Job applicants with black names less likely to get interviews | Hacker News Reader

Job applicants with black names less likely to get interviews

bloomberg.com

16 pointswalkedaway8 comments

It’s not specific to U.S. this kind of discrimination happens all over the world including countries like Norway https://sciencenorway.no/a/1780812

These studies are going to become harder and harder to do as automatic credential verification becomes the norm. Made up resumes will get flagged before they ever get to a human.

What is a "black" name?

https://abcnews.go.com/2020/top-20-whitest-blackest-names/st...

A while back the United States government assembled a list of names based on last names and applied it to demographics. They then set up an algorithm to check it against car loans and then assume discrimination based on the results.

They probably used this same method to assume an answer.

Respectfully: no, the authors did not. The method used can be found in the published paper, which is linked from the submitted article.

edit: clarify a pronoun

Well this seems like an actual case of racism (as opposed to nonsense that's been floating around in the last few years). You can't say things like "black name" and use it in any context as if it was a scientific fact you can build your argument upon. You'd think Bloomberg of all media would know better.

The article links to the paper, which answers your question in appendix B (at least for the purposes of this study).

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w29053/w290...

First names: "We draw racially distinctive first names from two sources. First, we use the same set of names in Bertrand and Mullainathan (2004), which are in turn drawn from Massachusetts birth records covering 1974 to 1979. Second, we supplement with names drawn from administrative records on speeding infractions and arrests provided by the North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts and covering 2006 to 2018. We pick the most common names among drivers born between 1974 and 1979 with race- and gender-specific shares of at least 90%"

Last names: "Last names are drawn from 2010 Decennial Census data. We use the names with highest race-specific shares that occur at least 10,000 times, picking 26 total for each race group"

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