Study Job candidates with ethnic-sounding names get fewer callbacks from employers

Study Job candidates with ethnic-sounding names get fewer callbacks from employersStudy Job candidates with ethnic-sounding names get fewer callbacks from employersWhen managers are searching for good candidates, they may be overlooking qualified people without even knowing it.Its well-established that job applicants with ethnic-sounding names working in English-speaking countries like the US, UK, and Canada, get fewer job opportunities than people with recognizably white or English-sounding names. Now a newly released study from Canada adds some detail on just how hard it is for people with recognizably ethnic names to even get their feet in the door at many companies, - despite being highly qualified and educated at the same schools as other employees.That suggests that companies arent necessarily picking the people based on the best experience or abilities, which could be hurting overall performance. Companies with diverse staff perform better financially, according to consulting firm McKinsey, which cited numerous studies.A new analysis from theUniversity of Toronto and Ryerson University shows that equally qualified applicants with Asian names - a broad category that includes names perceived as originating in India, Pakistan, or China - were 28% less likely to score an interview at Canadian companies than applicants with Anglo names, even when all the job candidates had been educated and employed in Canada.This means that for every 100 calls received by applicants with Anglo names, applicants with Asian names received only 72.2, the researchers wrote.The researchers suggested that discrimination was the only possible reason for the difference in employers choice of candidates, since all the candidates has similar qualifications, including equivalent degrees. All had also lived and worked in Canada all their lives.The data included examples of Anglo-Canadian names like Greg Johnson and Emily Brown Indian names used included Samir Sharma and Tara Singh Pa kistani names included Ali Saeed and Hina Chaudhry, and Chinese names included Lei Li and Xuiying Zhang. The researchers seem to have only examined fully ethnic names and said they did not carefully examine the outcomes for people with Anglicized first names combined with Asian-sounding last names.Fear of heavy accentsIn one startling paragraph, the University of Toronto researchers described why employers didnt even call back the applicants with Asian names open discrimination based on names.Employers indicated that an Asian name suggested the possibility of language problems and heavy accents, the University of Toronto researchers wrote.But the researchers didnt buy that excuse from the employers.The information in the resumes - including the Canadian education and experience - would contradict this concern, and in any case the employer could easily check by means of a quick telephone call. The language-difficulty rationale was also challenged by the fact that rates of discrimin ation were similar regardless of the extent to which the job required communication skills. So employers had no evidence to base their concerns about the language skills of the Asians from which they received resumes, the researchers concluded.Bigger companies discriminate lessThe new analysis also took a closer look at just how often large companies, with mora than 500 employees, called in candidates with ethnic Asian names, compared to small companies.Overall, large Canadian employers discriminated against candidates with Asian names about half as often as smaller employers did.The specific size of the organization had a lot to do with these decisions. The Asian-named applicants with all-Canadian qualifications had 20% fewer calls in the largest organizations, 39% fewer in the medium size organizations, and 37%fewer in the smallest organizations of fewer than 50 employees, the researchers said.A common occurrenceMany studies have shown that employers favor white-sounding names in Western countries including the United States, France, Sweden, Germany, and the UK. A Swedish study in 2007 found that candidates with Swedish names received 50% more call-backs than Middle Eastern names, the University of Toronto andRyerson researchers noted.English-sounding names are also favored over names that sound African-American when it comes to hiring, according to a 2003 study. The researchers did a field experiment where they sent almost 5000 resumes to more than 1300 employment ads in Chicago and Boston newspapers for jobs in sales, administrative help, clerical and customer services. They recorded how many people were contacted for an interview. Half were sent with stereotypically White sounding names like Emily Walsh or Greg Baker, and the other half with stereotypically Black names like Lakisha Washington or Jamal Jones.There was a stark difference in who made it to the next round of the hiring process, with resumes of White-sounding applicants getting 50% more callba cks. The report also claimed that despite the a company claiming to be an Equal Opportunity Employer, they were just as prejudiced as others.The evidence of discrimination hasnt gone without notice by minority job applicants, who are increasingly pushing back.Silicon Valley data mining company Palantir Technologies, whose largest shareholder is billionaire Peter Thiel, is embroiled in an ongoing lawsuit filed by the US Department of Labor. The lawsuit alleges that Palantir discriminated against Asian job-seekers - even those reportedly as qualified as whites - and relying on an unfair referral process.Discrimination in new formsThe authors of the study about Asian names concluded with questions about the modern workplace that many companies will have to confront What types of employers reject applications simply on the basis of an applicants Asian name? And what types are unwilling to pursue applications with Asian names, even with Canadian qualifications or possibly even with som e foreign qualifications? Are the Asian-name averse employers representative of older or more traditional segments of the labour market, where skills may be required but matter less than finding employees who will be part of the gang at work? .These are important questions because they may suggest whether changes toward a more advanced and knowledge-based economy is likely to break down vestiges of racial discrimination, or whether they simply maintain and practice such discrimination in new forms.