Expert warns of common ways jobseekers could be discriminated against

Your name, gender or where you live could cost you a job. Photo / 123RF

Hermeisha Robinson made headlines after allegedly being rejected for a job in the United States because her name was too "ghetto".

Late last week, the young Missouri woman claimed she had been insulted after applying for a customer service representative role at a company called Mantality Health via job website Indeed.com, and a screenshot of the supposed rejection email — which she posted on Facebook — immediately went viral.

The email to Robinson read: "Thank you for your interest in careers at Mantality Health. Unfortunately we do not consider candidates that have suggestive 'ghetto' names. We wish the best in your career search."

While the company claimed the letter was not real and was instead the work of hackers, Paul D'Arcy, senior vice president of marketing at Indeed, said interview discrimination was unfortunately all too common.

US woman Hermeisha Robinson was allegedly rejected for a job because her name was too "ghetto". Photo / Facebook

D'Arcy said hirers tended to spend less than 10 seconds on average glancing over a jobseeker's CV, and the bulk of that short time was spent on just a few pieces of information, including the person's name, address, former company and where they were educated.

"All of those things can be sources of bias and discrimination," he told news.com.au.

"This is one of the natural problems with humans making quick decisions — it's the way the brain works when we make all sorts of snap conclusions, and it often results in bad decisions."

D'Arcy said most of the time, the bias was occurring subconsciously with managers perhaps not even realising they were judging a potential new hire.

"When they're hiring someone, people create an image of the person that they're hiring for and that often includes whether they're male or female, how old they may be and a certain sort of background and they're looking for people who fit that," he said.

"When people see the name of a person, or get an indication of how old they are, they can make all sorts of quick decisions based on that and sometimes they wouldn't be the same decisions if they really thought about it or met the person face-to-face.

"A person with a foreign-sounding name might be less likely to make it to the next stage, and certainly for some roles, a male name or a female name might make it more or less likely to proceed.

"Even the neighbourhood someone lives in can impact how likely they are to make it."

D'Arcy said jobseekers could try and get around any potential bias by making sure their resume focused on their skills and qualifications and by bringing their "competence to the centre of the story".

He also suggested removing your address from your CV and putting the key things that will matter to your potential employer close to the top of the document.

D'Arcy said it was a "sad truth" some people used a different name to their own in their CVs in an effort to avoid discrimination, and that Indeed had taken steps to avoid subconscious bias in its hiring processes, such as hiding biasing information from hirers, training staff and using "other elements" to screen candidates.

Recent research conducted by Indeed revealed 35 per cent of Aussies had experienced discrimination when applying for a job, while 52 per cent thought it was inevitable employers might be biased, with potential age discrimination topping the list of workers' concerns.

However, last year a major study of so-called "blind recruitment" trials — commonly used to boost gender equality by removing gender-revealing details from job applications — could actually be making things worse.

It found overall, Australian Public Service officers actually discriminated in favour of female and minority candidates when their identifying information was given.