interviewer chemistry:
I'm looking at what you do on the weekends, family, do you play golf, do you play
tennis, do you like to read? Try to find out as much as I can because people hire
people just like themselves. That is an absolute truth in this business. If you sit
across from me and your background is very similar to my background, we kind of
"had the same things growing up, I'm going to gravitate to you faster than I'm going
to gravitate to some guy who lived in Boston all his life or New York, or
Philadelphia, or San Francisco.

It is important to underscore here the same point that we made about

personality traits. Namely, headhunters are emphatic in saying that attrib-
utes and experiences that enhance a candidate's likelihood of establishing
good chemistry with one organization and hiring authority might represent
neutral traitsor chemistry killersat a different organization or with a
different hiring authority.
Demographic and physical traits shape both applicant-organization and
applicant-interviewer fit. Some headhunters revealed and discussed selec-
tion criteria relevant to assessments of fit that were discriminatory and
sometimes illegal. These appeared most often in the form of concerns about
a candidate's age and appearance. Client preferences regarding appearance
and age are often unstated and thus inferred by headhunters, a point made
by a headhunter who places sales representatives:
My companies don't openly come out and say, "Don't send me someone like you."
I mean, they'd have no interest in looking at a 42-year-old, receding-hair-line,
five-foot, four-inch guy. I'm not saying they openly discriminate, but if it came down
to a 28 year old walking in the door or me, the 28 year old is going to get the job
19 out of 20 times. And these companies that I work for don't openly say, "I will
not look at this person." But they often find reasons to knock the candidate out.

Headhunters claimed that there were times when they would decide not
to present otherwise-qualified candidates for positions because employers
were likely to rule them out because they were an "inappropriate age" (for
the most part "too old") or, as one headhunter exclaimed, "like meshort
and dumpy." In other cases, they would present such candidates, expect
Fit and Skill 115

the worst, and then cloak the employer's real selection criteria should that
be necessary:
If they [a candidate] come in and they're five-foot, five-inches tall and 175 pounds,
I will go to the employer and say, "I have met this person and this is what they
look like." And I know the employer's going to knock him out, but at least that's
not me playing God. I let them do it. And I've got to gently go back to the candidate
and say, "There's now an internal candidate who has surfaced that they're looking
at strongly."

In the mind of this headhunter, a candidate who was "short and dumpy"
would generate no chemistry for the types of sales jobs he filled.
While many headhunters mentioned the importance of age and ap-
pearance during our interviews and fieldwork, we uncovered no direct ref-
erences to links between gender, race, and assessments of candidate fit.
Race and gender surfaced for the most part in discussions of what head-
hunters called "diversity searches." Headhunters claimed that many of their
clients would explicitly state that they wanted a "diversity candidate," which
tended to be defined in racial and ethnic terms rather than gender, in order
to boost counts of such employees. As one headhunter put it, "It's a num-
bers thing. There aren't many [minority candidates] out there. Their [an
employer's] EEOC counts are down. That's where the search will be." Im-
portantly, this and other similar comments suggest that corporate demand
for white-collar minorities stems from external pressure. Pressure of that
sort may subvert the explicit use of gender and race as proxies for likely
fit.6
In a few situations, gender and race appeared to shape assessments
of fit in a subtle, indirect fashion. A few headhunters discussed a candi-
date's "image" and likely fit in terms that were not inclusive of all races,
ethnicities, and genders. As one put it, a successful candidate is "going to
have a certain imagehe's going to look a certain way." Apart from the
use of a male pronoun to denote a generic candidate, this comment links
the idea of an "image" to a particular "appearance."7 This same head-
hunter went on to explain that a particular employer's "image" require-
mentnamely, that the candidate have a "commanding presence"meant
in practice that successful candidates tended to stand about six feet, two
inches tall, weigh about 175 pounds, and have dark hair and blue eyes.
While gender, race, and ethnicity did not surface in his discussion of image,
tall, blue-eyed candidates are more likely than not to be white men, not
women or people of color.
Gender and race are likely to shape assessments of fit in yet another
indirect and subtle way that may elude observation. Though we have no
direct evidence from our study to support this contention, we suspect that
gender and race are often linked to various social experiences and back-
116 Coverdill and Finlay

