Who would you hire?
As a hiring manager, you receive a job application each from Chris Liney and Itoro Umoren. Both candidates have identical experience and qualifications, who would you think is the better candidate? “No two people can have identical qualifications and experience” you say, “so my decision would be fair”. In this case, both candidates do have identical experiences and qualifications, I know this because they are both me!
Studies here and here show that having a white male sounding name yields at least 50% more responses from employers. It also equates to 8 years more experience. For those who get a job, this article shows that black women are paid 38% less than white men and 21% less than white women. This pay gap is widest for those in STEM fields and those with advanced degrees – ouch!! As a past engineer and current data scientist with a master’s degree and studying towards a PhD, this is a tough pill to swallow.
Gaming the system
I have never carried out an experiment applying for jobs with both identities (Itoro Umoren and Chris Liney), but I have studied enough about bias and discrimination to understand that Chris Liney stands a much better chance than Itoro Umoren. So when I’ve been in the market for a new job, I’ve always presented myself as Chris Liney.
Job hunting on LinkedIn changes this dynamic as it is a more personal experience than a pdf CV i.e. your name and image are available to the recruiter. I’ve toyed with the idea of changing my LinkedIn name to “Chris” even though it’s a name that exists only on official documents and I don’t really identify with it. I’m not even sure I’d respond to the name if someone called it out.
Having the “wrong” name is not the only hurdle to overcome when applying for a job via LinkedIn. Some people believe that you should have a picture on your LinkedIn profile if not, you could sabotage your chances of landing a great job. But, if I’m pretending to be a white male, my profile picture fails on both accounts. I have temporarily considered using my husband’s profile picture but that’s just deceptive. So for now, I’m sticking with myself on my profile. Luckily this isn’t a problem I have to deal with, since I’m not in the market for a new job. I’m still having a fabulous time at Principality Building Society leading an analytics team.
Bias in Machine Learning
This issue of bias and discrimination (applied to Machine Learning) is very fascinating to me. It is also the subject of my PhD research which I would like to share with you. Over the coming weeks, I will be posting about some of my findings to help us all understand a bit more about discriminatory Machine Learning algorithms and what we can do about it! You can always reach out to me at [email protected] or here
