Ask HN: How to deal with female name on resume? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to deal with female name on resume?

12 pointswatto143 comments

I'm a female working in the finance/tech industry. Applying to companies, I'm worried that the gendered name on my resume might be poisoning employers' perception of me: http://whatwouldkingleonidasdo.tumblr.com/post/54989171152/how-i-discovered-gender-discrimination.

Do you believe that this kind of name-based bias is strong enough that I should somehow change my resume to show something other than my name? Also, I'm working with a recruiter, should I tell him my concern?

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I would suggest you do further research before making a decision. It is possible it will hurt you. It is also possible that it will screen out toxic work environments where you wouldn't really want to be. Before deciding whether to go with initials or not, if it were me, I would see if I could come up with something on that angle of things.

From what I have read, some women are leaving tech to get away from the horribly misogynistic work environments they have endured. There are some real horror stories out there. If this can be used as a means to screen out potentially toxic work places, it might be a more efficient use of your time to go ahead and use the female name and let them not waste your time on interviews and what not.

Best of luck.

(I will add that I am a woman, fwiw.)

I agree with Mz that your going to screen out the toxic places by being honest.

As a guy who has done hiring in the past, if I see a woman who has 5+ years in the industry I'm automatically going to talk to her. Theres a lot of bullshit out there, and you have probably put up with a fair bit more of it than most other people/men. If your still here and still looking for a job its probably because you want to be in the industry and like what you do.

> I'm working with a recruiter...

Don't waste your energy with a some bozo recruiter.

Instead focus your search on networking with senior executive level women. Most companies (even in male dominate tech) have a few well positioned women. And most get the Girl Power Network thing.

Check out Women in Technology for an event near you>http://witi.meetup.com/ ; and www.womenintechnology.org

Also, The 25 Most Powerful Women in Finance for some additional target ideas... http://www.americanbanker.com/women-in-banking/gallery/the-2...

There are lots of firms who ONLY get decent engineers through recruiters.

Techical recruiting is HARD, and honestly if your a small shop, with limited HR going outside to get talent may be your only option.

The typical business model for a recruiter has the company pay him a fee for placement. He does NOT work for job-seekers, but rather tries to broker a match.

Most companies (especially small shops) would rather source a potential hire through their own channels, than pay a headhunter fee.

I don't think it's worth being concerned about (and I do believe we have a big problem with gender bias in this industry), but if you think it's a problem, it's going to be one whether or not it really is, because it'll impact your confidence. So, to ease your mind and table this issue: just use your first initial instead of your first name. Super common, people do it all the time.

I'd argue it is more likely to help you in tech' than hurt you. Companies are falling all over themselves to bring in more women.

No clue on finance however.

I would say it seems to depend on the company. Companies like Google and Microsoft seem to go out of their way to hire minorities (i.e. not white male), but companies which are less in the public spotlight seem to put less effort into it. At least that is my perspective based on interviewing at lots of companies for post graduation jobs.

I agree, or at least that is my perception. As a female dev I'm always more worried about a false positive, being hired for a job I'm not suitable for because of the diversity factor. I have found women sometimes get further in the interview process because they are given more second chances. My advice is use your female name.

> Companies are falling all over themselves to bring in more women.

In the HN echo chamber maybe. I still think hiring managers are thinking "maternity leave" especially in the US.

Which is odd as the US offers no maternity leave. A handful of states have a little but it is often UNPAID maternity leave making it all but worthless.

> Which is odd as the US offers no maternity leave. A handful of states have a little but it is often UNPAID maternity leave making it all but worthless.

That's a bit confused.

The US requires unpaid maternity (and other) leave via FMLA; a few states also provide some degree of paid maternity leave. (In both cases, "maternity" is overly specific, but included, in what is generally described -- as in the title of FMLA -- as "family and medical leave".) [0]

[0] http://www.ncsl.org/research/labor-and-employment/state-fami...

FMLA has so many loopholes it may have well not exist at all:

http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/1421.htm#2a

Plus let's be honest, unpaid maternity leave is worthless even if the FMLA worked (it doesn't). That isn't maternity leave, that's "job assurance" if people cannot afford to take leave, they won't. Its as simple as that.

The US is by far the worst western country when it comes to guaranteeing that mothers and fathers will be able to spend time with their kids in the all important first year. Don't even get me started on how bad the US treats single parents.