grounds that are key to the establishment of social similarities and hence
fit. For example, many headhunters spoke of the highly "athletic" character
of some hiring authorities and work groups, and how older and overweight
candidates would be unlikely to fit well with such people and contexts. We
suspect, but were unable to document, that settings of that sort induce a
gender bias, favoring men who, on the average, are more likely than women
to participate inand be involved spectators ofa wide range of athletic
endeavors. In selecting on various dimensions of social similarity, therefore,
employers and headhunters are likely to perpetuate indirectly inequalities
along the lines of gender and race.
Analyses of the character and role of fit thus highlight a criterion that
headhunters claim is at the very center of employee selection. Put simply,
headhunters were unequivocal in maintaining that "people hire people just
like themselves." To overlook the role of fit is thus to overlook what is
perhaps the main mechanism by which social advantage and disadvantage
become solidified in what Kanter (1993 [1977]) called the "homosocial re-
production of labor."

Skill and Employee Selection

Analyses of fit tend to imply that once a pool of candidates is formed

the selection of one or more new hires hinges solely on personality and
social attributes, not on skills or experiences relevant to the position being
filled that cannot be reduced in some fashion to fit. Several recent studies,
along with those of Kanter (1993 [1977]), Jackall (1988), and Morrill
(1995), suggest that certain personality and social attributes are the skills
sought in new hires. As a whole, these studies suggest that personality traits
are incorporated directly into the labor process in some jobs and organi-
zations and thus become indicators of an individual's ability to "do the
job" at the time of employee selection (e.g., Darrah 1994; Holzer 1996;
Leidner 1993; Moss and Tilly 1996). It is thus plausible, from this point of
view, to argue that fit serves as an indicator of the skills employers seek
in new hires, leaving little if any role for an assessment of other experiences
or talents that might shape a new hire's ability to "do the job."
We argue that in many situations assessments of skill cannot be
whollyor even largelyreduced to assessments of a candidate's likely fit.
That position is consistent with Bills's (1988) research on the ways work
experience, job performance, and technical expertise shape the selection
of new employees. Bills found that those factors were used more often
than any others by employers to narrow the applicant pool and to select
a new hire. Employers appeared to distinguish personality traits (which
Fit and Skill 117

were also found to be important in selection decisions) from assessments

of previous work experience, job performance, and technical expertise.
What was critical, however, was not general labor-market experience, but
rather highly specific forms of skill and experience. Bills's findings suggest
that many employers look for evidence that a job candidate "can do the
job" and that such evidence need not be identical to an assessment of fit.
The evidence on this point is clear and consistent: skill and experience
requirements were not dismissed by any headhunter in our study. This pat-
tern is particularly meaningful because headhuntersunlike employers-
have no obvious reason to claim that skill and experience (which are
generally seen as fair selection criteria) play an important role in the hiring
process. The difficulty, however, in saying that skill and experience matter
is that employers tend to describe skill and experience requirements in very
general terms in position descriptions and announcementsin the posi-
tion's "specs." A position's specs are likely to reveal little more than the
position's title, its salary (or salary range), formal educational requirements,
and the number of years of work experience in the same or a related field
that are required. For example, a headhunter who places engineers de-
scribed a recent search assignment for which an employer stated the fol-
lowing specs: three to five years' experience in machine design in a
high-volume manufacturing environment, supervisory experience, an ME
degree, and a starting salary of $45,000. The headhunter claimed that specs
like these "tell me nothing" because they neither identify which attributes
or traits will enhance chemistry nor indicate the most relevant experience-
and skill-based selection criteria.
Headhunters claim that while specs play an important role in deter-
mining the composition of the pool of viable candidates, they fail to provide
enough information to guide the selection of one candidate over another
when two or more candidates meet the specs. Given the conviction that
"there are a number of qualified people for most positions," headhunters
suggest that specs are best understood as a negative aspect of selection be-
cause they help determine who will not be chosen. Offers hinge upon an
employer's assessment of two positive selection criteria: chemistry (i.e., fit)
and hot buttons.
Hot buttons are highly specific skills and experiences that produce a
positive reaction on the part of a given employer. Unlike specs, hot buttons
are not baseline experiences or skills expected of all viable candidates;
rather, they are talents or skills that give a particular employer reason to
become sufficiently enthusiastic about a particular candidate to extend an
offer. One headhunter usefully defined hot buttons as the "solution to the
problem that motivated the employer to seek to fill the position." Another
defined them in terms of skills and experiences that would meet an em-
118 Coverdill and Finlay

