After changing his first name on his resume from a very Muslim-sounding name to an "Americanized" one, that changed completely.
Things are changing now, but I wouldn't be surprised if this bias is, at least to some extent, still evident.
In the 1960s there was a joke in Readers' Digest about how Teddy Kennedy wanted to change his name because he was tired of being pigeonholed as Jack's and Bobby's little brother. So the judge asks him, "what do you want it changed to?" The senator replies, "Roosevelt."
It was rather surprising to me when I realized the number of people telling me I shouldn't be pressured into changing my name was equal to the number of asian/minority women that changed names giving me not so subtle hints about what they've experienced. It frustrates me a little. But I have friends from all walks of life and everyone from the minimum-wage-job-paying-off-student-loans friends to doctors and lawyers were all telling me variations on the same story from all different settings. They went from sounding like a minority like I did and just getting whatever treatment they thought everyone else got (i.e. it wasn't explicitly racist, it was just...average), to sudden interest and respect that lasts even after people realize what race they are.
I do find it sad the other "married" privilege I'm laughing at is that I could be wearing literally anything even a crappy tshirt and yoga pants sweaty after a workout at the gym, and people will treat me differently based on whether or not I'm wearing my ring that has a 1ct stone. Especially when I frequent a store and the same cashier or owner still doesn't remember me but treats me like night and day based on it every. single. time. The effect is even better than walking up to someone to buy lots of things and they're a bit snobby like "you can't possibly want this or pay for it" until I pull out a platinum amex or a wad of 100s from my wallet.
This is (among other reasons) why I try so hard not to make buttloads of assumptions and pass instant judgment on others - I don't like being on the receiving end, and we're all guilty of being on the giving end too many times.
Job wise my resume contains my birthplace and university education (which is from a "safe" first world country people usually think of a "white" - Israel) so if anything it must help (being seen as Jewish in Germany is usually more likely to get one "corrective" positive discrimination for obvious reasons).
Of course we can never know for sure which interviews we didn't get due to stereotypes so who knows.
But I'm sure I'd have gotten worse treatment if my name was obviously Muslim or African sounding.
I'm american, but my name is "Aram". This is not a common American name (Its more common in Armenia, and my dad is half Armenian). Im pretty much a European mutt.
People try to figure out who you are by your name. When I moved from Mass to NY for work and was meeting people I had worked with and talked to on the phone (who speak freely), I got three times "You don't look like an Aram". I asked someone what they thought Aram looks like, I was told more middle-eastern.
When I do a job search, I wonder if changing my name would make it easier. Being in tech helps though, people are used to odd names.
"The results of this study indicate a gender bias for both men and women in preference for male job applicants."
I'm also skeptical how much value is added face-to-face. I think the long term strategy would be to apply big data techniques to hiring. If you do long-term tracking of hiring outcomes, you could start to develop a suite of accurate hiring predictors. It is clear at least some current selectors are not very good (e.g. gender, first name). I'm aware of an elite academic dept. that doesn't do face-to-face meetings for hiring assistant professors. Someone in the dept. claimed the application packet was the best predictor of the kinds of success the dept. hires for and face-to-face wasn't useful, if not misleading.
On the one hand, face-to-face does allow all these preconceptions and prejudices to happen. On the other, it allows the team to assess those things that actually matter in meetings, presentations, and other face-to-face venues.
Perhaps for a purely distributed company, this wouldn't matter. But in many existing cases, the face-to-face is still a factor.
I still think you're not learning what you think you're learning from face-to-face. I don't have data on that, but then again, I'm guessing you don't either.
As far as I know it works fairly well.
http://www.chicagobooth.edu/capideas/spring03/racialbias.htm...