Is there a glass ceiling for ethnic minorities to enter leadership positions? Evidence from an Australian field experiment with over 12,000 job applications.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1048984322000583
Abstract
We submitted over 12,000 job applications, to over 4,000 job advertisements, to investigate hiring discrimination against six ethnic groups for leadership positions.
For leadership positions, applicants with English names received 26.8% of positive responses for their job applications, while applicants with non-English names received 11.3% of positive responses. This means ethnic minorities received 57.4% fewer positive responses than applicants with English names for leadership positions despite identical resumes.
For non-leadership positions, applicants with English names received 21.2% of positive responses for their job applications, while applicants with non-English names received 11.6% of positive responses. This means ethnic minorities received 45.3% fewer positive responses for non-leadership positions despite identical resumes.
Ethnic discrimination for leadership positions was even more pronounced when the advertised job required customer contact.
Years back a friend whose parents had immigrated to Aus told me he anglicised his name on CVs for this very reason and I was really upset by it. How unfair that an Australian born, probable genius had to change something like that just to be taken seriously. I told myself if I was in a position to do something about it then I would.
Over a decade later and I happen to run a small business in Aus, with many duties including hiring. Wouldn’t you know it, at face value I am guilty of this discrimination as well.
However, it’s not because I’m a racist (definitely not!), but because of what hiring from job ads looks like now. If I put up an ad, I get an insane amount of responses, but so few of them have even read the ad, let alone meet the requirements. In fact the majority of applicants to any ad I put up live in India and many give me the impression they’ve automated the application process. Once you’ve gone through 10 applicants in a row who don’t live in the country they’re applying for a job in you start to filter them out, consciously or unconsciously. I just don’t have the time to sort though CVs granularly when that’s the volume coming in.
We currently have 3 Indian blokes on staff (and several other ethnicities) and they’re all good at their jobs and I like them on a personal level, but they all came through recruiters. I never thought I’d be rooting for recruiters, but if your name comes through a recruiter I know you’ve been vetted and ostensibly will meet the requirements, no need to screen. I’d be curious to know what this test looks like when it’s not just spamming ads.
I'm sure motives differ from company to company, manager to manager. But it does sound like you concede that the only meaningful shot someone with an Indian background has with your company is if someone else brings them to you, as being Indian is a useful filter for you.
The point of studies like this isn't to wag a finger at hiring managers to discuss how bad they are as people, but to show concretely that there is hiring discrimination and that there are specific challenges to being a racial or ethnic minority seeking leadership roles even in 2023.
As bad as it makes me feel that’s fair to say. We do only hire though recruiters now, so the playing field is as fair as they are.
I guess it’s my conscience putting a guilty spin on it. The usual take away (at least as far as Australia is concerned) is that we need to be less racist, but all I want is less junk applicants.
Calling such an effect "hiring discrimination" feels wrong, though it may be technically appropriate to use the term.
"Discrimination" carries with it the connotation of prejudice. In this example, however, there is no prejudice against hiring Indian candidates.
There clearly is prejudice -- not conscious, malicious hatred, but they themselves said they learned to "filter out" applications from those with Indian names unless they're from a recruiter. That's definitionally prejudice against applications from ethnically Indian candidates, and it clearly results in discrimination against them as described.
What's the point in playing word games like this, in the end? Is it to make hiring managers who make decisions like this not feel guilty about the effects of their actions? Because as @RNG points out, the point of studies like this isn't to guilt the (mostly white) people making these hiring decisions, but instead to acknowledge the very real inequalities that ethnic minorities face in the job market. Saying this shouldn't be called "hiring discrimination" is downplaying the very real effects decision-making like this has on minority applicants -- and it doesn't matter how pure and non-racist the hiring manager's thoughts are when the result for minority applicants is the same.
In this case the result for minority applicants isn't the same, however. A recruiter does the leg work of filtering out the legit candidates.
I wish we used different words because I'd rather differentiate between blameworthy actions and knock-on effects.
It doesn't matter to those on the receiving end of discrimination whether that discrimination is the result of active malice or knock-on effects. Knock-on effects are probably responsible for more discrimination these days. White people (disclaimer: I am one) have a tendency to obsess over whether they should feel guilty and whether their motives were pure when neither of those things actually matter to the boots-on-the-ground reality of living as a racial or ethnic minority. Prioritizing the feelings of the majority over the experiences of minorities to the extent that we don't use words like "discrimination" to describe prototypical discrimination is a gross misassignment of priorities if your goal is actually a better, more equitable world for people of all races and ethnicities.
My goal is to treat everyone equally without prejudice, and that's the standard I hold others to as well.
It would be nice if we still had terminology that reflected that.
I appreciate how well you handled a somewhat contentious conversation.
Thank you!
For direct applications, do you filter out any Indian names or only those who are foreigners living in India?
Any Indian name. The platforms I use allow you to specify “must have working rights in Australia”, but applicants just tick that box and submit anyway. It doesn’t feel good, but as anyone running a small business will tell you: time management is critical.