‘Relatable’ over qualified: UCT research exposes silent barrier facing black youth.
Image: PEXELS
A study co-led by the University of Cape Town (UCT) has found that black youth in South Africa may face hidden barriers in corporate graduate recruitment, where hiring decisions are often influenced not only by qualifications and competence, but also by whether candidates are seen as relatable
The research was conducted together with scholars from Ankara Hacı Bayram Veli University and Brunel University London.
The study, titled "Relatability as a racialised construct in corporate graduate recruitment: Revealing a hidden mechanism of labour market exclusion for black African youth in South Africa", was published in the British Journal of Sociology.
According to the researchers, "relatability" can act as a hidden barrier in hiring processes, especially for black graduates in South Africa.
"Our research shows that graduate recruitment is not always driven purely by competence or qualifications.
"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," 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 (GSB).
He added that this study is crucial because it turns the focus away from blaming unemployed youth for a lack of skills and instead looks at how organisational recruiting procedures can become barriers to inclusion.
"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 used qualitative interviews and identified five connected factors influencing hiring decisions: self-presentation, confidence, bias, choice and affinity. They argued that whiteness often functions as the standard against which candidates are judged.
"We extend theories of social closure into aesthetic and affective domains, conceptualising relatability as a meso‐level mechanism linking micro‐interactional judgements to macro‐level racial hierarchies," the paper said.
The study said this approach can help explain how cultural expectations and behaviour are used in exclusionary ways, even in systems that appear racially neutral.
Researchers called for reforms in recruitment practices, including changing organisational norms, widening ideas of professionalism and reducing the use of cultural familiarity as a measure of merit.
The paper argued that relatability has become "an institutionalised mechanism through which classed and racialised dispositions are recognised and reproduced, even within racially diverse hiring structures".
The study also linked these findings to South Africa's wider unemployment crisis. According to Statistics South Africa, the country’s unemployment rate stood at 32.9% in the first quarter of 2025.
Researchers said their findings showed that hiring decisions are often influenced by perceptions of interpersonal comfort, organisational fit and reputational safety before qualifications or competence are formally assessed.
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