Potential Discrimination of an Ethnic-Sounding Name
Driving down any main city street reveals “Help Wanted” signs on almost every corner, yet there appears to be a disconnect as a recent Wall Street Journal podcast revealed that “unemployment remains near a 50-year low with about 8 million positions remain unfilled while some candidates say they’ve hit a wall when trying to land a job” (Borchers).
There is clearly a need for talent and there are many opportunities for employees looking for work. To better understand this dilemma, managers should examine their recruitment and selection processes. Recruitment refers to the process of “identifying, attracting, interviewing, selecting, hiring and onboarding employees. It involves everything from the identification of a staffing need to filling it” (SmartRecruiters). Recruitment and selection are partners in locating and hiring new organizational members. Selection refers to the process of “assessing candidates’ qualities, expertise and experience to narrow down the pool of candidates” (Personio) so that the candidate best suited for the role and organization is hired.
What’s the problem? Some job seekers have found that hiring managers are not calling them back while others complain about going through multiple rounds of interviews or being assigned projects and presentations. All of these efforts are for nothing when the candidate isn’t hired. Gone are the days when job seekers would be passively recruited to job switch with little to no effort. For others, it’s a different story with a similar ending. Perhaps it’s something more than a recruitment and selection issue; discrimination may be at play.
Recently, a Black man accused a hotel in Michigan of racial discrimination after he states that he was only invited to an interview after he changed the name on his application to one that “sounded more Caucasian” (Bisset). According to the pending litigation, Dwight Jackson sent multiple applications to a specific hotel in Detroit, Michigan, on multiple occasions, using his own name. None of these applications led to an interview. Mr. Jackson then changed the name on his application to the more Caucasian sounding name of John Jebrowski, using the same cover letter and resume as previously submitted. Soon after, Mr. Jackson was granted an interview with the name of John Jebrowski. Again, nothing but the name on the resume and cover letter were changed. Shortly after the interview, Mr. Jackson was “informed that he was no longer a viable candidate for the position” (Bisset). Mr. Jackson’s lawsuit claims that the hotel is discriminating against him based on his race and is engaged in unlawful hiring practices.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, discrimination is prohibited under Title Vll of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This legislation makes it illegal for employers to discriminate against someone based on their race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Title Vll specifically identifies that it is unlawful to discriminate in any aspect of employment, including hiring and firing. So how important is the ethnicity of a job candidate’s name? The hotel showed interest in hiring “John Debrowski” when he was identified as a Caucasian male but was denied employment when identified as Dwight Jackson, a Black male. The resumes were forwarded to the Washington Post, who confirmed that they were identical except for the applicant name and starting date of Jackson’s current role.
How much does an ethnic sounding name impact recruitment and selection? A Discrimination Report Card study sent more than 83,000 fictitious job applications to Fortune 500 firms. It found that “distinctively Black” names reduced the chance of a call back by 2.1%, compared with White-sounding names. As for Mr. Jackson’s lawsuit claiming discrimination and unlawful hiring practices, it will be important to see how an ethnic name impacts an organization’s recruitment and selection processes.
https://www.justice.gov/crt/laws-we-enforce
https://www.smartrecruiters.com/resources/glossary/recruitment/
https://www.personio.com/hr-lexicon/recruitment-and-selection/
Borchers, Callum. https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/your-money-matters/why-some-people-still-cant-find-work-in-a-strong-job-market/
Bisset, Victoria and Rosenzweig-Ziff, Dan. Black man only got job interview after using White-sounding name, lawsuit says. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/07/11/dwight-jackson-job-discrimination-resume-name/