ployer's "dire need." Hot buttons need not be particularly complicated or

nuanced. For example, the hot buttons for the engineering position men-
tioned above turned out to be successful experience in designing jigs and
fixtures and performing vendor quality audits. Hot buttons are often con-
text specific. They vary widely across positions, departments, companies,
and over time for even the most narrowly defined occupational specialties.
In some cases, hot buttons depend more on the hiring authority than
on the job. Headhunters claim that certain hiring authorities look for par-
ticular types of experiences and skills in all the candidates they interview,
making hot buttons specific to the hiring authority rather than the position.
When I'm working with a brand new manager I've never worked with I don't have
an established relationship so I'm not going to know what the hot buttons are for
that person. So what I'll do is say, "Listen, I understand what your company Johnson
& Johnson wants. I understand the profile. Tell me about you, what are you looking
for?" What I do is I make up a profile. I say, Bill Smith [a pseudonym] with Johnson
& Johnson has, this is what his hot buttons are so anybody I send to him I need
to make sure that they're prepared to either show examples or deal with this when
he turns around and asks it.

This headhunter then went on to say that the hot buttons included how
you prefer to manage your people, accounts, and discretionary funds; how
you develop new business and the careers of your people; and what kind
of computer systems you know. What is clear from his statement is that
there are hot buttons "for Bill Smith" and that candidates will need to
press those hot buttons.
Hot buttons can be more unclear than unstated. On occasion, the specs
will contain a laundry list of experiences and skills, not all of which are
equally important in the eyes of a hiring authority. Headhunters typically
ask hiring authorities to list the most important attributes they seek in a
new hire. A headhunter explained how he probes to learn about hot buttons:
Meade will send you very lengthy job descriptions and she [an HR staffer] has in
every case here. What I found, though, and maybe it's just on my part, that they
are very boring. What I find is it's better for me to talk to the hiring authority and
say, "Look, what are the three or four most important things to you in evaluating
whether this person's going to be right?" You find out what are the nuances as far
as terminology for the job and then you focus on, "Okay, what's really important
to you?"

An important aspect of this headhunter's statement is that he finds it useful

to bypass his contact in the company's human resources department and
to speak directly with the hiring authority. Position descriptions are rarely
viewed as credible indicators of what is sought in candidates; nor do those
descriptionsor staff members in human resourceshelp headhunters to
prioritize selection criteria. Many headhunters believe that those in human
resources are too far removed from the job and the hiring authority to
Fit and Skill 119

understand the hot buttons and chemistry that will be required of a new
hire. This headhunter's strategy of contacting the hiring authority to find
out "what's really important" represents an opportunity to probe for hot
buttons as well as issues related to fit.
Our evidence thus suggests that the screening and selection of job can-
didates is influenced in part by assessments of skill that are not wholly or
even largely reducible to fit. Put simply, fit does not totally dominate the
selection of new employees. Our evidence suggests that the specific expe-
riences and skills employers seek in candidates may not be obvious from
a position's officially-stated requirements or specs. Candidates who possess
the experiences and skills mentioned in the specs may or may not have
what the employer seeks. The existence of "hidden" or "unstated" experi-
ence and skill requirements might make it appear as though screening and
selection decisions are not guided by assessments of skill or experience,
but a conclusion of that sort would be mistaken.8

