- Apr 21, 2007
- 8,971
- 5,592
Study suggests bias against 'black' names on resumes
HR Magazine, Feb, 2003 by Bill Leonard
Employers may be selecting or overlooking prospective job candidates for interviews based on their potential race as suggested by names, according to a recent study by two professors from the University of Chicago and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
To test whether employers might discriminate against job applicants with black-sounding names, associate professors of economics Marianne Bertrand with Chicago's Graduate School of Business and Sendhil Mullainathan with MIT conducted an elaborate experiment. They fabricated resumes for multiple "phantom" job seekers with common black and white names. The professors then sent out nearly 5,000 resumes for 1,300 job openings advertised in newspapers and on online job sites throughout Chicago and Boston.
"We searched online and selected resumes of actual job seekers," says Bertrand. "We then used those to create models for several different realistic resumes with the appropriate education and experience needed for typical job openings advertised in newspapers."
Most job openings for which the researchers sent resumes were administrative, sales, clerical and managerial positions. Bertrand and Mullainathan randomly assigned the applicants names common to either black men, black women, white men or white women and were careful not to send identical resumes to the same employer.
READ MORE: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3495/is_2_48/ai_97873146/
HR Magazine, Feb, 2003 by Bill Leonard
Employers may be selecting or overlooking prospective job candidates for interviews based on their potential race as suggested by names, according to a recent study by two professors from the University of Chicago and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
To test whether employers might discriminate against job applicants with black-sounding names, associate professors of economics Marianne Bertrand with Chicago's Graduate School of Business and Sendhil Mullainathan with MIT conducted an elaborate experiment. They fabricated resumes for multiple "phantom" job seekers with common black and white names. The professors then sent out nearly 5,000 resumes for 1,300 job openings advertised in newspapers and on online job sites throughout Chicago and Boston.
"We searched online and selected resumes of actual job seekers," says Bertrand. "We then used those to create models for several different realistic resumes with the appropriate education and experience needed for typical job openings advertised in newspapers."
Most job openings for which the researchers sent resumes were administrative, sales, clerical and managerial positions. Bertrand and Mullainathan randomly assigned the applicants names common to either black men, black women, white men or white women and were careful not to send identical resumes to the same employer.
READ MORE: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3495/is_2_48/ai_97873146/