Now before you start on your internal racism rant, there are some studies behind this. So chill.
Why are we all here at Penn State? We want a degree to get a career, hopefully, one day. When you apply for a job you send in your pretty printed resume telling the company who you are and what you can do. But is the name at the top of that resume going to get or deny you a job?
A study done by The National Bureau of Economic Research says it does. They conducted a large study where they responded to 1300 ads in the newspaper for similar jobs ranging from cashier to sales manager. They sent about a total of 5000 resumes; they sent in 4 resumes for each jobs. 2 of the resumes were higher quality and 2 were lower. From each quality, the resumes were the same, except they randomly assigned one white sounding name and one black sounding name in each category. Source.
The results were pretty racist, not going to lie. It took the white names on average 10 resumes sent before a call came. Meanwhile it took, African-American names around 15 tries. The white names got 50% more calls. When looking at just the higher quality applications, the white names only go 30% more calls. Source.
ABC News conducted a smaller version of the study. They had six participants post 2 copies of their resumes on a popular job search site. One copy would have their actual ethnic sounding name while the second one would have a more white sounding name. Source.
Again some disappointing results. The white name resumes got downloaded on average 17% more. Also, most of the racist responses seemed to come from larger companies.
Why is this?
So we did the experiments and they seem pretty thorough to me.
What we don’t know is the mechanism that cause that. It is illegal for them to actually discriminate so we can rule out them doing it on purpose. I believe it is possible for it to be subconscious. As if we take stereotypes and connect them with less white names.
A Fortune 500 company recruiter said “It’s a choice [I] was trained to make: When representing certain companies, do not send black candidates. And on a résumé, a name may be the only cue of the applicant’s race.” Source.
It also might be that people are more comfortable with those of their own race. So if a higher percent of people are hiring are white they might feel more comfortable with other white people, as horrible as that sounds. Source.
So if I want a job I need to change my name?
No, I’m not saying change your name. Just know that your name could be keeping you from getting the most employment opportunities possible. If you’re genuinely concerned, the best thing you can do is try to get them so see past just a resume and meet with them. Also, if you can find a way to use your name to make you more memorable, you are more likely to be hired. Source.
Here’s an anecdote from a man who experienced this.
That’s all for now! Happy job hunting!
It is a great topic to discuss but here are some problems I wonder:
In your research, there are whites and African American, what about other Ethnic? Is there any difference between other Ethinic? Whether is the person who in charges of hiring can influence the decision? These are the problems still need to be considered. Because what my mother tells me is that when she considers of hiring new employees, names do not affect their decision. Since I am Chinese, maybe culture also differs and plays a role.
I think that this is a very accurate blog post. Many times a name can be a deciding factor as to weather you get a call back. I know at the company my dad works at that he tells me that the first thing they look at is there name. He is black and he tells me that the reason they don’t hire people with crazy names isn’t because of their race its just because the company believes that it is unprofessional and don’t want names like that to relate back to their company. I personally believe that it is sad why many people don;t get called back because of their name but thats the way the world works. But because we have experienced people being turned away hopefully we would make smart decisions when we finally have kids.
This is a very interesting article. I never really thought about if people hiring really did this. Although I guess people hiring do this, they also have a lot of anti-discrimination laws. This website lists these laws.
This is a very interesting article. I actually remember a while back hearing about the Jose vs. Joe study. I was wondering whether or not it depended on the race of the person in charge of hiring, so I am glad that you made sure to mention that in your article. Unfortunately, this is a problem that society is having today. Oddly enough, a more ethnic sounding name gets you into colleges easier than it does getting you a job. Colleges are realizing that it is important to have diverse campuses, so maybe job will catch on to that trend sooner rather than later.
I don’t think there is a mechanism for this. This is white privilege. Things like this happen all the time, and white people just don’t notice it. I am wondering how we could go further into this experiment. The next step could be to interview the recruiters and ask what their thought process is, but I bet most of their responses would sound just like the guy you quoted. Their going to give whatever reason makes them sound like less of a jerk. There really is no reason to explain it besides white privilege.
Wait but don’t companies have quotas that have to meet regarding percentages of each race they hire so wouldn’t they actually look at this person and see what they look like and all that?