Upthread, you claimed:

(1) The US has no national maternity leave provision, and (2) A few states provide maternity leave, but even that is only unpaid.

The fact is, the US does have a national unpaid maternity leave provision, and a few states provide paid maternity leave.

> FMLA has so many loopholes it may have well not exist at all

FMLA covers about 60% of all employees, and is used by about 13% annually. So, while it certainly doesn't cover everyone, it certainly has considerably more effect than if it did not exist at all.

> Plus let's be honest, unpaid maternity leave is worthless even if the FMLA worked (it doesn't). That isn't maternity leave, that's "job assurance" if people cannot afford to take leave, they won't.

Its true that unpaid maternity leave obviously isn't as good as paid leave, and people are less likely to take it at all, and likely to take less of it than they would if the lead were paid. That doesn't change the fact that the existence of FMLA as a national source of unpaid maternity leave makes your early claim that there was no US national maternity leave, even unpaid, false, nor does it change the fact that the existence of state paid maternity leave programs makes your further claim that the few states that offered maternity leave offered only unpaid leave also false.

> The US is by far the worst western country when it comes to guaranteeing that mothers and fathers will be able to spend time with their kids in the all important first year.

That's rather clearly true, but not what you claimed upthread, and, more importantly, would have been irrelevant where you made the claim upthread about the nonexistence of required maternity leave in the US, since the US's relative position on maternity leave is immaterial to the issue, which is that hiring managers might avoid hiring women because they might take maternity leave. Since most positions are covered by FMLA, and since FMLA does provide for maternity leave that employees have a right to take, hiring managers might well be considering that, even if the US maternity leave provisions are poor compared to every other developed (not just "western") country.

Congratulations you've nitpicked my remark to death.

But I won't conceded that what the US calls "Maternity Leave" is not in fact it by any modern standard of the term, it is nothing more than a job assurance program that even according to you only reaches 60% of people. And out of them few can afford it (and even them not for its full duration).

A handful of US states offer legitimate Maternity Leave and they should be congratulated for that. The federal government should be ashamed, FMLA is pathetic, and their inaction lets people (both parents & children) down daily.

To be honest I'm not exactly sure what point you're trying to make. That the US is awesome? That maternity leave is fine? That you just want to be "right?" If it is the first two points then we'll never reach consensus and if it is the last point then this is all a waste of time.

> To be honest I'm not exactly sure what point you're trying to make.

That your fact claims upthread (to wit that the US has no national mandatory maternity leave, including unpaid, and that the small number of states that provide more than what is nationally mandated require only unpaid leave) are false and the conclusion they were offered upthread to support (that it is not plausible that US hiring managers would act based on the concern that female applicants might demand maternity leave) is unjustified, since the US has a national mandate that covers most employees for unpaid maternity leave and the handful of states that require something more than the national minimum provide paid leave, and, whether or not those are good maternity leave mandates, they do exist, employees might make use of them, and hiring managers might well act based on sex-based assumptions about which candidates would be more likely to avail themselves of those mandatory leave programs.

Someone1234's claims might be overstated, but it's not the crime that you're making it out to be.

Companies and hiring managers aren't actually the same thing, and the former failing to align internal incentives properly with goals can often cause the former and the latter to have divergent interests.

It depends on your level. Companies are falling all over themselves to bring in more women, but might get your resume glossed over for a senior or lead dev position, or they might assume that she's looking for a more junior position, or perhaps something with more visual design or front end work. Because hey! You're hiring women in tech either way!

Do you want to work at a company where it matters?

A thousand times this. It makes me sad that you have to worry about this :(. But if there's that strong a bias against your name, you probably don't want to end up actually being present there.

My advice, working at an enterprise SaaS company: stick to your guns, and be proud of your name! Good companies (like ours :) ) are actively seeking women for technical positions to correct the bias.

What's the name of your company?

The fear is that it happens at a subconscious level. Most people have subtle (latent) biases against disadvantaged groups.

A perfectly awesome to work at company might be doing this out of ignorance, not because they would be a bad place for OP to work.

I don't think any reputable company does recruitment based on names. In fact, most of the big name companies are trying to get more woman into workforce to balance any bias there might be.

This is a tough one. What everyone assumes is that a only blatantly sexist person will dismiss your resume because of a female name. Obviously, such people will flunk you in the interview.

