Employers less likely to chose applicants with foreign-sounding names

A professor at the University of British Columbia tackles the idea of equal opportunity employment in a recent study. It turns out, you’re much more likely to get a callback after submitting a resume simply by having a perceived “white” and not foreign name.

As part of his research, the professor tailored 6,000 mock resumes to specific job requirements in 20 occupational categories and sent them to employers with online job postings in the Greater Toronto area.

Each resume listed a bachelor’s degree and up to six years’ experience but the study found resumes with names like Jill Wilson or John Martin received interview callbacks 40 per cent more often than identical resumes with names like Sana Khan or Lei Li.

The study mirrors another published in 2003 by the National Bureau of Economics Research, in which researchers found that job applicants with African-American sounding names tended to get 10 callbacks while applicants with white names got 15.

Click here to read the summary of the research “Employers’ Replies to Racial Names.”