found<\/a> was that some firms called back Black applicants considerably less, while race played little to no factor in the hiring processes at other firms.<\/p>\n\n\n\nDorianne St Fleur, a career coach and workplace consultant, said she wasn’t surprised by the findings showing fewer callbacks for presumed Black applicants at some companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I know the study focused on entry-level positions. Unfortunately it doesn’t stop there. I’ve seen it throughout the organization all the way up into the C-suite,” she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
St Fleur, who primarily coaches women of color, said many of her clients have the right credentials and experience for certain jobs but aren’t being hired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“They are sending out dozens, hundreds of resumes and receiving nothing back,” she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Much of a company’s bias in hiring could be explained by its industry, the study found. Auto dealers and retailers of car parts were the least likely to call back Black applicants, with Genuine Auto Parts (which distributes NAPA products) and the used car retailer AutoNation scoring the worst on the study’s “discrimination report card.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We are always evaluating our practices to ensure inclusivity and break down barriers, and we will continue to do so,” Heather Ross, vice president of strategic communications at Genuine Parts Company, said in an email.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
AutoNation did not reply to a request for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The companies that performed best in the analysis included Charter\/Spectrum, Dr. Pepper, Kroger and Avis-Budget.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Several patterns emerged when the researchers looked at the companies that had the lowest “contact gap” between white and Black applicants<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Federal contractors and more profitable companies called back applicants from the two racial groups at more similar rates. Firms with more centralized human resources departments and policies also exhibited less racial bias, which Kline says may indicate that a standardized hiring workflow involving multiple employees could help reduce discrimination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When it came to the sex of applicants, most companies didn’t discriminate when calling back job-seekers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Still, some firms preferred one sex over another in screening applicants. Manufacturing companies called back people with male names at higher rates, and clothing stores showing a bias toward female applicants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kline said the research team hoped the public would focus as much on companies doing a bad job as those doing a good one, since they have potentially found ways to remove or limit racial bias from the hiring process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Even if it’s true, from these insights in psychology and behavioral economics, that individuals are inevitably going to carry biases along with them, it’s not automatic that those individual biases will translate into organizational biases, on average,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
St Fleur said there are several strategies companies can use to cut down on bias in the hiring process, including training staff and involving multiple recruiters in callback decisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Companies should also collect data about which candidates make it through the hiring process and consider standardizing or anonymizing that process, she added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
St Fleur also said she often tells her job-seeking clients that it’s not their fault that they aren’t getting called back for open positions they believe they’re qualified for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“The fact that you’re not getting callbacks does not mean you suck, you’re not a good worker, you don’t deserve this thing,” she said. “It’s just the nature of the systemic forces at play, and this is what we have to deal with.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Still, she said job candidates facing bias in the hiring process can lean on their network for new opportunities, prioritize inclusive companies when applying for work and even consider switching industries or locations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Npr<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Twenty years ago, two economists responded to a slew of help-wanted ads in Boston and Chicago newspapers using a set of fictitious names to test for racial bias in the job market. The watershed study found that applicants with names suggesting they were white got 50% more callbacks from employers than those whose names indicated they were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":25968,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1365,5198,7325,1372],"class_list":["post-25967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-black","tag-name","tag-racial-discrimination","tag-white"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25967"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25969,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25967\/revisions\/25969"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}