The problem is it completely ignores people who honestly don't believe they are sexist (and may even consider themselves feminist), but suffer from an unconscious bias. These people might be fine to work for and not be biased (or blatantly so) in the rest of the hiring process.

I never thought of orchestras as havens of gender bias, but they totally were:

http://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2013/oct/14/b...

And I'm sure the judges certainly didn't consider themselves as sexist.

It's totally up to you, but an easy solution is to use initials, such as AJ instead of Allison Jane. For some reason, we almost always assume initials belong to a man.

As for the recruiter, hopefully they know some stats about diversity, including if they are trying to improve it. But in general, a recruiter does not want to submit someone who won't pass the interview.

Researchers in the US have demonstrated that black names (many blacks have names like Tyrone and Aleisha which white people doesn't) are discriminated against (http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html).

It's not far-fetched to speculate that employers would likewise value female and male names differently. I'm just guessing but it feels to me like in the software industry, there may be a bias against females for managerial and project leader positions. Otoh, there is a clear bias in favor of females for bottom-rung coder positions. It's not uncommon to see language in job ads that they would like to see female applications.

I say do an experiment with initials if you can't find an existing study. Try askscience on reddit for previous studies.

I bet it does affect interview rates.

But in general people hire for 'cultural' fit which means like them, so if you find a female who is hiring then that is bonus points, for some men it is minus points, but other things matter too like your perceived social class, what school you went to, etc.

But you can't do anything about that stuff so best is to give them the benefit of the doubt in terms of being able to judge you on your merits. But I think people do want to click with their hires regardless of official policy. You might be able to bond over technical details in your field or baseball teams or whatever.

No. Never. Be who you are and be extremely happy not to have to work for/with people that think it is OK to filter out candidates based on the name or gender.

Years ago, I was in the very unique situation of helping with the recruitment of my own boss. When interviewing a woman, the CTO asked if she was planning to have more kids. Her reaction was a very quick and assertive "Would you ask me the same question if I wasn't a woman?". I was embarrassed by the question and loved the answer. She was hired and we had a great working relationship for the years after.

I think it is very much OK to put people on the spot when similar questions come up.

I don't think this is a real common occurrence or something you should be worried about (but I am also male). And like ellisv said, in the few times it does would you really want to work at that type of place? My 2 cents, be yourself and don't hide anything.

If you really feel it is hurting you though, then try using your first initial. But either way, neither would stop you from getting an interview with any company I have been apart of if you had the qualifications, and I think that's true at most any reputable company.

I've never even thought about this when applying for jobs and didn't notice my name negatively affecting my chances (aside from a female name I also have a very foreign sounding name even though English). I figure if someone is going to discriminate against you based on your name/implied gender/whatever that company is probably not one you want to be working for anyway.

I don't think there is nothing to worry about. I mean your not me a dude with 95% looking female name. For the most part most of my interviews went well though one army research organization one was a bit weird. I think at the time they were "ok we have to ask questions, but lets not make it awkward".

I'd be concerned. If you're lucky, an androgynous name like Robin or Jo can help you. Otherwise, maybe use an initial?

Once you get an interview, it becomes harder to avoid the discrimination. But at least you can get through the resume filter.

Its probably too much, to ask you to change your name.

I have a friend whose last name triggers porn spam filters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem

His name really is just like that.

initials instead of full name maybe? I doubt it's an issue for finance, more for tech perhaps? Depends on what role it is and what level you are at. It matters less than it used to. There's more important things on a resume to determine if you get an interview. Tailoring resumes to company and role is more important.

The common way to do this in literature is using an alias. 'Little Bobby Tables' is probably available again...

Strangely, that one is always available in the database!

I guess you should also find a way to change your look to trick the manager during the in person interview.

We've hired people without ever once meeting them! Remote workers, online interviews, accepted and get to work. But we're a company that creates remote-worker tools, so we're well-placed to make that happen.

Without even a skype/hangout session? Without getting their actual name/gender for legal purposes?

Here's a question. How anonymous can an employee be? For the U.S. It seems like you need to get a Social Security number for tax purposes. Is a name also required?

Employers are required to verify that the employee is eligible to work in the U.S., meaning they're a citizen or else have the proper kind of visa, and are not in the country illegally. And most companies will also do background checks. So yeah, you'll need to give your name, and probably a Xerox of your passport or driver's license, when you sign on to a company.

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