The authors explore how career paths are shaped by the involvement of search firms in hiring. Drawing on theories of market intermediation, they argue that search firms constrain horizontal moves across functions and industries by favoring workers from within the same function and industry as the role being filled. Using survey data on 1,342 job moves undertaken by 816 MBA alumni, the authors find that individuals who move jobs through a search firm experience lower horizontal mobility than those who move through other means. Findings also suggest that these results are not driven by firms’ decisions to use a search firm to fill the job. Supplementary analyses show no evidence that the job matches that are formed using search firms result in a better fit between workers and employers. Overall, the findings point to the significant institutional role search firms play in managerial careers.
Association of Executive Search Consultants. 2011. Retained and Contingency Executive Search: The Key Differences. Report. AESC: New York.
2.
BertrandMarianneGoldinClaudiaKatzLawrence F.2010. Dynamics of the gender gap for young professionals in the financial and corporate sectors. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics2(3): 228–55.
3.
BidwellMatthew J.2011. Paying more to get less: Specific skills, incomplete information and the effects of external hiring versus internal mobility. Administrative Science Quarterly56(3): 369–407.
4.
BidwellMatthew J.MollickEthan. 2015. Shifts and ladders: Comparing the role of internal and external mobility in managerial careers. Organization Science26(6): 1629–45.
5.
BlackwellMatthewIacusStefanoKingGaryPorroGiuseppe. 2009. cem: Coarsened exact matching in Stata. Stata Journal9(4): 524–46.
6.
BonetRocioCappelliPeterHamoriMonika. 2013. Labor market intermediaries and the new paradigm for human resources. Academy of Management Annals7(1): 341–92.
7.
BurtRonald S. 2005. Brokerage and Closure: An Introduction to Social Capital. New York: Oxford University Press.
CorcoranMaryDatcherLindaDuncanGreg J. 1980. Most workers find jobs through word of mouth. Monthly Labor Review103(8): 33–35.
10.
CoverdillJames E.FinlayWilliam. 2017. High Tech and High Touch: Headhunting, Technology and Economic Transformation. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press, an imprint of Cornell University Press.
11.
CowgillBoPerkowskiPatryk. 2020. Delegation in hiring: Evidence from a two-sided audit. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.3584919
12.
CrosslandCraigZyungJinyongHillerNathan J.HambrickDonald C. 2013. CEO career variety: Effects on firm-level strategic and social novelty. Academy of Management Journal57(3): 652–74.
13.
CustódioCláudiaFerreiraMiguel A.MatosPedro. 2013. Generalists versus specialists: Lifetime work experience and chief executive officer pay. Journal of Financial Economics108(2): 471–92.
14.
DiPreteThomas A. 1987. Horizontal and vertical mobility in organizations. Administrative Science Quarterly32(3): 422–44.
15.
DobrevStanislav D.MerluzziJennifer. 2018. Stayers versus movers: Social capital and early career imprinting among young professionals. Journal of Organizational Behavior39(1): 67–81.
16.
FergusonJohn-PaulHasanSharique. 2013. Specialization and career dynamics: Evidence from the Indian Administrative Service. Administrative Science Quarterly58(2): 233–56.
17.
Fernandez-MateoIsabel. 2007. Who pays the price of brokerage? Transferring constraint through price setting in the staffing sector. American Sociological Review72(2): 291–317.
18.
Fernandez-MateoIsabelCohMarko. 2015. Coming with baggage: Past rejections and the evolution of market relationships. Organization Science26(5): 1381–99.
19.
Fernandez-MateoIsabelKingZella. 2011. Anticipatory sorting and gender segregation in temporary employment. Management Science57(6): 989–1008.
20.
FinlayWilliamCoverdillJames E. 2002. Headhunters: Matchmaking in the Labor Market. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
21.
FullerSylvia. 2008. Job mobility and wage trajectories for men and women in the United States. American Sociological Review73(1): 158–83.
22.
GalunicCharlesErtugGokhanGargiuloMartin. 2012. The positive externalities of social capital: Benefiting from senior brokers. Academy of Management Journal55(5): 1213–31.
23.
GouldRoger V.FernandezRoberto M. 1989. Structures of mediation: A formal approach to brokerage in transaction networks. Sociological Methodology19: 89–126.
24.
GranovetterMark S. 1973. The strength of weak ties. American Journal of Sociology78(6): 1360–80.
25.
GreeneWilliam H. 1993. Econometric Analysis. 3rd intl. ed. New York: Prentice Hall.
26.
HamoriMonika. 2007. Executive career advancement in career moves across employers: The role of organization-level predictors. International Journal of Human Resource Management17(6): 1129–51.
27.
HamoriMonika. 2010. Who gets headhunted—and who gets ahead? The impact of search firms on executive careers. Academy of Management Perspectives24(4): 46–59.
