For my friends in #recruiting and #talentacquisition... I was catching up on a few episodes of the Trevor Noah podcast, What Now?, and the hosts cover a working paper by researchers at UC Berkeley measuring the impact of biases that lead to candidates with "white" sounding names receiving a disproportionate number of callbacks compared to candidates with identical resumes, but Black names. That paper, Systemic Discrimination Among Large US Employers, looked at 83,000 resumes submitted to 11,000 entry level jobs across Fortune 500 employers. In our book coming out this August, we look at research with similar findings at the leadership level, which found "ethnic minorities received 57.4% fewer positive responses than applicants with English names for leadership positions despite identical resumes." For some people... these findings are no surprise, it's simply part of their lived experience and they have to find ways of dealing with this. I think it's worth 15 minutes of your time to pull up this podcast and listen to the hosts talk about this reality. It's a powerful reminder of the work that still needs to be done to create a fair selection process that treats people with dignity, and encourages them to show up as their full selves. Listen to 10:40-24:00 of SE1, Episode 25. And if you're in a position to influence this process in your own company, I hope you've pre-ordered our book 😉
You guys are spot on….as usual
I help organizations hire, develop and engage people. Host of INSUBORDINATE-Better Workplaces, Better World podcast.
2moCompletely agree with all this. And—one of the questions I’ve been thinking about and am curious to hear your perspective on: how do we work to eliminate these biases and provide greater/equitable access and opportunities earlier in the talent development and selection process? What can we do toward constructive solutions at an identification and sourcing level, normalizing a diverse talent pool?