ABSTRACT
Employment is the key to economic and social mobility through which one can potentially manage and maintain self-respect, purpose, dignity, agency, and meaning. Human resource professionals (HRPs), therefore, as gatekeepers to employment have an immense potential impact on the lives of historically marginalized populations and their communities. The purpose of this study was to better understand why HRPs hire from historically and structurally marginalized populations and what resistance they face as a result. While many studies have looked at the phenomenon of hiring discrimination and its opposite, there is a dearth of literature and understanding of the “micro” dynamics of progressive hiring.