Fake Cover Letters Expose Discrimination Against Disabled | Hacker News Reader

Fake Cover Letters Expose Discrimination Against Disabled

nytimes.com

24 pointshvo16 comments

I'm concerned with how many people believe it's "unprofessional" to disclose a disability on a cover letter. Having a disability is something that will require the company to accommodate and giving them the most lead time to do so seems like a professional courtesy. Should the wheelchair user wait until the day of the interview to tell the employer they'll need an elevator? It also smacks of the old style "You're just like us!" attitude instead of acknowledging that yes, people with disabilities have different needs.

In the US, I can't speak about elsewhere, removal of barriers to accessibility in the workplace has been Federal Civil Rights Law for nearly 25 years. There is no "grandfathering" as is appropriate when it comes to civil rights:

http://www.ada.gov/reachingout/factor.html

Creating or renting a workplace that is inaccessible is what constitutes a lack of professionalism.

s/Against Disabled//

This study has been done with people using names that are, black, foreign, feminine, etc. If you're different, some people are gonna think differently. When there's a "pipeline" little biases add up: Your teacher treats you differently, the college admission treats you differently, your professors treat you differently, recruiters treat you differently, your boss treats you differently. That might not happen in every step along the way, but the potential is there and there are many opportunities.

A white male Stanford grad from a well off family is flipping a coin once to see if they get a real chance to be successful in life. Someone who is discriminated against has to roll a D20 every step of the way to see if they make it.

If you want to make a difference, recognize these biases exist. Review CVs with all identifying information removed or generalized. Hopefully, eventually the bias will fade, but you can't ignore that it exists and that you can turn it off like a switch.

This is what I most want to see happen. I really want all such processes to reduce candidates to a hash or number until it is unavoidable to know the identity of the candidate (phone interview or in-person interview). Issues that might require accommodation prior to an offer letter like wheelchair accessibility should only be disclosed to the recruiting department and only to people who will not be involved in the hire/no-hire decision.

This is why unconscious bias training is so important/effective. We all have biases, and what works is surfacing them from the unconscious to the conscious so we can deal with them.

The first thing I find odd is that so many employers actually read cover letters carefully enough to discriminate based on them. The lower discrimination level with inexperienced candidates may be better explained by the lower investment in analyzing applications before scheduling interviews rather than less intention to discriminate.

I wonder how this would have gone if they disclosed something besides a disability in the "control" coverletter that wasn't relevant to the job. I suspect they'd still find discrimination, but perhaps a bit less.

So much diversity, and potential from individuals with disabilities. It's a shame its difficult for them to find jobs.

I think the bias for the more experienced workers has a lot of flaws they can't cover in a study like this.

For one, why are they bringing up a disability if it won't affect their job? It's not related to the application nor is it appropriate. I don't talk about being pregnant in interviews but once I'm in the interview I can bring it up in person. Things have worked out well for me with this approach.

Secondly, if I were looking at a resume for a very qualified person the first thing I would do is google them to see if they made up their credentials. After finding nothing because this person was made up for the study I would not pursue them.

> For one, why are they bringing up a disability if it won't affect their job? It's not related to the application nor is it appropriate.

US disability discrimination laws only provide protection if you disclose. (As I understand it, maybe I'm wrong?) Since it's not legal for the company to discriminate against you there shouldn't be any problem with disclosing. If anything, an employer should want someone to disclose because that person is honest. A candidate who doesn't state they have a disability either doesn't have one, or does have one but is hiding it.

Someone using a wheelchair might want to disclose early so the interviewer can say hold interviews in a place that isn't up a flight of stairs.

> if I were looking at a resume for a very qualified person the first thing I would do is google them to see if they made up their credentials. After finding nothing because this person was made up for the study I would not pursue them.

So you'd not pursue the non-disabled candidates, as well as not pursuing the disabled candidates. That would mean similar levels of rejection. How would you explain the disparity in amounts of rejection between fake candidates with no declared disability and fake candidates with a declared disability? All the candidates are equally fake.

How is a spinal cord injury relevant to an accountant job? It's weird and premature to bring it up in a cover letter, it could be taken as a sign of poor judgement or "why are they bringing this up? I don't care, are they an activist type? I don't need that kind of attitude." A younger person new to the world of work might be more easily forgiven the choice than an experienced person. If you get contacted for an interview, that's the time to bring up accommodations like wheelchair access.

I could imagine a cover letter describing Asperger's syndrome as an asset for accountancy work, claiming it's a source of their focus and numeracy. It would still be weird but that would meet the reader's expectations, right?

Still, I'm not trying to explain away their results, the quantity of data and comparable results for both disabilities suggests a common bias irrespective of the nature of the disability.

A spinal cord injury has some relevance - is the location of the interview going to be accessible? Is the location of the job going to be accessible? Here the candidate is going out of their way to give potentially useful information to the employer. It's weird (and illegal) to use that against them.

Also, some places have recognised that they have bias, and they've put in place some system to reduce it. See, for example, the "two ticks" scheme in the UK.

https://www.civvystreet.org/employers/en-gb/civvystreetemplo...

https://www.gov.uk/recruitment-disabled-people/encouraging-a...

First point: Full disclosure, I'm Canadian - in Canada it's not required to disclose your disability to prove discrimination. Generally you can at least get to the interview phase without disclosing. Not familiar with American law, didn't know that.

In Canada you are also required to have an elevator or ramp in every business building so stairs normally aren't an issue either. I don't think I've ever been to an interview where someone in a wheelchair wouldn't have access.

I agree disclosing in the interests of transparency is a great thing, I just don't see what it has to do with a cover letter and "Why you'd be a great fit".

Second point: I guess I hadn't thought that one through. :P

In fairness to the study, the way they brought the subject up was pretty well done.

In all the cover letters (both with and without disability) they stated that the candidate volunteered for a disability charity and that their work there meant that they had experience in working with people in a supervisory capacity.

In the disability letters they added that they had the disability and wanted to help others with it.

Having read a fair few CVs myself, I think they all read fairly innocuously.

My only comment on the way it was written (as an employer) is that the novice letters read better than the experience ones: having supervisory experience for a graddie is a plus; but a bit of a red flag for a senior role (why would you mention it, don't you have it in your day job?)

I think the most likely explanation for the finding is in the breakdown by company size. The government and fed contractors were, more or less, without bias (in some cases with a small bias towards the applicants with disabilities).

By far the largest bias was in small firms. If I were to hazard a guess it will be at least partly due to a perceived cost in recruiting people with disabilities (which is presumably why they are exempt from ADA in the first place). But the study didn't pursue this.

The sword cuts both ways.

Here is a story about a white poet that used an "ethnically sounding" name, as he would not get published as easily using his birth name.

http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/09/10/439247027/...

I might start submitting a few submissions for conferences using a pseudonym....

This reminds me of a thought I had in one of my college courses. It was in regards to college admittance. If we want to avoid bias, then why to we track it. That is if we shouldn't care if the person is black/white, male/female, dis/abled, etc then why do we ask for that as part of the sign up/interview process?

I know with names its is hard to exclude some identifiable info as assumptions can be made, but leaving this out would probably do more to close these gaps.

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