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Why I’m no longer putting names on candidates CVs

FourthLine consultant Andrew Barrett takes a look at the discrimination people may face when applying for jobs, and explains why he's taken the decision to no longer put candidate names on CVs.

I read a book recently which caused me to pause for thought. The book was called “Why I’m no longer talking to white people about race” by Reni Eddo-Lodge.

Reni is a black British journalist who published a blog in 2014 which took on a life of its own. Reni was candid in her experiences as a black woman living in the UK and the obstacles that she has come up against. As a recruiter, I was particularly interested in her comments on discrimination people may face when applying for jobs. This caused me to look into this issue in more detail.

Researchers at Ryerson University and the University of Toronto were also interested in this apparent racism when people of ethnic minority apply for jobs. They sent 13,000 fake CV’s to over 3,000 job advertisements, and the findings were shocking. It was found that candidates with Chinese, Indian or Pakistani names were 28% less likely to be selected to interview compared to “white sounding” British names. The experience, qualifications and skills were identical on all of the CV’s. It follows therefore that we ask the question, why didn’t the Chinese, Indian or Pakistani candidates get through the initial CV sift phase?

And it gets worse. If the candidates had foreign qualifications and previous foreign employers, they were 35% less likely to be selected to in the case of large firms, and 60% less likely in smaller firms. In another study, it was also found that women who had “whiter” sounding names, needed to apply for half as many jobs before being selected to interview. A further study showed in 2012 that 45% of black 16-24 year olds were unemployed. The national census figures between 1991-2011 show that black people were twice as likely to be unemployed. Some of the larger companies have already adopted a no names policy when recruiting to combat this issue, such as HSBC, KPMG and Deloitte.

Diversity quotas have had mixed reviews to say the least, however there are some indications that they can work. America’s National Football League introduced a measure to get more black or ethnic minority managers into top coaching jobs. Dan Rooney (Diversity Committee Chair) introduced a regulation where when a vacancy presented itself, top sports bosses were required to interview at least one black or ethnic minority candidate. Over the next 10 years 12 new black coaches were appointed and 17 teams were led by either a black or Latino coach. The observation was that teams were interviewing candidates that they may not have previously considered. Similarly, in the UK, in 2015 there was just one black manager in the English Premier League. There wasn’t a single black manager in the top four divisions of Scottish football!

Measures to improve diversity in business isn’t a new topic of discussion. Vince Cable, the ex-business secretary, aimed to get 20% black or ethnic minority board members in all of the FTSE100 businesses in 5 years. Before this intervention, over half of the FTSE100 businesses did not have one black or ethnic minority member on their boards. Despite Cable’s efforts, he fell someway short of his original target.

I can speak from experience and say that as a recruiter I have witnessed discrimination firsthand. My role is to meet with hiring managers to discuss the vacancy that they are recruiting for and the type of person they are looking for to fill the role. I met with a director of a city insurance firm who made it quite clear that he was looking for a male, middle aged candidate. The language that this hiring manager used was interesting. “Most people who work for us are men, this is a really demanding businesses to work for, and having time off to have children and things like that, isn’t really going to work for us. This is just something to bear in mind when you are recommending candidates to us”. Subtle, but it was clear what this guy was hinting at. He also went on to say that “you need a lot of grey hairs in this role to be able to be credible to the board”. Double whammy: sexist and ageist.

Some may argue, what is the point of this no names policy, when the candidate arrives for interview, the hiring manager can clearly identify the candidate’s race and gender. However, as with a lot of these things, I would argue that doing something about the problem is better than doing nothing.

So this is why I’m no longer putting names on candidates CVs.

How FourthLine can help:

FourthLine is working with a number of financial service firms to help them with Operational Resilience enablement and Outsourcing and 3rd-Party Risk Management, through a mixture of end-to-end consulting and resourcing options.

November 6, 2019
Daniel Waltham
Responsible for leading client relationships and new business sales. Dan takes a lead role in customer engagement, identifying, creating and designing solutions to help our customers with risk and regulatory challenges. 13 years of experience working with financial services businesses across risk, compliance, data protection and regulatory change.
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