A Disheartening Reality: “Whitening” the Resume
A few years ago a study by professors at the University of Chicago and MIT found that resumes with “white-sounding” names got 50 percent more responses than ones with “black-sounding” names. Last week a story in the New York Times, “Whitening the Resume,” illustrated how some African American job seekers are coping with this injustice: they are removing or deemphasizing identifiers that could identify them as black in the resume screening process. Here are a few examples from the story:
Tahani Tompkins was struggling to get callbacks for job interviews in the Chicago area this year when a friend made a suggestion: Change your name. Instead of Tahani, a distinctively African-American-sounding name, she began going by T. S. Tompkins in applications.
Yvonne Orr, also searching for work in Chicago, removed her bachelor’s degree from Hampton University, a historically black college, leaving just her master’s degree from Spertus Institute, a Jewish school. She also deleted a position she once held at an African-American nonprofit organization and rearranged her references so the first people listed were not black.
This is an example of where calling out differences destructively leads to injustice and to self protective behavior that robs individuals from fully embracing their cultural identity. The statistics don’t lie here. Behind all the politically correct statements that people make, it is clear that exclusionary behavior still plays out in tangible ways every day. A 50% higher screening out of resumes with “black sounding names” is not a coincidence. While I do not yet know of comparable studies with “Latino sounding” names chances are high the results would be the same.
Outright discrimination is obviously a serious issue that must be vigorously addressed. In addition I believe that there are many who truly are not explicitly discriminatory but who don’t realize their style preferences and their worldviews could inadvertently be screening out good talent.
As I discuss in “The Inclusion Paradox: The Obama Era and the Transformation of Global Diversity,” Diversity training needs to go beyond “tolerance and sensitivity” and actually equip recruiters, hiring managers, and human resources professionals to be culturally competent enough to notice when the screening out is taking place.
It may start with people being able to recognize when that subconscious feeling that may lead to putting the resume least like them in the No pile. But the skill needs to go deeper than when it’s time to assess the minorities who do come in for the interviews. How able are hiring managers to appropriately interpret eye contact, a candidate using “we” instead of “I” language, or whether certain syntax is indicative of poor performance or simply is a languaging preference of different ethnic groups in the US?
Between discrimination and lack of cultural competence we have ended up in the travesty of those who are different working hard at hiding their differences – to their and everyone else’s detriment.
What do think? How much should those who are different assimilate in the workplace in order to be accepted and advance?
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I’m lucky that my surname has little personal value to me. When I change the name, I will face ostracism from my family but maybe they will come to understand it. This whole situation is such a mess. Post -racial America-ha! I wish I could do something to undermine this oppression. I guess all I can do is talk about it… I’m so sorry that it’s like this.
Im very frustrated right now but after researching this topic today Im starting to believe that some hiring managers have preconceived notions and throw certain resumes in the garbage. I will officially try this method and see if this increases the phone interviews.
I hate to say that an incident a few days ago reinforced that America has come a long way but people still have their prejudices. Here is the incident that stayed in my mind:
2 Hispanic men walk into Quick Check. Buy Coffee and sit in sitting area with about 7 white males. Let say 3 of them 40-50 years old and 4 of them of retirement age. I sat at a table alone reading my paper. They started to make fun of the hispanic men because they could tell they did not understand english. THe hispanic men just nodded and smiled evertyime the white males said something mockingly. ” I no speaky English?” stuff like that. I beleive the men sensed they were Illegals and thought it was ok to taunt them.
I knew one of the retired men and he gestered to the group that I(the latin fellow in the corner is latino)guy over there speak the kings English.
I wanted to kind of give the group a mean look so they could cut out the crap but
I was practicing anger management and figured It was none of my business and besides the taunting was not crossing the line. I stood up after finishing my coffee then give them a dirty look and nodded my head.I drove to work and replayed the episode in my head multiple times.
I’m aware that there are good and bad of all kinds. But my final conclusions are that America is changing alot and there are people who just go with with the flow until you stir up some bad feellings they have and especially when they in a group where and they have one thing in common- their ancestors all came from somewhere in Europe many years ago. They petty much kinda like the way things were about 50 to 100 years ago and have no clue or independant thinking or concious to understand that the Native Americans were here 1st and now live on reservations.
I liken the ILLEGALS TO THE Europeans of long ago. An invasion of another people into another peoples current land and way of life.
CQ is very much a theoretical concept in a nation where people of color in the work force are still recognized and referred to as: “ethnic” and “underdogs” quite unabashedly. I was in Phoenix last month (in the year A.D. 2011) and I drove by a street called Sundown Drive. How disturbing is that? And why did the HOA leave out the word: “Town”. Were they being coy? Is that what White people describe as a: “nuance subtlety?” or dare I say “plausible deniability”?
