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Minorities Who ‘Whiten’ Résumés More Likely to Get Interview

Vice

Member
Katherine DeCelles, a professor at Harvard Business School, along with colleagues from the University of Toronto and Stanford University, recently studied this phenomenon in “Whitened Résumés: Race and Self-Presentation in the Labor Market” (pdf). “Discrimination still exists in the workplace,” said DeCelles. “Some applicants were willing to lose what could be seen as valuable pieces of human capital because they were more worried about giving away their race.”

Although the practice sounds demeaning and reductive in the year 2017, apparently it works. In one study, researchers sent out whitened résumés and nonwhitened résumés to 1,600 employers. Twenty-five percent of black applicants received callbacks when their résumés were whitened, compared with 10 percent of the job seekers who left their ethnic details on the same résumés.

Article:
http://trib.al/DTa76tP

Study: http://www-2.rotman.utoronto.ca/facbios/file/Whitening MS R2 Accepted.pdf
 
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Yup all minorities applying for jobs already know this. I've often wanted to just write a fake last name so that they wouldn't be able to tell that I was Asian.
 
Pretty commonly known fact.

The depressing thing is realizing that the current culture of resumes and interviews is pretty lousy at actually finding a good hire anyways.
 
Well minorities knew this obviously. White people as a group, some did but most don't care or will make some weak argument about assimilation or whatever or that we're "post racial" or they don't see color, or the hundreds of other nonsense.

Haha, when I first typed this up I literally had "all minorities" in place of "everyone", but I wanted to give most white people the benefit of the doubt

Duh? I guess.

I mastered my white voice.

Ah, the white voice. Reminds me of this video
 
Yup. My wife refuses to give our kids any Black sounding names due to that.

I remember my previous job was over the phone. I got the job. Years later my boss and the guys that interviewed me went out to lunch and they mentioned they thought I was white over the phone interview.

I wasn't insulted as they were Black so I told em blunt:

"Hey man, I'm trying to get paid. I'll put on that Margaret Thatcher and speak the Kings English when the need arises. Fuck the bull."



Goat first post.
 
Uhh, yeah? Its a fucking shame that it has to be this way but its true. My mom taught me to do this at a young age when i'd start looking for work.
 

Pau

Member
This has been known for years.
Same with being female.
Its way research citations are given as: Smith, F.
I wonder how us gals with minority names fare on average comparatively. I don't think I've seen a study do a breakdown that way. It's either ethnicity or gender.
 
Lol these studies have to be done by people trying to disprove the theory and then they are like oh shit I guess it's true and publish it.
 

kaioshade

Member
I am (un?)fortunate enough to soumd like a stereotypical meek white guy. It never gets old when my entire 6'4" black self strolls into an interview.
 
Of course this is a thing. I'm not saying "duh", because black people know this, but white people have no idea. But yeah.

I had an interview earlier this week over the phone We made small talk, and she noticed my name and started talking about how it's Irish and how her grandmother was Irish and all that jazz. At that point I knew she was under the assumption that the person speaking to her was a nice white man and not a scary black creature attempting to be human.

When I stepped into her office the next day for the in-person interview, she glared at me like I lied to her. That happy tone was gone. She even asked me to verify who I was a few times more than I felt necessary.

That's the worst part. When white people feel like we are the problem because we "lied" to them.
 

PSqueak

Banned
Oh yeah, i remember a story going viral about a guy names José Zamora who only started getting calls back when he started writing his name as "Joe Zamora".
 

Barzul

Member
Yeah I know I definitely remove any signs of my ethnicity in my voice when I talking on the phone. My name is black as hell though, so if I get a call in the first place I know that's definitely already been considered.
 
Of course this is a thing. I'm not saying "duh", because black people know this, but white people have no idea. But yeah.

I had an interview earlier this week over the phone We made small talk, and she noticed my name and started talking about how it's Irish and how her grandmother was Irish and all that jazz. At that point I knew she was under the assumption that the person speaking to her was a nice white man and not a scary black creature attempting to be human.

When I stepped into her office the next day for the in-person interview, she glared at me like I lied to her. That happy tone was gone. She even asked me to verify who I was a few times more than I felt necessary.

That's the worst part. When white people feel like we are the problem because we "lied" to them.

God damn
 

Apathy

Member
No duh. Lucky for me I have a "traditional" American name and can speak "traditionally" on the phone.

Man I am so lucky with that. I got a name that has a version in Spanish and in English but it's spelled the same way. If I had gotten a Spanish name like my cousins (Jose, Jesus) I would have way more trouble
 

Switch Back 9

a lot of my threads involve me fucking up somehow. Perhaps I'm a moron?
Of course this is a thing. I'm not saying "duh", because black people know this, but white people have no idea. But yeah.

Man GAF sure loves to generalize eh.

It might be because I went to school in western Toronto but I've known about this phenomenon for years. It's not as bad where I'm from because a good chunk of people doing the hiring aren't Caucasian, but it's known and it's definitely a thing.

On top of this, having to explain to (white) friends that naming their child Royal or Angel might not look great on future resumes got a surprising amount of flak.

Sorry man, you think your kid with a stripper name is going to get looked at twice for that office job? Gimme a break
 
Sad that I sometimes feel it's safer to put White, rather than Asian on my applications. It also helps that I generally look white despite being Half Asian.
 

PSqueak

Banned
How do you whiten a resume?

Leaving out details about your [ethnic] heritage and listing your own name as something more "white" sounding.

When i worked as part of a Directv call center the first tip i was given was to say my name was something more american and white sounding like "Robert" so the customers wouldn't flip the fuck out. The principle is the same.
 

ColdPizza

Banned
Leaving out details about your [ethnic] heritage and listing your own name as something more "white" sounding.

When i worked as part of a Directv call center the first tip i was given was to say my name was something more american and white sounding like "Robert" so the customers wouldn't flip the fuck out. The principle is the same.

Yeah, looks like people would use initials to hide ethnic names etc.

When I called DirecTV once I talked to a rep named Asia. Even told her I loved her name. That made for a great phone call and good customer service.
 
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