DISCUSSION AND THEORETICAL IMPLICATIONS

In this section, we discuss two main implications of the evidence and

analysis presented thus far on the character and importance of fit and skill
in the employee-selection process. The first centers on the conceptualiza-
tion, causes, and implications of fit. The second involves some thoughts on
how the importance of fit and hot buttons may limit the predictive power
of standard, variable-oriented accounts of labor-market success.

The Conceptualization, Causes, and Implications of Fit

Our evidence provides support for the idea that both applicant-organi-
zation and applicant-interviewer fit play an important role in employee se-
lection. In light of its relative neglect in the literature on fit, it is important
to consider why applicant-interviewer fit might be so crucial to employee
selection and what it might imply for students of labor markets and or-
ganizations.
A tentative answer to the matter of why applicant-interviewer fit looms
so large in the selection process can be found in scholarship on trust in
organizations and the social psychology of inter-group relations. Social simi-
larities tend to produce what has been called depersonalized (Brewer 1981)
or characteristic-based trust (Zucker 1986). For example, recent research
on the character and production of trust in organizations suggests that there
are norms of obligation and cooperation rooted in social similarity (Creed
120 Coverdill and Finlay

and Miles 1996). Creed and Miles argue that these norms create the "ex-
pectation that a person can or cannot be trusted because of family back-
ground, age, social or financial situation, ethnicity, and so forth" (p. 18).
In a similar fashion, Zucker (1986, p. 61) argues that people tend to assume
that those who are socially similar will hold similar "background under-
standings" that will facilitate interaction and enhance the likelihood that
the outcome of negotiations and exchanges will be satisfactory to both par-
ties.
While social similarities may well influence assessments of trustworthi-
ness, and hence employability, they are also likely to shape the evaluation
of a candidate in a more subtle fashion. Kramer, Brewer, and Hanna (1996,
p. 367) review research on group processes which finds that people tend
to evaluate socially-similar others in relatively positive terms. Moreover,
causal attributions about others' dispositions, motives, and intentions are
influenced by social similarities. For example, evaluators can attribute un-
desirable or negative behaviors to external and unstable factors or to in-
ternal and stable factors. Research suggests that evaluators who are socially
similar to the person being evaluated are more likely than those who lack
that social similarity to attribute negative or undesirable behaviors to ex-
ternal and unstable factors (Kramer et al. 1996, p. 368). What is particularly
important about these evaluative processes is that evaluators often appear
to be completely unaware of their in-group bias. A hiring authority's evalu-
ation of candidates is thus likely to be influenced by the perception of social
similarities in a way that goes beyond the matter of trustworthiness dis-
cussed above (for evidence that supports this claim see Baron and Pfeffer
1994, p. 194; Lin, Dobbins, and Farh 1992; Rand and Wexley 1975).
liie importance of fit in the selection of new employees has two rather
somber implications for workplace diversity. Some scholars have painted
what we believe to be an overly-optimistic view of the possibility of achiev-
ing diversity in the workplace. For example, Kanter (1993 [1977], p. 54)
argued that managers' desire for socially-similar others in the workplace
what she called the homosocial reproduction of laborwas directly corre-
lated with the "uncertainty quotient" in organizational roles (see also
Pfeffer 1989, for a similar argument about uncertainty). Uncertainty, ac-
cording to her argument, increases reliance on trust and personal discretion
and leads to the selection of workers on the basis of social similarity. If
uncertainty can be reduced, then the "closed circle" can be opened.
Our evidence, however, does not support Kanter's hypothesis that the
desire for socially-similar candidates varies substantially across different
types of white collar jobs or over a wide range of employers.9 With the
exception of a few cases in which an employer was desperate to hire some-
one with uncommon technical skills, virtually no Southern City headhunter
Fit and Skill 121

