WeeklySA_AdminCULTURE: A University of Cape Town study has found that many employers were hiring, not only on qualifications and competence, but on who feels ‘familiar’, ‘safe’ and ‘relatable’ — a practice researchers say is quietly shutting black graduates out of employment and entrenching racial inequality in South Africa’s labour market…
By WSAM Reporters
Scores of qualified black graduates could be locked out of jobs by hidden hiring biases that favour familiarity over merit, a new University of Cape Town study suggests.
The UCT-led study, conducted in partnership with researchers from Ankara Hacı Bayram Veli University in Turkey and Brunel University London, argued that recruitment decisions were often influenced by whether candidates appear culturally familiar to hiring managers rather than by their qualifications alone.
Published in the British Journal of Sociology under the title “Relatability as a racialised construct in corporate graduate recruitment: Revealing a hidden mechanism of labour market exclusion for black African youth in South Africa”, the study examined how race, class and cultural background continue to shape employment opportunities in subtle but consequential ways.
Whiteness often remains the unspoken benchmark against
which professionalism, confidence and organisational fit are measured, even within companies that had formally embraced diversity and transformation…
The findings come at a time when South Africa was battling one of the highest unemployment rates in the world, with young people and black graduates continuing to bear the brunt of the crisis.
While the country’s overall unemployment rate stood at 32.7% in the first quarter of 2026, youth unemployment among those aged 15 to 24 reached a staggering 60.9%, according to Statistics South Africa.
More troubling, research on graduate employment patterns showed that African graduates continued to experience significantly higher unemployment than their white counterparts.
In 2023, the unemployment rate among African graduates stood at 18%, compared with just 3.7% among white graduates, highlighting persistent racial disparities despite higher education attainment.
“Our research shows that graduate recruitment is not always driven purely by competence or qualifications,” said Professor Kurt April, Allan Gray Chair and Director of the Allan Gray Centre for Values-Based Leadership at UCT’s Graduate School of Business.
“Employers often make decisions based on who feels familiar, relatable or safe, and these subjective judgements can unintentionally reproduce longstanding racial and class inequalities in the labour market.”
The researchers identified five interconnected processes — self-presentation, confidence, bias, choice and affinity — through which candidates are assessed.
Together, these factors create what the authors described as a “racialised cultural filter” that advantages applicants whose mannerisms, speech patterns, social networks and experiences align with dominant corporate norms.
The study argues that whiteness often remains the unspoken benchmark against which professionalism, confidence and organisational fit are measured, even within companies that have formally embraced diversity and transformation.
“What makes this study significant is that it shifts attention from blaming unemployed youth for lacking skills to examining how organisational hiring practices themselves can become barriers to inclusion,” April said.
“If we want meaningful transformation, we need to rethink the hidden cultural assumptions and embedded homosocial reproduction that shape who is seen as employable.”
The researchers contend that many employers rely heavily on subjective assessments of personality and cultural fit during interviews, allowing unconscious biases to influence decisions long before candidates’ competencies are objectively evaluated.
According to the study, perceptions of interpersonal ease, organisational fit and reputational safety frequently shape recruitment outcomes, effectively becoming gatekeeping mechanisms that determine access to employment opportunities.
“Skills shortage”
The findings challenge the widely held belief that South Africa’s graduate unemployment crisis is driven primarily by skills shortages. Instead, the study suggests that many qualified black graduates may be excluded by hiring systems that reward cultural familiarity rather than merit.
The report calls for sweeping reforms in recruitment practices, including broader definitions of professionalism, greater scrutiny of interview processes and a reduction in the use of cultural familiarity as a proxy for competence.
Researchers argue that unless organisations confront these hidden barriers, employment inequality will continue to be reproduced even in workplaces that appear racially diverse on the surface. Employment crises were hardly confined to the Global South, yet “the magnitude and tenacity of youth unemployment in post-apartheid South Africa” remain distinctive, the study noted.
No comment
Approached for comment, Department of Employment and Labour officials declined to respond to questions, adding that they could not respond until they had reviewed the research.
Department spokesman Teboho Thejane “advised” WSAM to approach the study researchers themselves for comment, instead.
“It is difficult to respond to any of the questions without a full understanding of the terms of reference and methodology applied in the research,” added Thejane in a terse statement.
Spokespersons of both the Department of Higher Education and Training and the SA Chamber of Commerce had not responded to questions sent to them by late tonight.
The findings add a new dimension to the national debate on youth unemployment, suggesting that the challenge facing many black graduates may not simply be a shortage of jobs, but the invisible filters determining who gets considered for them.
For a generation of young South Africans carrying degrees but struggling to enter the workforce, the study raises an uncomfortable question: if qualifications alone are not enough, how many opportunities are being decided before the interview is even over?
