Pongo Blog | Good Resume But No Interviews Could Be Your Name

After generations of Georges, Williams, Johns, and Jameses, we now have a Barack in the White House. So we can all agree that name discrimination is history. Yeah, right! Tell that to the woman who wrote this post on Tuesday, describing her experience as a highly qualified job candidate who couldn't 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. It's 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.

Name Discrimination OK, that's 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 we're aware of in ourselves, but it's tough to act on the ones that are subconscious.

But sometimes name discrimination isn't about race or ethnicity or xenophobia at all. It's just laziness or fear of embarrassment. If the name on your resume looks hard to pronounce and/or isn't gender-specific, it's quite plausible that a hiring manager might (consciously or not) reject it for that reason, alone.

Let's say, for example, you're a recruiter trying to cull a stack of 100 resumes down to 10. You see one from an applicant named Taidgh Smith. Unless you're familiar with traditional Irish names, you probably would wonder if Taidgh 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 and just skip over the difficult resume.

[BTW, I have a nephew named Taidgh, so let me say for the record that it's a boy's name, and it's 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? (We're talking first names—you can't really mess with your surname.)

We'd love to hear your thoughts or experiences with this topic. Please cast a vote in our poll, and add your comments below. Since this is a potentially touchy subject, we'll be moderating comments before they go live.

@Tzvika

I Googled your first name and learned that it is a male name of Hebrew origin and it is pronounced "tzee-kah." The problem is, a hiring manager with a hundred resumes to sort through is unlikely to take the time to do that.

On a resume, if I were you, I might consider putting the pronunciation in parentheses, something like this:

Mr. Tzvika (pronounced "Tzee-kah") Dor

I would also be very upfront about it in your cover letter, with a blunt statement like:

"I find that many people are puzzled by my unusual name, so let me clarify that I am a gentleman and my name is pronounced "Tzee-kah."

@SM

Agreed. We can make progress (as evidenced by the funny-named guy in the White House), but it may never go away fully.

@Sri

See my comment above to Tzvika. Same idea could work for you.

@tb / Olympia

My personal opinion? Your name is not that unusual. There's a famous actress with that name (Olympia Dukakis) so people are probably familiar with it, it's easy to pronounce, and clearly a female name. I think you're all set in the name department.

Thanks for the comments, all!

Julie

@M. Postlewait

I would guess Possel-wait, with a short O and a silent T. I'm guessing that because there is an actor named Pete Postlethwait, and I have always heard his name pronounced Possel-thwait (but maybe that was only in my head)? Am I close?

@Jeralicia

I definitely like your theory about following a unique name with a bad ass resume! I wonder what would happen if you sent a resume as just "Alicia." According to those research statistics, it might change things. (How sad is that?)

@Coley

You make a great point about familiarity, and I agree that conscious, overt racism is not always the cause of the hiring discrepancy. But unconscious biases color our decision-making all the time. A preference for the familiar is part of human nature, but so is its corollary, the fear of the unfamiliar or different (which is at the heart of racism).

This is a very complex topic with no simple answers. I really appreciate your comments, everyone!

--Julie

Good Resume But No Interviews? It Could Be Your Name