One could argue that I exhibit a significant amount of CQ since I work with many leaders of Indian, Black, Middle Eastern, Latino and Asian backgrounds in the Commercial Real Estate Industry; not White, they prefer being offered services by their own people – they clearly demonstrate that with a firm and curt: “NO, we’re ok!” followed by a deafening click sound resonating from a phone being slammed.
But, if I apply for a job and a person representing the dominant demographic in Human Resources departments across the United States (White & Female), sees my foreign name, my resume has a high probability of being deleted or trashed before even being read. It almost seems as if the same homogenous mentality used in dating by most White females is also being used to make a business decision on behalf of a company.
My parents made monumental sacrifices to legally immigrate to the US. It’s not cheap to legally come here. It takes a minimum of $500,000 cash. They assimilated and adapted. I was born in the US, received my education here and have diverse domestic & international work experiences, but, they gave me a cultural name. So, what happens to me in this economy? Do HR people in the private sector recognize the value I bring to their organization or is their idea of an ideal candidate [for the highest salary the job has to offer] a White married male who is over 6 feet tall with a “safe” and “mainstream” Christian name?
That translates to a theme of being damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
Or is the message, you can approach corporations with the idea of creating a Cultural Intelligence Specialist position, but, the only way you’ll be taken seriously, let alone hired, is if you change the “ethnic” name your parents so graciously and thoughtfully bestowed upon you to something “NORMAL”?
At-least, many Blacks have Christian sounding last names and Jamal Roberts can try James, as insulting and psychologically difficult as that may be to him. But, what do the rest of us bachelor degree holders do in this economy? After all, Sushil Patel can become Sam Patel, but, let’s face it, given his last name, we all know he’s Indian. What if he doesn’t have an IT degree? Does that mean he’s destined for a life of mediocrity? What happens if the American job applicant’s name starts with Mohammed and why hasn’t our President, Barrack, the Barry Hussain of all Obamas not mentioned this issue even once with the state of employment that we currently face?
What’s the message here? You’re allowed to have a Muslim name in the US and be a citizen, you can get an education in a college or university, as long as you can pay for it, but, don’t ask us for a job with a respectable living wage when you graduate, unless you graduate from an Ivy League with a GPA of 3.5 and above?
Where happens to the rest of us “ethnics”? Is hanging my $200,000 B.A. in Economics from the University of Rochester on the wall of my office in a taco truck stand a sign of things to come?
No, I shouldn’t dis taco truck stands. At-least, if I get a job working in one, I can finally put CFO (AND) Cultural Intelligence Specialist on my resume (AND) receive the relevant job experience I need in order to get a job. Now that’s what I call a strategic career plan! Oh wait, crap! I can’t get a job in a taco truck stand. I don’t speak Spanish.
(Can you detect the hint of sarcasm or are people of color in this country not allowed that luxury? What if I call it reverse-sarcasm?)
A penny for your thoughts, oh wise ones…
For more info, see: http://www.imdiversity.com/villages/careers/articles/hicks_name_discrimination.asp
Even those of us who happen to be minorities but who “look white” on paper sometimes pass this paper screen and then get invited to the interview only to have the proverbial door slammed in our face. I make sure to keep all reference to the American Indian Science & Engineering Society and the American Indian Graduate Center on my resume but under “professional associations” along with more neutral-sounding things like National Science Teachers Association because I have had what feels like a lifetime of getting invited to the interview passing the paper screen only to have the door slammed in my face when I got there. Seriously: one time I walked up to a door and I could tell people were back there and no one would open it. Or I get invited halfway around the world based on a positive telephone interview and job offer over the phone, only to get there and have it rescinded when they see me. And all because I’m brown which people think is “black” and everyone knows “black” is the LAST thing any employer wants to hire; Latino second and I think American Indian third.
I actually don’t think that Spanish-surname-screening is as big a problem in the job market because most jobs these days require bilingual-Spanish ability and although Latinas all over this country will call it “discrimination” of some sort if they’re being hired on the presumption of being Spanish-speaking, at least they wind up with JOBS this way and not NOTHING…in spite of having gone to and graduated college with a Bachelors of Science in Biology.
You could actually BE as “white” as possible on paper and on the inside – via upbringing, education and culture; i.e. raised in a good area in the suburbs and attended college-prep or even private religious schools and gone straight to college from high school, no out-of-wedlock babies or drug habits or criminal record – and still wind up with no job because you can’t pass the in-person “screen.” You get through all the screening processes and then the minute they see that your skin colour doesn’t match anything else about your life (or so the assumption is) that’s it, that’s all she wrote.
I’ve even gotten this one: invited to come in person, the door slammed in my face when I got there, and then months later a letter mailed to me and forwarded to me from my old address wondering if I was ever going to show up. If you have lived a “white” life so that you’re not really “whitening” your resume, that’s really YOU on it, you will ultimately get treated like you must be lying either about what you have been through and where you grew up and where you went to school, or that you must be an impostor, that you’re not really the person on that paper that they were expecting to see. Either way, not hired.
It’s almost as if there’s no hope. No solution. No answer.