even hinted at the possibility that there were hiring situations in which ap-
plicant-interviewer fit was not criticalif not the keyto the selection de-
cision. This pattern may stem from the unconscious social-psychological
processes discussed above that shape the evaluation of job candidates. Our
sense is that those processes are difficult to alter and hence serve to un-
dermine efforts to diversify workplaces.
A second implication is that headhunters surely serve to perpetuate
the tendency for "likes to hire likes." Headhunters, after all, strongly believe
that social similarities are key to selection decisions. From the headhunter's
point of view, the ideal search assignment is one in which they quickly and
effortlessly identify and present a single candidate who is a dead ringer in
the eyes of the hiring authority. The workaday world of contingency head-
hunting, however, is far from that ideal, and headhunters often end up
presenting candidates who lack some of the desired experiences and skills
and/or fall short of being socially similar to the hiring authority. In practice,
then, headhunters do not present only socially-similar candidates to em-
ployers. Their theory of employer selection decisions, however, leads them
to work toward that end, possibly even in situations in which social similarity
might not be a selection criterion. In that situation, a headhunter's theory
of selection would serve to perpetuate the use of social similarity as a se-
lection criterion. Headhunters are thus another institutional mechanism
that supports the homosocial reproduction of labor.10

Fit, Hot Buttons, and the Explanation of Labor-Market Success

Over the past couple of decades, studies of labor-market success have

increasingly shifted to the idea that there are distinct labor markets in the
United States (e.g., Parcel and Mueller 1983; Farkas and England 1994).
One main line of demarcation is between internal and external labor mar-
kets. Even in the external labor market, however, there are thought to be
distinct, non-overlapping labor markets. These distinct labor markets have
two features that are particularly important. First, employers across given
labor markets value and reward different worker characteristics. For exam-
ple, in some labor markets, particular educational credentials are either
required or very important; in others, those credentials may have little or
no value. What this implies is that the importance of a variable like edu-
cation for employability and labor-market success depends upon the labor-
market context. A second important aspect of this conceptualization of
labor markets focuses on the extent of variation within a specific labor mar-
ket. Within a given labor market, the buying and selling of labor are guided
by a set of criteria that are not thought to vary substantially across em-
122 Coverdill and Finlay

ployers. It is thus reasonable, according to the now-conventional concep-

tualization of labor markets, to speak of a labor market for cost accountants
in a given geographical area (thus capturing the idea of a heal labor market
for a particular kind of labor). In that market, the criteria that determine
employability and success should not, according to the labor-market litera-
ture, vary greatly across the employers of that type of labor.
Our evidence from headhunters, however, strongly suggests that there
is considerable variation in the criteria employers use to select candidates
from a candidate pool. General criteria, such as education and experience,
play a limited role at best. Instead, the criteria that are used to select can-
didates are the candidate's compatibility with a particular organization's
culture, norms, and strategies, compatibility with the hiring authority and
interviewers, and whether the candidate meets specific skill or experience
requirements. Criteria of this sort appear to vary substantially across firms
seeking the same general type of labor; further, headhunters suggest that
they can also vary from one hiring authority to another even within a single
jinn. Our evidence from headhunters thus suggests that it may not be pos-
sible to speak of anything like a single set of criteria that guide the buying
and selling of labor even within a narrowly defined labor-market context.
In many ways, headhunters suggest an extremely radical notion of labor-
market segmentation.
This finding suggests that the use of fit and hot buttons in the selection
of new employees is likely to introduce some degree of "noise" or "ran-
domness" into standard, quantitative efforts to model labor-market proc-
esses even when investigators invoke the idea of multiple labor market
segments. For example, nebbishness, on the average, may have no dis-
cernable influence on individuals' chances of being selected for a job as a
computer systems analyst. In that situation, the standard, variable-oriented
explanatory logic would suggest that nebbishness plays no systematic role
in shaping mobility patterns even though it may be absolutely critical to the
selection process for a particular job at a particular firm. It is this element
of what looks like "randomness" from the perspective of a variable-oriented
explanatory logic that may well be a main cause of the relatively low ex-
planatory power of most quantitative studies of labor-market processes.
While nebbishness on the part of a job candidate in just the right con-
text might look like "luck" from the standpoint of a variable-oriented re-
searcher (as in the discussion of luck in Jencks et al., 1972 and 1979), it
does not look like luck from the standpoint of a headhunter who views the
selection of new employees as rife with such demand-side idiosyncracies.
The headhunter's job is to gather as much nuanced information as he or
she can about factors relevant to fit and hot buttons. He or she then iden-
tifies and presents, for example, suitably nebbish candidates if that is what
Fit and Skill 123

