The solution to the name/ethnicity bias in hiring is simpler than most consider. Simply voiding the field when the information is accessed by a potential employer/recuiter works best. For years my former employer required that HR not share that information so that merit based hiring could be the standard and not something that needed awareness. (This argument does collapse when an individual may have attended an HBCU or a program geared towards a "special ability".)
Maybe due to being on the Behavioral side of Econ I'm more cognizant of implied baises and the methodology to address those same biases, but that also falls on employers/education providers to develop internal systems than address individuals and not whatever upload LinkedIn provides.
This is a complicated area of inquiry, and will continue to receive serious attention. If this became tangled up in a legal squirmish, we'd all benefit from learning the causal effect of race on job choice. Here is more recent research in the area, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2022.104079
Great post. Sadly, not surprising at all. There is prejudice and white privilege that people don’t realize. It’s simply baked in to our thoughts and systems…..which is why, I believe, we still need governmental guardrails in place so we are as equal as we can possibly be.
You realize you expressed a version of confirmation bias by assuming that all "White People" suffer from being ignorant of their biases?
Government is never the solution since it moves slower and with a considerable amount of their own biases and conflicted motives to properly account for changing how society handles ethical issues. We have guardrails in place for things like gender, yet can't agree whether it's a biological fact or a construct of society.
Companies need to be more proative in their recruitment efforts rather than wait for the reflections of society to work through their hiring systems.
Thanks for the link. It has been my experience that everyone agrees that merit should be the defining factor. However how we define merit and access is where the tension builds up.
The point of my post was that merit is identical in both situations but employers treated the applications differently.
Should have written “you missed the point of my point.” The cited article does a good job of explaining many of the statistical questions around the citations presented.
According to the paper you shared, they would actually love to use audit studies but can’t do it for admissions. The audit experiment is preferred to their methodology. While not all the papers I share are audit studies to experiments, most of them are. The catfish experiment is n of 1 audit study. :-)
“The concern with this methodology is that race can proxy for differences in unobserved factors not fully captured by applicant characteristics and Harvard ratings. To avoid concerns about omitted variable bias, researchers have often turned to audit and correspondence studies in other economic settings where racial discrimination is a concern. However, this approach is infeasible for college admissions in the United States because it would be impractical to generate fictitious applicants to the level of detail that admissions offices review applicants”
100% agree. In perfect world. But since we live in a world with built in biases…..(by the way, I meant to respond to the post in general, was not responding to your post per se)
The solution to the name/ethnicity bias in hiring is simpler than most consider. Simply voiding the field when the information is accessed by a potential employer/recuiter works best. For years my former employer required that HR not share that information so that merit based hiring could be the standard and not something that needed awareness. (This argument does collapse when an individual may have attended an HBCU or a program geared towards a "special ability".)
Maybe due to being on the Behavioral side of Econ I'm more cognizant of implied baises and the methodology to address those same biases, but that also falls on employers/education providers to develop internal systems than address individuals and not whatever upload LinkedIn provides.
That’s a good idea. It only gets complicated when other identifiers are also correlated with race. As you have pointed out.
This is a complicated area of inquiry, and will continue to receive serious attention. If this became tangled up in a legal squirmish, we'd all benefit from learning the causal effect of race on job choice. Here is more recent research in the area, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2022.104079
Great post. Sadly, not surprising at all. There is prejudice and white privilege that people don’t realize. It’s simply baked in to our thoughts and systems…..which is why, I believe, we still need governmental guardrails in place so we are as equal as we can possibly be.
You realize you expressed a version of confirmation bias by assuming that all "White People" suffer from being ignorant of their biases?
Government is never the solution since it moves slower and with a considerable amount of their own biases and conflicted motives to properly account for changing how society handles ethical issues. We have guardrails in place for things like gender, yet can't agree whether it's a biological fact or a construct of society.
Companies need to be more proative in their recruitment efforts rather than wait for the reflections of society to work through their hiring systems.
Actually, you missed the point. These matters should be based on merit.
Thanks for the link. It has been my experience that everyone agrees that merit should be the defining factor. However how we define merit and access is where the tension builds up.
The point of my post was that merit is identical in both situations but employers treated the applications differently.
I am sorry if I misunderstood your position
Should have written “you missed the point of my point.” The cited article does a good job of explaining many of the statistical questions around the citations presented.
According to the paper you shared, they would actually love to use audit studies but can’t do it for admissions. The audit experiment is preferred to their methodology. While not all the papers I share are audit studies to experiments, most of them are. The catfish experiment is n of 1 audit study. :-)
“The concern with this methodology is that race can proxy for differences in unobserved factors not fully captured by applicant characteristics and Harvard ratings. To avoid concerns about omitted variable bias, researchers have often turned to audit and correspondence studies in other economic settings where racial discrimination is a concern. However, this approach is infeasible for college admissions in the United States because it would be impractical to generate fictitious applicants to the level of detail that admissions offices review applicants”
100% agree. In perfect world. But since we live in a world with built in biases…..(by the way, I meant to respond to the post in general, was not responding to your post per se)