Studies about racism in employment?

Originally posted by sh76
A very interesting story happened to me in the last few weeks.

I have an academic administration position. A few weeks ago, I posted an ad for a professor on a well known academic careers website.

A few days later, among my applicants was a resume with the exact academic credentials I had set forth; one from a top school and one from a good school. The na ...[text shortened]... es when doing basic internet checks before giving a callback is so easy and so routine?

We have every confidence in your abilities. That's why they pay you the big bucks!🙂

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
Well that was a crappy thing to do. Why would you do such an ignoble thing especially when your superiors were hostile to it?

My immediate superiors were not hostile to excluding black candidates. Instead, they favored not hiring black candidates, though they would never admit they were racists.

Indeed, their view was that if a candidate went to a black school then the candidate had a sub-par education. If the black candidate went to major (white) university, then the candidate likely road affirmative action and was coddled. Too risky.

Their thought it would be too damaging to hire someone (black candidate) too slow and could not grasp the engineering.

As for me, I was always hammered for or suspected of being "liberal" (a bad word) by my manager peers and manager sponsor. One time (in 1994), to not jeopardize a further promotion, I lied and said I voted for Perot instead of Clinton in 1992. My sponsor (my boss' boss) who was making the promotion decision asked "You didn't vote for Clinton did you?" And she was female and somewhat progressive. It was right after all of the Hillary healthcare stuff and gays-in-the military stuff and right before the Gingrich '94 revolution. I never did that again. I felt horrible about it.

The upper management who would on rare occasion push to diversify were way-up at the top executive level and not on-site but at headquarters in the northeast.

It certainly sounds like a strange application and it may or may not be part of such a study. Some things to keep in mind, this is exactly the kind of study that people love to replicate. It has a "sexy" subject, the media loves to report on this. This may also mean that some less than qualified people try to "replicate" it without thinking everything trough.

If I've got the time, I'll try and find some of the more recent, published, studies in this area and see if and how they handle online presence. While I'm at it I may even run into info that might settle Shs and Mauraders discussion whether or not this racism is more prevalent with lower education people. (Though you'd have to find lower education people who make hiring decisions, not easy.)

Duchess, are you really telling me that you know professors with NO internet presence. No mention of their name on the university website (and accompanying university e-mail, whether or not they use it), no mention of any books and papers they published on google scholar ? Even if you're not actively working on creating it, every academic person who has ever done anything will leave traces online.

(Sh, if the person is applying for a professorship, surely he claims to have publications and you should be able to check whether those exist ?)

The post that was quoted here has been removed

Thank you for that rational, comprehensible and relevant contribution to this discussion.

Originally posted by Barts
It certainly sounds like a strange application and it may or may not be part of such a study. Some things to keep in mind, this is exactly the kind of study that people love to replicate. It has a "sexy" subject, the media loves to report on this. This may also mean that some less than qualified people try to "replicate" it without thinking everything trough. ...[text shortened]... y he claims to have publications and you should be able to check whether those exist ?)

Nope; no publications listed on the resume. It's an administrative position so lack of publication is not terribly shocking, but it is another flag.

Originally posted by sh76
Nope; no publications listed on the resume. It's an administrative position so lack of publication is not terribly shocking, but it is another flag.

I quickly skimmed a couple of papers on the subject and found that none created an online presence for their "applicants". However, they mostly focused on jobs where you'd expect a less thorough application process (low-level administration, student jobs) and no online traces of earlier employment apart from maybe a LinkedIn page. If reputable researchers are trying to replicate this study for more high-profile jobs, where more scrutiny is to be expected, I'd expect them to think about manufacturing at least something.

Something you may have to look for is that these studies usually send at least 2 CVs (sometimes more) for a single position, with an equal number of each ethnicity being compared. The CVs will of course not be identical, but are likely similar in most relevant categories. One may have a bit less experience, but a higher GPA for example. (Edit; for this reason you shouldn't worry about this being a study. If you dismiss this CV and do the same to the equally good "white" CV without cyber-presence it will come out as equal in a hypothetical study)

Finally, to me it seems unlikely that this is one of those studies though, for the simple reason that you say it sounds tailored for the position. As in any study, the researchers will try to get as much data as possible. Tailoring multiple equally strong but not identical CVs for every single position is a lot more work than creating a couple of sets and sending those out far and wide.

Originally posted by sh76
A very interesting story happened to me in the last few weeks.

I have an academic administration position. A few weeks ago, I posted an ad for a professor on a well known academic careers website.

A few days later, among my applicants was a resume with the exact academic credentials I had set forth; one from a top school and one from a good school. The na ...[text shortened]... es when doing basic internet checks before giving a callback is so easy and so routine?

They are counting on you doing the check and not calling back to skew the results. This sort of thing is why such studies are worthless despite people like the Parachuter believing them.