It turns out that it could be your name that is causing you to be placed in the reject pile. A couple of years ago,the National Bureau of Economic Research published the results of large-scale survey showing systematic discrimination among large US employers. The researchers sent 83,000 fictitious applications to 108 large employers for entry-level positions right across the USA.
Should you use an alias on your resume to avoid bias?iStock
For each job,the researchers sent one application that had a distinctively black applicant name and another that had a distinctively white applicant name. Brad and Greg were pitted against Darnell and Lamar or Amanda and Kristen vied for jobs with Ebony and Latoya. They also varied other potential sources of discrimination,varying applicant sex,age,sexual orientation,gender identity,and political leaning.
After carefully constructing the CVs to be otherwise equivalent,the researchers sent them off,even staggering the dates they were sent to avoid raising any suspicions. Then they waited 30 days to see whether the firm would contact the fantasy applicant.
About 24 per cent of applicants were contacted within 30 days. And guess what,applications with distinctively black names were less likely to be contacted than their counterparts with white names. In contrast,the gender of the applicant had no effect on contact rates. The over 40s were contacted less often,but the effect was not as great as it was for race.
The researchers also found evidence of intersectionality effects. Intersectionality refers to the potential for different social categorisations to overlap or amplify social discrimination. It turns out that when applications had a female name,it created a small boost for white applicants,but a small reduction in being contacted for black applicants.
Recruiters were more likely to think a candidate was female if the word “care” was used in explaining a gap in work history.
Overall,all firms were found to discriminate against black applicants,but not surprisingly,there were pockets of firms that were a lot worse than others. Discrimination also varied by the type of job,with black applicants being particularly penalised when applying for customer service roles.
Jobs requiring social or customer service skills showed an advantage for women,but jobs requiring manual skills were for the blokes. Have we learned nothing since the 1950s? For all of those commentators that sneer at diversity initiatives,firms that had greater demographic diversity were also the firms that displayed the least discriminatory behaviour in recruitment.
In the past month,the University of Chicago published “A Discrimination Report Card” that named the companies involved and how they fared on discrimination. It reveals stark differences,with some real outliers in terms of discrimination.
This is all depressingly familiar territory. My research team published a series of papers and then self-help how to write CV books based on similar (but much smaller) behavioural studies where real Australian employers responded to mock-up CVs.
We found recruiters were more likely to think a candidate was female if the word “care” was used in explaining a gap in work history (such as caring for a child or relative). If candidate photographs were included,the applicants were discriminated on their looks. Yes,those perceived to be attractive were judged to be higher achieving lacking any other information. Bias is universal.
There are clear policy messages here for authorities and employers. However,for candidates,what can they do? Should you use an alias to avoid bias?
Changing one’s name seems quite extreme and potentially offensive. Would you like to work for a company fostering such bias? Fighting to eliminate discrimination is a given.
For individual applicants,if they are not already acutely aware of these issues,as I suspect most are,thinking through how best to increase your chances of being shortlisted,and what if anything you are prepared to do in pursuit of that is probably worthwhile at the outset.
But in saying that,why the hell should they have to?
Dr Jim Bright FAPS owns Bright and Associates,a career management consultancy,and is director of evidence&impact at BECOME Education an Ed Tech start-up. Email to. Follow him on Twitter @DrJimBright
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