Is Name Discrimination in Hiring Still a Trend? Industry Leaders Say Yes

By Renata Sago Black job-seekers are still whitening their résumés. Even so, one year after finishing college, 60% of Black graduates were underemployed. Erika Broadwater’s career began 33 years ago with a phone call. A former colleague had seen her work as an intern and invited her to apply as a marketing administrator. The position was ideal. She had just earned a business degree.& “My résumé was by typewriter,” she remembers. “But you had to, back then, go to the location and complete a paper application. There were no online portals for you to digitally apply.” Broadwater now manages recruiters and implements some of the applicant tracking systems (ATS) that collect data from job websites. She is also CEO of the National Association of African Americans in Human Resources. Although how people navigate the market has greatly shifted from when Broadwater started working, she says one thing has remained the same: name bias.  “We have been paying a lot more attention in bringing more awareness to that stereotype, and it really is both gender and ethnic-focused,” she says. “We do know through common language — and this is in every culture for the most part, except for, perhaps, those countries...