will fit the bill. Such matchmaking activities serve to decrease the extent
to which luck dominates the selection process.11

CONCLUSIONS

This article represents an effort to understand better the processes by

which people are matched to jobs. It has explored the selection of new
employees through the eyes of headhunters, a third party to the matching
process. We have argued that headhunters provide a useful vantage point
from which to understand the employee-selection process. Given that con-
tingency headhunters are paid only when one of their candidates is hired
by a client company, they have a strong financial incentive to become astute
students of employee selection processes and practices. Those processes
and practices, however, are those of employers, not headhunters, a distinc-
tion that gives headhunters less reason than employers to portray matters
as rational and meritocratic if neither of those two adjectives are warranted.
Our evidence and arguments lead to three main conclusions. First, as-
sessments of a job candidate's likely fit play a critical role in the selection
of white collar employees. Previous studies have not erred in advancing that
general conclusion. Most studies that have highlighted the importance of fit
have centered on managers (e.g., Kanter 1993 [1974], Jackall 1988, and Mor-
rill 1995), leaving unclear whether fit plays an important role in the selection
of other white collar employees. Our evidence, which covers a broad range
of white collar employment, shows that fit is not a selection criterion unique
to managers. Moreover, it is a selection criterion that is still very much in
use even in the middle 1990s, many years after the introduction of various
"diversity" initiatives aimed at increasing the social and cultural heteroge-
neity of workplaces. While Kanter's Afterword to Men and Women of the
Corporation (1993 [1977]) suggests that workplaces are shifting "from ho-
mogeneity to diversity" and that "the managerial priority" has shifted to
"managing and even affirming diversity," (1993 [1977], p. 290), one of our
headhunters summed up the continuing role of fit in employee selection a
bit differently: "Likes hire likes. So much for diversity." In short, social simi-
larity remains more consequential than Kanter's recent statements imply.
A second conclusion involves specifying the levels at which fit becomes
important in the selection of new employees. What we have called appli-
cant-interviewer fit has been noted in some previous studies but overlooked
by others. We speculate that this neglect may stem from two sources
namely, the perceived legitimacy of the different levels of fit and the type
of evidence used in most previous studies. With respect to perceived le-
gitimacy, Rynes and Gerhart (1990, p. 14), for example, cite a number of
124 Coverdlil and Finlay

