Page 167 - Through the gate of the neoliberal academy • Herschberg

inequalities in recruitment and selection practices for early-career researchers (ECRs) who are increasingly working on unstable and temporary contracts. Using a practice lens, I further advance the scholarly conversation on inequalities in recruitment and selection in two ways: 1) by focusing on the hiring of early-career researchers and 2) by contrasting gender practices and practicing gender in recruitment and selection.
Hiring early-career researchers
The first contribution of my dissertation relates to the focus on early-career researchers in studying the (re)production of inequalities in recruitment and selection practices. My findings show both similarities and differences in hiring practices for early career positions compared to the literature on hiring for senior positions such as associate and full professorships. Similar to studies on senior positions that reveal how committee members engage in practices such as informal scouting and inviting candidates, favouring local or known candidates, and closed hiring (Nielsen, 2016; Van den Brink & Benschop, 2014), I observe that such informal networking practices are common for early-career positions too. Committee members argue that (alleged) quality is the main focus in the hiring of senior candidates (O’Connor & O’Hagan, 2015; Van den Brink & Benschop, 2012b), yet, I show this holds for early-career stages as well. My findings also uncover power games (Bozionelos, 2005) and the presence of gender practices in recruitment and selection (Van den Brink, 2010; Van den Brink & Benschop, 2012b).
This dissertation shows that inequalities in recruitment and selection practices for early-career academic positions differ from more senior positions on two main aspects: 1) the projectification in academia, and 2) the assessment of ECRs’ potential due to their short(er) track record.
First, I observed that what makes the hiring of postdoc researchers different is the way they are funded and the type of position this creates. Increasingly, academics are held accountable for the external research funding they obtain, which creates strong competition for collaborative and commercial research funding (Lam & de Campos, 2015). As external research funding mostly finances temporary research projects the amount of project-based research has grown (Ylijoki, 2010), also referred to as ‘projectification’ (Ylijoki, 2016). This results in a growth of peripheral precarious jobs, such as postdoc positions. In chapter 2, I showed how the projectification in academia instigates recruitment and selection practices for postdocs to be predominantly focused on the short-term.
The dominant discourse in academia is that principal investigators compete for “the ‘best’ postdoc candidates from around the world” (Cantwell, 2011, p. 435).
GENERAL DISCUSSION 165
6