Getting Jobs and Building Careers: Reproducing Inequality in State-Sponsored Job Search Organizations

Abstract

Hunting for jobs is a socially, historically, and institutionally constructed process. Workers must learn how to find jobs and build careers but the ways in which they learn and the tools they have for doing so vary by class, race, gender, and cultural capital. In this paper, we analyze two organizations that teach clients job market behaviors that purportedly enable them to search for work. We argue that job search organizations (JSOs) can reinforce occupational and career inequalities. Focusing on the job market information and skills given to different occupational groups, messages about opportunity and mobility, and resources made available to clients, we show how JSOs prepare people to look for jobs along class-specific lines. These organizations discipline clients’ aspirations and shape their understandings of their occupational competencies and weaknesses. The study highlights the importance of this understudied type of labor market intermediary.

Citation

Smith, V., Kohler Flynn, H. and Isler, J. (2005), "Getting Jobs and Building Careers: Reproducing Inequality in State-Sponsored Job Search Organizations", Smith, V. (Ed.) Worker Participation: Current Research and Future Trends (Research in the Sociology of Work, Vol. 16), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 375-402. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0277-2833(06)16014-8