sources in support of the statement that "academics and consultants have

increasingly recommended that job applicants be assessed in terms of their
fit with the employing organization's strategies, culture, norms, and values."
Fit at this applicant-organization level must appear fair or legitimate for
such writers to advocate using assessments of fit as a candidate-selection
criterion. We suspect, however, that it might be much more difficult to view
applicant-interviewer fit as a legitimate and legally-defensible selection cri-
terion. In the language of Southern City headhunters, applicant-interviewer
fit means that "people hire people just like themselves." That phrase points
to the importance of highly subjective, non-job-related criteria that have
traditionally been viewed as discriminatory (Gutman 1993). It is quite pos-
sible that research that leans on data collected directly from employers will
miss the conceptual and empirical salience of applicant-interviewer fit be-
cause company insiders may be reluctant to reveal or discuss a selection
criterion that may be viewed as invalid.
A third and final conclusion centers on the importance of skill in the
selection of employees. While some workplace activities may well depend
upon clear communication, predictable behavior, and, in general, "getting
along with others," social skills based on fit are clearly not the only skills
that employers seek. Assessments of fit during the selection process may
thus serve to predict certain social skills, but those skills are not the only
skills that employers consider when they evaluate the likely capabilities of
job candidates. Our evidence suggests that highly specific and oftentimes
rather idiosyncratic elements of skill and experiencecalled "hot buttons"
by headhuntersplay an important role in the selection of employees.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A version of this article was presented at the 1997 annual meeting of

the American Sociological Association in Tbronto, Canada. We thank Linda
Grant, Ivy Kennelly, Tbby Parcel, and the editor and reviewers for helpful
comments on an earlier draft. The research was partially supported by a
University of Georgia Faculty Research Grant to the first author and by
funds provided to the second author when he was a fellow at the Institute
for Behavioral Research at the University of Georgia.

ENDNOTES

1. One exception to this is a recent study by Bretz, Rynes, and Gerhart (1993) which sug-
gested that corporate, campus recruiters based assessments of the likely fit of students
Fit and Skill 125

mostly on the basis of job-related coursework and experience. Our hunch is that this
pattern may be specific to entry-level workers making the transition from school to work.
2. We refer to them as headhunters in this article so that they are easy to distinguish from
corporate "recruiters" who are employees of the hiring company. The term "headhunter"
is widely used in leading newspapers and the business press; it is also the term that people
in the industry use to describe themselves.
3. An important review of research on the employment interview (Arvey and Campion 1982)
provides some support the idea that employers who know their employee-selection prac-
tices are being studied may well alter their behavior and practices.
4. We explore relationships between companies and headhunters, and the reasons a com-
pany may "externalize" the recruitment of new employees, in a separate paper (Finlay
and Coverdill 1997).
5. Our understanding of headhunting was also informed by the collection and analysis of
industry newsletters such as the Fordyce Letter and Executive Recruiter News, over 100
hours of training material contained on video and audio cassettes, 98 responses to a mail
survey we sent to all headhunting firms in Southern City, and interviews with 16 employers
about their use of headhunters. We do not discuss that evidence in detail here because
we do not draw on it explicitly in this article.
6. An alternative hypothesis, which we doubt but cannot fully discount, is that the litigious
climate surrounding the hiring of women and minorities made headhunters unwilling to
discuss or reveal how race and gender operate to ensureor killchemistry. Headhunt-
ers, like employers, can be sued for discrimination in hiring. We doubt that we overlooked
the explicit use of gender and race in assessments of chemistry in part because we did,
in fact, observe the blatantly illegal use of age as a selection criterion.
7. The use of male pronouns for generic candidates was common among both male and
female headhunters who placed workers in mixed-gender and male-dominated jobs. Con-
versely, headhunters who worked the market for administrative support staff, and thus
placed mostly women, used female pronouns to refer to generic candidates.
8. We do not discuss in this paper the employee's side of the matching process, which, as
one reviewer noted, is equally important if the placement is to be made and the head-
hunter to be paid. The employee or candidate side is examined in another paper (Cover-
dill and Finlay 1997).
9. It is important to note that Kanter brought no evidence to bear on this portion of her
argument, leaving it a plausiblebut completely untestedhypothesis.
10. Our argument here is similar to what Larwood (1991) has termed "rational bias."
11. Headhunters do more than merely identify and present candidates who would appear to
meet the fit and hot button preferences of employers. In another article (Coverdill and
Finlay 1997), we discuss how headhunters attempt to ensure that an employer will perceive
candidate traits that are conducive to the establishment of good fit and the pressing of
hot buttons. Headhunters rarely assume that some level of "objective" compatibility and
skill will be enough to produce a match.

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