Does an Athletic Past Give Job Applicants a Lift?

“This guy is actively involved in sports at a high level,” Vera said.

“Norwegian champion, actually!” Nora said. “Nordic champion as well!”

Vera noted approvingly, “That’s what we look for. Healthy interests that are time-consuming, because that says something about commitment.”

This was a real conversation observed by Lisa Sølvberg, a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Bergen. And it was by no means unique. In a study of Norwegian firms in high-status industries such as finance, accounting, law, and medicine, Sølvberg and Kellogg’s Lauren Rivera found that sports came up over and over in candidate evaluations.

Indeed, having an athletic background helped increase applicants’ odds of getting an interview or an offer. “It was a real edge,” says Rivera, a professor of management and organizations.

By observing hundreds of candidate evaluations, the researchers found that Norwegian companies often gave preferential treatment to applicants with experience in skiing, cycling, and other sports popular in the country.

The results came as a surprise, given Norway’s reputation for being an egalitarian society with high social mobility. In previous work, Rivera had seen a similar phenomenon in the U.S., where high-level participation in certain sports was a key factor in evaluating applicants at prestigious firms.

“[In Norway,] we still see these exact same tools—albeit different sports—being used as tools of exclusion that end up reproducing inequalities,” Rivera says.

Varsity athlete? You’re in

In her earlier research, Rivera found that extracurricular activities played “a huge part” in how American investment banks, law firms, and consulting companies evaluated possible hires. Companies favored candidates who played sports like lacrosse or squash that are typically associated with affluence, particularly at the varsity level. Athletes in these sports tend to come from privileged backgrounds, with parents who can afford the high participation fees and have the time to shuttle kids to and from games.

Rivera became involved in the Norway research when Sølvberg visited Kellogg during her PhD program and shared that she had uncovered similar patterns at certain types of Norwegian companies.

They focused their research on hiring patterns at “elite,” or very selective, firms in three different sectors: first, companies in industries such as finance and accounting that achieved their elite status through economic capital; second, organizations with a lot of cultural value, such as prestigious arts and publishing organizations; and third, “balanced” companies, such as those in medicine and law, with a high level of both economic and cultural capital.

Sølvberg interviewed 50 people with various roles and levels of seniority who played an active part in the hiring process at their firms. She also observed the hiring process at nine companies, sitting in on 61 job interviews and roughly 200 candidate evaluations.

This dataset was unique because, in hiring studies, “we usually don’t have access to those closed-door moments,” Rivera says.

More points for sports

The researchers noticed a strong focus on athletics in the hiring process at finance, accounting, law, and medicine organizations. And evaluators weren’t shy about stating their preferences. “It was very blatant,” Rivera says. “People knew this was happening, and they kind of leaned into it.”

For example, some firms awarded more points to resumes that included a background in sports. One investment banker said, “I put a lot of emphasis on people who have engaged in competitive sports” because it “says a lot about the personality in a positive way.” An HR manager noted that a director at a previous company “was very fond of cross‐country skiing. So, everyone who could do cross‐country skiing at a certain level” got an interview.

Sports talk also came up frequently during interviews with candidates—in more than 80 percent of interactions at firms in the economic and “balanced” sectors. In deliberation meetings after interviews, evaluators usually didn’t refer to an applicant’s athletic background directly but did occasionally mention sports as a point in the candidate’s favor, suggesting that it could “serve as a selection criterion that could explicitly push a candidate into the acceptance pile,” the researchers wrote.

Male-dominated sports such as skiing, soccer, rowing, and cycling accounted for 79 percent of the mentions in Sølvberg’s interviews with employees. In the economic sector and at law firms, evaluators also preferred candidates who had played in an adult competitive or professional league—activities that skew toward men and the upper class.

The clear exceptions were elite firms in publishing and the arts. Sports rarely came up in these job interviews and mostly as part of a wider-ranging discussion that included other interests such as music.

Looking-glass merit

Why did some employers care so much about a background in sports, even when it had nothing to do with the candidates’ job responsibilities?

Some evaluators saw athletics as a marker of valuable traits, such as good time management, ambition, determination, and the ability to work in teams (even if the person had only played an individual sport). Other evaluators reasoned that a sporty candidate would fit in better socially. In contrast, the lack of a sports background was sometimes seen as a sign of sloth. One evaluator admitted, “When I looked at those CVs, I thought that those who hadn’t played sports, are they a bit lazy?”

Yet other personal activities that could signal positive character traits weren’t given the same weight. For instance, parenting or working while attending university, which could also indicate good time management, were not valued. This exemplifies what Rivera calls looking-glass merit: many employees at these firms are athletes themselves, and they’re “defining what a good worker is through their own experience.”

Some Norwegian firms even seemed to use athletic criteria to circumvent laws prohibiting discrimination based on disability or health conditions. Evaluators in the healthcare sector mentioned that athleticism signaled an ability to handle intense work hours and mental demands. They felt that people who participated in sports were more “reliable,” and that such people were less likely to take advantage of Norway’s generous sick-leave policy.

“They wanted people who are healthy enough never to use it,” Rivera says. In this context, the preference for athletes was “a way of excluding people on the basis of health and disability status.”

In part, these firms’ emphasis on sports was specific to Norway. In the economic sector and law firms, organized athletic activities are central to firm culture, and many employees spend time together on offsite ski trips or cycling adventures. Many of these firms also compete in national and international athletic events, a source of pride for the company and a way to boost its status.

If “you can do our equivalent of black diamond [slopes] or go off the trails, you’re a good enough skier that you can participate in the group,” Rivera says.

A more-expansive view

Instead of focusing so much on sports, Rivera believes firms should think about which traits they want to measure and assess those traits directly. For example, if they want to assess a candidate’s time management, they could specifically test for that skill as part of the evaluation.

Firms that want to rely on proxies should “thoroughly vet the ones they use to make sure that they are not systematically excluding a large portion of the population,” Rivera says. “Athletes do not have a monopoly on time management and teamwork.”

Employers need to reconsider how they judge candidates so that they’re not using a very narrow definition of merit, she adds. They should ask themselves, “Are there people we are excluding for reasons that have nothing to do with how good a worker they could be?”