Good Resume But No Interviews It Could Be Your Name

Good Resume But No Interviews It Could Be Your NameGood Resume But No Interviews Could Be Your NameGood Resume But No Interviews It Could Be Your NameAfter generations of Georges, Williams, Johns, and Jameses, we now have a Barack in the White House. So we can all agree that anthroponym discrimination is history. Yeah, right Tell that to the woman who wrote this post on Tuesday, describing zu sich experience as a highly qualified job candidate who couldnt get an interview until she began using her middle name (Danielle) instead of her first name (Danisha) on her resume.Name discrimination is a discouraging fact, but hardly a surprise. Its just one of the many biases that can affect the hiring process. Several years ago (2003), Kendra Hamilton reported on a study in which researchers from the University of Chicago and MIT sent out 5,000 resumes with either white-sounding or black-sounding names chosen from birth records. Bottom line, they found that resumes with names like Jay, Brad, Carrie, and Kristen were 50 percent more likely to receive a callback than those with names like Keisha, Latoya, Rasheed, and Darnell.OK, thats one shocking statistic, which at first glance might seem to imply that recruiters, HR people, and hiring managers must be a bunch of filthy racists. (Tabloid journalism, anyone?) Come on. A tiny percentage may be, but overall, hiring professionals were anxious to learn how to remove these biases from the screening process once they learned of them, according to the researchers.Suffice it to say, every human being has biases. We can reject the ones were aware of in ourselves, but its tough to act on the ones that are subconscious.But sometimes name discrimination isnt about race or ethnicity or xenophobia at all. Its just laziness or fear of embarrassment. If the name on your resume looks hard to pronounce and/or isnt gender-specific, its quite plausible that a hiring manager might (consciously or not) reject it for that reason, alone.Lets sa y, for example, youre a recruiter trying to cull a stack of 100 resumes down to 10. You see one from an applicant named Taidgh Smith. Unless youre familiar with traditional Irish names, you probably would wonder ifTaidgh is a man or a woman, and how his/her name is pronounced. Tage? Taddig? (Nope, not even close.)What do you think most recruiters would do in that situation? Would they take the time to Google the name to find out its origins? Human nature being what it is, most people will take the quicker, easier route andjustskip overthe difficult resume.BTW, I have a nephew named Taidgh, so let me say for the record that its a boys name, and its pronounced roughly like Tiger without the r.If you were a job seeker facing possible name discrimination, would you switch to a more commonly known middle name, or a nickname that sounds more white or Anglo? Maybe use only your initials, or otherwise change the name on your resume? Or, would you stick with your real name, regardless? (Were talking first namesyou cant really mess with your surname.)poll9