The Effect of Gender on the Recruitment of Entry-Level Accountants

Abstract

level accountants or the gender of accounting firm recruiters has an effect on hiring decisions made by public accounting firms. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Moreover, the Equal Pay Act of 1963 protects men and women who perform substantially equal work in the same establishment from sex-based wage discrimination. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission enforces these laws. Consequently, public accounting firms that discriminate based on gender in their hiring process are violating federal law. The primary research questions addressed in this study are as follows: (1) Are male and female accounting graduates rated equally by recruiters for entry-level positions in public accounting firms?, (2) Are male and female entry-level staff offered similar starting salaries?, and (3) Do male and female accounting graduates receive similar ratings and salary offers regardless of whether the recruiter is a male or a female? This study is important for several reasons. First, little research has been done concerning the effect of student gender on the hiring decisions for entry-level accountants. Second, the current study uses data from both small and large accounting firms. It appears that firm size has been ignored in prior studies. Third, the present study uses data from a large geographical region of the United States (ten states). Fourth, this study examines the effect of recruiter gender in hiring decisions, a topic that appears to have been generally neglected in prior studies. Finally, this study appears to be the first to combine recruiting decisions and salary decisions into a single study. In the following two sections, we summarize key prior research concerning the recruitment of entry-level accountants, provide a theoretical framework, and develop our hypotheses. In the subsequent three sections, we describe the research methodology, analyze the data and present the findings, and discuss the research results. Next, we address managerial implications of our findings. The final section discusses the limitations of the study and opportunities for future research. PRIOR RESEARCH Prior research on the recruitment of entry-level accountants by public accounting firms does exist. One stream of research has examined the characteristics that are desired by recruiters of entry-level accountants (e.g., Dinius and Rogow, 1988; Craig, 1990; Ahadiat and Smith, 1994; Moncada and Sanders, 1999). These studies examined the attributes of entry-level staff that are considered desirable by recruiters: accounting grade point average, communication skills, professional appearance, etc. All of these studies focused on applicant characteristics in general and were not related to a specific candidate. Three studies examined specific characteristics of hypothetical job candidates. First, Kirsch et al. (1993) asked recruiters at Big Six firms to make hiring judgments about potential job candidates. Kirsch et al. (1993) manipulated six characteristics of the potential candidates: communications, responsibility, professionalism, performance of routine tasks, conceptual understanding, and interpersonal skills. This study provided empirical evidence about the influence of each characteristic on hiring judgments. Kirsch et al. (1993) found all six characteristics to be related to hiring judgments. Second, Anderson et al. (1994) studied auditors' judgments of normal promotion, rapid promotion, and turnover using 16 hypothetical audit seniors. The researchers manipulated professional appearance, gender, and three other characteristics. They reported that professional appearance was positively related to ratings. They also reported that female audit seniors received lower ratings than their male counterparts. Third , Almer et al. (1998), using managerially ranked employees of one Big Six firm from one southwestern city, applied a judgment modeling approach to examine the effect of diversity-based candidate attributes on hiring, career progression, and turnover judgments. …

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