How ‘best fit’ excludes international graduates from employment in Australia: a Bourdeusian perspective

ABSTRACT

Very few organisations, even local firms, are insulated from global economic activity or the social and cultural consequences of widespread global migration programs such as international education. Nonetheless, established recruitment processes remain stubbornly local, privileging candidates who conform to the criterion of ‘people like us’ to produce a ‘good fit’ in relation to the existing workforce. In a three-year study investigating the employment outcomes of international students graduating from Australian universities in nursing, engineering and accounting, we interviewed potential employers (multinational, medium and small) regarding their recruitment practices. We found employers considered the credential indicated technical competence while the apparently objective criteria like visa eligibility and English language ability (linguistic capital) often filtered out many international student candidates. Additionally, in the context of rising credentialism, employers additionally looked for dispositions of employability or 21^st century ‘soft skills’ considered to be transferrable from education into work. But the final form of distinction between applicants was based on whether the applicant would ‘fit in’ to the organisational culture and existing teams. Despite employers agreeing with management discourses extolling the benefits of workforce diversity with regard to gender, cultural and linguistic capitals, recruitment practices saw unconscious bias exercised against international graduates, thus reproducing monocultural rather than inclusive organisations.

KEYWORDS:

• Graduate employability
• recruitment
• best fit
• 21^st century skills
• international students

Acknowledgments

The project was an Australian Research Council Linkage Project LP0990875 “Investigating stakeholder responses to changing skilled migration policies for Australian international graduates” in partnership with IDP Pty Ltd. The research team comprised of Jill Blackmore, Lesley Farrell, Marcia Devlin, Ruth Arber, Cate Gribble, Mark Rahimi at Deakin Univerisity, Geelong.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The Bologna Process is a series of ministerial meetings and agreements between 48 European countries aiming to improve comparability of the standards and quality of higher-education qualifications.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council [IDP Ltd,LP0990875];IDP Ltd [NA]

Notes on contributors

Jill Blackmore

Jill Blackmore is a Faculty of Arts and Education.

Mark Rahimi

Mark Rahimi is a Faculty of Arts and Education