ABSTRACT
It is common for scholars interested in race and poverty to invoke a lack of access to job networks as a reason why minorities face difficulties in the labor market. A key component of understanding whether minorities are cut off from employment opportunities is to understand why they may be underrepresented in networks that lead to good jobs. The referral process may contribute to minorities' isolation either if there are no minority employees available to refer in pool of workers, or if these employees are reluctant to pass on information about good jobs. In order to study the role of job-referral networks in the application process, people distinguish networked candidates using data from the original application forms. Employee referrals made up 30.2 percent of the applications for which people could identify recruitment source. Even if networked minorities are well represented in application pool, this does not necessarily mean that they will be similarly represented at subsequent stages of screening process.