28.
HamoriMonika. 2014. Executive career success in search-firm-mediated moves across employers. International Journal of Human Resource Management25(3): 390–411.
29.
HolzerHarry J. 1987. Informal job search and Black youth unemployment. American Economic Review77(3): 446–52.
30.
IbarraHerminia. 2002. How to stay stuck in the wrong career. Harvard Business Review80(12): 40–47.
31.
JovanovicBoyan. 1979. Job matching and the theory of turnover. Journal of Political Economy87(5): 972–90.
32.
KacperczykAleksandraYounkinPeter. 2017. The paradox of breadth: The tension between experience and legitimacy in the transition to entrepreneurship. Administrative Science Quarterly62(4): 731–64.
33.
KhuranaRakesh. 2002. Searching for a Corporate Savior: The Irrational Quest for Charismatic CEOs. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
34.
KwonIlloongMeyersson MilgromEva M. 2014. The significance of firm and occupation specific human capital for hiring and promotions. Labour Economics31: 162–73.
35.
LeungMing D. 2014. Dilettante or Renaissance person? How the order of job experiences affects hiring in an external labor market. American Sociological Review79(1): 136–58.
36.
LeungMing D.SharkeyAmanda J. 2013. Out of sight, out of mind? Evidence of perceptual factors in the multiple-category discount. Organization Science25(1): 171–84.
37.
LevittSteven D.SyversonChad. 2008. Market distortions when agents are better informed: The value of information in real estate transactions. Review of Economics and Statistics90(4): 599–611.
38.
MerluzziJenniferPhillipsDamon J. 2016. The specialist discount. Administrative Science Quarterly61(1): 87–124.
39.
NealDerek. 1995. Industry-specific human capital: Evidence from displaced workers. Journal of Labor Economics13(4): 653–77.
40.
O’MahonySiobhanBechkyBeth A. 2006. Stretchwork: Managing the career progression paradox in external labor markets. Academy of Management Journal49(5): 918–41.
41.
PellizzariMichele. 2010. Do friends and relatives really help in getting a good job?Industrial and Labor Relations Review63(3): 494–510.
42.
QuiñonesMiguel A.FordJ. KevinTeachoutMark S. 1995. The relationship between work experience and job performance: A conceptual and meta-analytic review. Personnel Psychology48(4): 887–910.
43.
Quintana-GarcíaCristinaElviraMarta M. 2016. The effect of the external labor market on the gender pay gap among executives. ILR Review70(1): 132–59.
44.
RiderChristopher I. 2009. Constraints on the control benefits of brokerage: A study of placement agents in U.S. venture capital fundraising. Administrative Science Quarterly54(4): 575–601.
45.
RobertsLaura MorganChaSandra E.HewlinPatricia F.SettlesIsis H. 2009. Bringing the inside out: Enhancing authenticity and positive identity in organizations. In Morgan RobertsLauraDuttonJane E. (Eds.), Exploring Positive Identities and Organizations: Building a Theoretical and Research Foundation, pp. 149–69. New York: Routledge.
46.
SeidelMarc-David L.PolzerJeffrey T.StewartKatherine J. 2000. Friends in high places: The effects of social networks on discrimination in salary negotiations. Administrative Science Quarterly45(1): 1–24.
47.
SpulberDaniel F. 1996. Market microstructure and intermediation. Journal of Economic Perspectives10(3): 135–52.
48.
SpulberDaniel F. 2003. The intermediation theory of the firm: Integrating economic and management approaches to strategy. Managerial and Decision Economics24(4): 253–66.
49.
StantonChristopher T.ThomasCatherine. 2017. Information frictions and observable experience: The new employer price premium in an online market. Working paper. Harvard Business School.
50.
SullivanPaul. 2010. Empirical evidence on occupation and industry specific human capital. Labour Economics17(3): 567–80.
51.
VergneJ.-P.WryTyler. 2014. Categorizing categorization research: Review, integration, and future directions. Journal of Management Studies51(1): 56–94.
52.
WellerIngoHymerChristina B.NybergAnthony J.EbertJulia. 2019. How matching creates value: Cogs and wheels for human capital resources research. Academy of Management Annals13(1): 188–214.
53.
WooldridgeJeffrey M. 2010. Econometric Analysis of Cross-Section and Panel Data. 2nd ed.Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
54.
ZuckermanEzra W. 1999. The categorical imperative: Securities analysts and the illegitimacy discount. American Journal of Sociology104(5): 1398–438.
55.
ZuckermanEzra W.KimTai-YoungUkanwaKalindavon RittmannJames. 2003. Robust identities or nonentities? Typecasting in the feature-film labor market. American Journal of Sociology108(5): 1018–74.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
