Recruiters under pressure. Discrimination and diversity through the prism of interwoven discursive registers

While most studies on discriminatory practices in recruitment identify them with a single set of motives, this article, based on 57 interviews with recruiters from different sectors, seeks to provide an alternative analytical framework. The requirements for fairness in the recruitment process are taken seriously and used to describe an experience of recruitment that entails grappling with contradictory demands, some related to economic efficiency, others to social justice. Recruiters have to balance these requirements. And whether or not recruitment is discriminatory depends on how the balance is struck and the social and organisational constraints that affect it. [Copyright Elsevier SAS.]