What if you had to change your name to get a good job?
Does your name identify you as 'other'? Do recruiters care about what you go by?
A few months ago, when I began job hunting in earnest to be able to stay in a specific country (for the second time in my life), I knew how to play the game a little bit better.
I took the years off my education.
I didn’t add locations to my CV.
I removed as much identifying information as I could so that my achievements and work experience could shine.
All this, because I know that recruiters and hiring managers are often biased. It’s not even intentional for all of them — there’s a strong unconscious or implicit bias when people look at resumes. Today, we’re bringing one of them to the forefront.
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet
Would it, really?
Other than gender, a name bias is probably the most common and most spoken-about bias when it comes to hiring. People with ‘ethnic-sounding’ names have probably already faced this. For example, whenever an East Asian introduces themselves with their ‘English’ name, chances are they’ve been told to go by that name to make it easy for others.
Elimi8Hate estimates that over 60% of people who change their names to something more anglicized do so because of racism.
What if they’re not skilled or experienced enough?
Okay, but you actually need to look at their experience for that.
Now, let’s pause for a second and give people the benefit of the doubt.
Sometimes, a name can feel like a good indicator of if the person knows the country the job is based in, sometimes, there may be language requirements, and sometimes it might feel like it’s better to hire ‘locals’ instead of immigrants or expats because of cultural differences.
But here’s the thing — immigrants have been around for a long time.
Most Americans are a great example of this. So many of them are named to honour an Irish/British/Italian (aka European) ancestor. Their names are rooted in their history and culture, but for all intents and purposes, they identify as American and would be at home in a company that requires them to speak English and fit in well with their teams.
So a name isn’t an indicator of a person’s skill, experience, or ability to perform well at a company.
When I went to the UK to study, I lucked out — my name has both Welsh and African origins. Carnelio is derived from Cornelius in the Bible. I’m Catholic by religion. So my resume would fare quite well in that country.
But my friends with quintessentially ‘Indian-sounding’ names (think Hindu or Muslim names) probably had their resumes ignored fairly immediately. Two decades ago, a study found that ‘Black-sounding’ names were less likely to get called for an interview than ‘White’ names or Asian ones.
This bias is alive and well even today. A 2021 study done by Zety that sent in applications that only differed in name, here’s what they found:
“Malik Washington had the highest percentage of hiring managers who said they were likely to call for an interview, while Destiny Washington had the lowest percentage. The name with the largest percentage of hiring managers who said they were unlikely to call was Jose Vazquez.”
This name bias starts pretty young sometimes.
“Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s health secretary, accused the Little Scholars Nursery in Dundee of discriminating against his young daughter on the basis of her name. When Yousaf’s wife Nadia El-Nakla emailed the nursery to ask about places for their two-year-old daughter Amal, she was told there were no spaces available – but a friend with a more white-sounding name who emailed the next day was offered a choice of three afternoons and a tour of the nursery. ”
A name bias impacts more than just hiring. How many of us have had Microsoft Word call out our name as an ‘error’ but let some other names through? Sure, we can’t include all the names in the world, but one would assume that as time passed, we’d create a broader database of names that weren't just those popular in White countries, right?
We talk a lot about getting a foot in the door — but sometimes, the door doesn’t open when you call out your name.
What if they won’t fit in?
Once again, let’s pause to give people the benefit of the doubt — for cultural differences.
Sometimes you think that someone whose name doesn’t match your perceptions and expectations might not fit into your company culture, team, or whatever. A reasonable worry, given that we spend so much of our time at work and with our colleagues.
But again, if someone doesn’t seem like the usual type of person you hire because of cultural differences, wouldn’t that make you want to hire them faster? They’d bring a fresh, new perspective, and you never know what you’d learn.
What if the name bias affects ‘White’ names too?
Most of the discussion around name bias in hiring and in life surrounds ‘ethnic-sounding’ names. But it occurs to me that some ‘White’ names also carry a bias.
You know how we all mock or roll our eyes at those exaggerated spellings of McKeleigh or names like Laikynn? There’s a whole generation of kids who are gonna grow up to send in resumes with those names.
Then there are also people who are named after their parents’ favourite characters — remember kids named Daenerys or Khaleesi? Others are named after fruits like Apple or less-common biblical folks like Moses.
Sure, some of them won’t need to send in resumes, thanks to nepotism and privilege. But for those who do, the name bias might ricochet right back to these ‘White’ names soon enough.
Not only will they show their true age pretty quickly (we’ll tackle ageism in another issue), but they’ll also be setting themselves up for quick rejections once someone sees that name at the top of a CV.
For now, a conscious or implicit name bias stops us from creating well-rounded workplaces where people can bring their true selves full of diverse experiences to work. In the longterm, it only bodes well for a company to be able to check themselves before their biases wreck them.
In Europe, I’d venture that those with Eastern European names that show their origins are also often dismissed quicker than those with [insert country]-sounding names. A lot of this bias also makes it difficult for qualified or those desperately seeking employment for visa purposes to find a good job. If the good places have this bias that makes them think X person may not be the right fit alone because of their name, what do you think the bad places are like?
So, what can we do?
Awareness — I used the word ‘unconscious’ in this article. This is because our cultural upbringing may not have exposed us to others with names that sound different from the majority. We might unconsciously be filtering them out. So realizing there can be an unconscious bias at play can help mitigate that.
This is where blind applications come into play. Countries where the norm is to add photos and locations make it two times more difficult for people who don’t look like the majority or have different names to find good jobs. Take away names, locations, and pictures.
One of the most fruitful experiences of my life was being able to do a work placement at Penguin Random House UK. They ran a lottery, and you didn’t need to hold a degree, have any specific experience, or jump through three dozen hoops to gain some work experience to start your career. Not sure if it’s still true, but at the time, they had done away with requiring degrees for full-time job applications — to me, an immigrant student seeking a work visa and studying for it, that was groundbreaking.
Imagine if more companies were open to hiring people from different cultures, backgrounds, ethnicities, etc. We’d all open our minds a bit more, and wouldn’t that make this world a better place to live?
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Nia's Newsletter Rec
The Dunker is a fortnightly business and creativity newsletter by Freelancer Magazine. You get five links each for your business, freelance, and creative brain and let me tell you, I truly enjoy the picks in every issue. In fact, I'm more than certain I've reshared some of the articles I've read via the Dunker here.
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Cool things to check out this week 💝
Amazing things the human body does that most of us don't know.
Next week, Tuesday at 11 am UK time (28 Feb), I'll be hosting #ContentClubUK — it's a Twitter chat for folks who make, write, or work with content. It's fun and takes 30 mins (you don't need to be from the UK or anything) — join in if you'd like!
This is how a ball point pen works — no, I didn't know there's a literal ball either (you live and you learn, eh?).
ICYMI — the perils of going to stock photo university (if you need a laugh, this is for you).
Ending this with some small acts of kindness if you'd like to do one:
Thanks for reading! I’ll see you next week — maybe not at the same time, but definitely the same place.
I love this. I know that perceptions change due to names (even when someone is introduced to me, I take note of the name and what it means) but it shouldn't be a thing for opportunities like jobs and education. Interesting that you took off your years and locations in your resume! It says a lot about things that can cause a resume to be discarded.