Behind the Research: Isamar Troncoso
by Shona Simkin When posting an online review of a restaurant or hotel, have you ever hesitated upon noting that the owner or manager has responded to other comments? Isamar Troncoso wondered about that very issue, and decided to take a closer look. As an assistant professor of business administration in the Marketing Unit, Troncoso researches online platforms and teaches Marketing in the first year Required Curriculum. We talked with Troncoso about how she became interested in this field, what she’s researching now, and what she likes to do in her free time. What is your area of research? Another of my research papers studies freelancing platforms like Upwork and examines how the pictures of the workers might affect their hiring outcomes. We were particularly interested in the role that appearances could play in different jobs, coming from the idea some people hold that what a software engineer looks like might be different from what an artist looks like. Our results suggest that part of the reason looks matters in these online platforms is that it's hard to decide who to hire. Employers usually receive applications from many candidates, many of them with five-star reviews. At some point, a subjective judgment, such as "looking like a programmer," might kick in to help employers break ties among highly qualified candidates. How do you go about this research? In that project, we wanted to know to what extent appearance in hiring was related to gender, race, or other things in their photo (quality of the photo, accessories, background). The conjoint study allowed us to estimate this better by creating more variation in the data—women are still underrepresented in STEM degrees and related jobs, for example. We also used these experiments to create artificial variations of the current platform design, such as hiding the photo until after the first screening process or removing it altogether, to understand how appearances affect hiring decisions. What are you working on at the moment? How did you get interested in this field? Where are you from, and what do you like to do in your spare time? In my free time I like climbing and eating—I’m a bit of a foodie, so together it is a good balance! I try to do indoor climbing a few times a week; to me, it is a nice combo of physical and mental challenges because I am scared of heights, so I have to push myself. It is also one of the few things that helps me disconnect—I can't think about anything else when climbing. And I love trying new restaurants with my husband and experimenting with new recipes at home. I’m probably better at finding new restaurants than cooking at home—but once in a while I try cooking Chilean food that I can’t find here. Last Chilean holiday, I was really craving empanadas, so I looked for some recipes online, and they came out pretty good! |
Post a Comment
Comments must be on-topic and civil in tone (with no name calling or personal attacks). Any promotional language or urls will be removed immediately. Your comment may be edited for clarity and length.