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A team of economists recently conducted an experiment with about 100 of the country’s largest companies, using fake resumes with equivalent qualifications but different personal characteristics to apply for jobs. They changed applicants’ names to indicate whether they were white or black, male or female — Latisha or Amy, Lamar or Adam.
On Monday, they announced the names of the companies. They found that, on average, employers contacted putative white applicants 9.5% more often than putative black applicants.
However, this practice varies by company and industry. One in five companies – many of them retailers or car dealers – accounted for nearly half of the call-back gap for white and black applicants.
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Two companies favored white applicants over black applicants more than others. These include used car retailer AutoNation, which contacted presumed white job applicants 43 percent more often, and Genuine Parts Co., which sells auto parts under the NAPA brand, which contacted presumed white job applicants more often. out 33%.
“We are always evaluating our practices to ensure inclusivity and break down barriers, and we will continue to do so,” Genuine Parts spokesperson Heather Ross said in a statement. AutoNation did not respond to a request for comment .
The experiment, known as the Audit Study, is the largest of its kind in the United States: Researchers sent 80,000 resumes to 10,000 jobs from 2019 to 2021. The results illustrate the deep-seated employment discrimination that exists in parts of the U.S. labor market — and the extent to which black workers are starting behind in some industries.
“I’m not surprised at all,” said Daiquiri Steele, an assistant professor at the University of Alabama School of Law who worked on employment discrimination at the Department of Labor. “If you have trouble breaking in, the biggest problem is the ripple effect it has. It affects your wages and the future economy of your community.”
Some companies show no difference in how they treat white or black applicants. Their HR practices—and one policy in particular (more on that later)—provide guidance on how companies can avoid making biased decisions during the hiring process.
The lack of racial bias is more common in certain industries: grocery stores, including Kroger; food, including Mondelez; trucking and transportation, including FedEx and Ryder; and wholesale, including Sysco and McLane Co.
“We want to bring attention to not only that racism is real, sexism is real and some of it is discriminatory, but also that people can do better and learn from those who are doing it well. Something, said economist Patrick Kline of the University of California, Berkeley, who collaborated with Evan K. Rose of the University of Chicago and Christopher R. Walters of the University of California, Berkeley. (Christopher R. Walters) conducted this research.
The researchers first announced details of their experiment in 2021 without naming the specific company. The new paper, to be published in the American Economic Review, names the companies and explains a method for grouping them based on performance while accounting for statistical noise.
The study included 97 companies. The jobs researchers apply for are entry-level and do not require a college degree or extensive work experience. In addition to race and gender, the researchers also tested other characteristics protected by law, such as age and sexual orientation.
They sent up to 1,000 applications to each company, applying for up to 125 positions at each company across the country, trying to uncover the operating patterns of companies and isolated instances. They then track whether the employer contacted the applicant within 30 days.
Prejudice against black names
Companies that require a lot of interaction with customers (such as sales and retail), especially those in the automotive industry, are most likely to show a preference for applicants who identify as white. This was true even when applying for positions at companies that did not involve customer interaction, suggesting that discriminatory practices have become embedded in corporate culture or human resources practices, the researchers said.
There are exceptions, though – some of the companies that showed the least bias were retailers, such as Lowe’s and Target.
Lincoln Quillian, a sociologist at Northwestern University who analyzed the audit study, said the study likely underestimates the rate of discrimination against black job applicants in the labor market as a whole because it tested large companies, which tend to discriminate less. It does not include names intended to represent Latino or Asian American applicants, but other research shows they are also less connected than white applicants, even though they face less discrimination than black applicants.
The experiment ends in 2021, and some companies involved may have changed their practices. Still, a review of all available audit studies found that discrimination against black applicants has not changed in three decades. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, such discrimination was found to have disappeared among some employers, but the researchers behind the study said the impact was likely short-lived.
Gender and other characteristics
On average, companies do not treat male and female applicants differently. This is consistent with other research showing that sexism against women is rare in entry-level jobs and begins later in careers.
However, when companies do favor men (especially in manufacturing) or women (primarily in clothing stores), the bias is much larger than race. Builders FirstSource contacted presumptively male applicants more than twice as often as female applicants. Ascena, which owns brands such as Ann Taylor, reaches 66% more women than men.
Neither company responded to requests for comment.
The consequences of being a woman vary by race. The differences are small, but being female has a slight benefit for white applicants and a slight penalty for black applicants.
The researchers also tested several other legally protected characteristics on a smaller number of resumes. They found there were minor penalties for being over 40.
Overall, they found that there were no penalties for using nonbinary pronouns. As shown by including LGBTQ+ club membership on a resume, white applicants are slightly penalized, but black applicants are greatly benefited – albeit small, but racially penalized when this appears on their resumes Just disappeared.
Under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, discrimination is illegal even if it is unintentional. In the real world, however, it’s difficult for job seekers to know why they haven’t heard back from a company.
“Addressing these practices is particularly challenging because applicants often do not know whether they have been discriminated against during the hiring process,” EEOC spokesperson Brendalyn Bickner said in a statement. (She said, It has seen the data and spoken to researchers, although it cannot use academic studies as the basis for its investigation.)
What companies can do to reduce discrimination
Researchers found that some common measures—such as hiring a chief diversity officer, providing diversity training, or having a diverse board of directors—were not associated with reducing discrimination in entry-level hiring.
But one thing strongly predicts less discrimination: centralized human resources operations.
The researchers recorded voicemails received by the fake applicants. When a company’s calls come from fewer individual phone numbers, indicating that they originate from a central office, bias tends to be reduced. This is even more the case when they come from personal recruiting managers at local stores or warehouses. These messages often sound frantic and informal, such as asking the applicant if they can start work the next day.
“That’s when implicit bias kicks in,” Klein said. He said a more formal hiring process could help overcome this problem: “Just thinking about things, what steps are taken, someone has to approve something, is really important in reducing bias.”
Sysco, a wholesale distributor of restaurant food that showed no racial bias in the study, has a centralized recruiting team that reviews resumes and decides who to call. “The key is to be consistent in how we review candidates, focusing on the requirements of the position,” said Ron Phillips, chief human resources officer at Sysco. “It reduces the opportunity to express personal views during the process.”
Paula Hubbard, chief human resources officer at McLean, said another important factor is diversity in recruiting. The company sources, stocks and delivers products for large chains such as Walmart, and no racial bias was shown in the study. About 40% of the company’s recruiters are people of color, and 60% of them are women.
Human resources officials say diversifying the applicant pool also helps. McClain participated in Women in Trucking events and posted advertising signs in Spanish.
The same goes for recruiting based on skills rather than degrees. While McLean used to require a college degree for many positions, it changed that after determining that specific skills were more important for warehousing or driving jobs. “We do this with all jobs now: Is a degree really needed?” Hubbard said. “Why? Does it make sense? Is the experience enough?”
Hilton, another company that showed no racial bias in the study, also stopped degree requirements for many jobs in 2018.
New research finds that another factor associated with reduced hiring bias is more regulatory scrutiny — such as federal contractors or companies receiving more citations from the Labor Department.
Finally, more profitable companies were less biased, consistent with Nobel laureate Gary Becker’s long-held economic theory that discrimination is bad for business. Economists say this may be because more profitable companies benefit from a more diverse workforce. Or it could be a sign that they have more efficient business processes in HR and other areas.
c.2024 The New York Times Company
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