Would you change your name to get a job?

Just how far would you go when applying for a job? Would you for instance be prepared to change your name to get the job? How do you feel about the advice that you should be prepared to change just about everything on your CV including your name, to tailor your application for every role you apply for?

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.

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.