Having a bachelor’s degree, a top-notch grade point average, and a relatively high level of work experience actually reduce the chance that a job applicant will be called in for an interview with a child-care provider, concludes new research by Kent State and Arizona State universities that used thousands of fictional résumés to gauge child-care hiring practices in 14 large cities.
Fictional applicants with six months of experience were called in for interviews more often than those with two years of experience. Having a bachelor’s degree was no more likely to garner a callback than an associate degree. And while having a GPA of 3.3 got more attention than a GPA of 2.8, an applicant with a GPA of 3.8 was slightly less likely to get a job interview than 3.3 GPA applicant. The researchers also found evidence of racial bias in hiring: Applicants who had names commonly associated with African-Americans and Hispanics were less likely to be called back for interviews. That finding was surprising, they said, considering that the early-childhood workforce is 40 percent nonwhite.
