Skill evaluations over careers: hiring software developers and human resource professionals in Germany

Abstract Whereas research on hiring processes shows how merit is constructed during the evaluations, the cultural dimension of job-specific skills has attracted little attention. These skill evaluations vary over careers and, at the same time, constitute what possible careers may look like in the labour market. I investigate how hiring agents evaluate skills over careers, adding a career approach to skill evaluations in hiring. Skills are analysed through the concept of skill repertoires as shared grammars of valuing and making sense of skills. Based on interviews with hiring agents for software development and human resource management (HRM) positions in Germany (n = 42), I show different dominant skill repertoires that are linked to career narratives, evaluative techniques, and across-career differences. The skill growth repertoire in software development sets out shared standards of evaluation across careers as a project of learning and teaching. In HRM, the natural fit repertoire, wherein hiring agents evaluate and make sense of skills as inborn competencies, is enmeshed with an image of individualised careers that fit a person. These skill repertoires shape evaluations of skills across career stages in different patterns and are mirrored in how careers are structured and made sense of.