So, Dear Applicant, Do You Mean Working From Home or Shirking From Home?

Abstract

The demand for telework possibilities among applicants is often driven by perceived productivity gains. This raises the question of whether expressing this preference affects hiring intentions. A preference for telework, on the one hand, and justifying it through productivity, on the other, may send conflicting signals to recruiters regarding notions of the ideal worker. In this paper we therefore investigate how expressing a desire for telework motivated by productivity reasons impacts the probability of receiving an interview and what it signals to recruiters. To this end, we set up a vignette experiment in which recruiters evaluate fictitious applicants for different jobs. As a result of this experimental set-up, the answers to our research questions can be interpreted causally, with external validity supported by the heterogeneity of the jobs included in the experiment. Our results indicate that expressing a productivity-motivated telework preference might negatively impact interview likelihood, although this effect is context-dependent and shaped by recruiter, job, and applicant characteristics.