How hiring practices during COVID-19 displayed instances of ethnic discrimination

A recent study analysed and investigated hiring discrimination against job applicants with either Chinese or Indian names, attempting to determine whether ethnic discrimination in recruitment changed during the pandemic.

Published in the Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society report by Monash University, a recent study focused on ethnic discrimination in hiring practices during the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia.

The study involved submitting 1,239 job applications for leadership roles and 7,179 for non-leadership job positions to 3,500 job advertisements across six professions in Australia. The roles that were applied for included, accountant, marketing specialist, HR management professional, personal care aide, electrician, and administrative/clerical worker.

Professor Andreas Leibbrandt, who oversaw the study, explained how the application process went.

“We manipulated the names on identical résumés and analysed the differences in the responses received for applicants with Chinese, English and Indian names to measure hiring discrimination,” Leibbrandt said.

“We included applicants with English names as a comparison group. For every job listing, we refrained from sending more than three résumés to a single job to prevent alerting recruiters to our field experiment. We concentrated on current job ads that were no more than one week old to increase the likelihood of receiving positive replies.”

In terms of the names used for each applicant, various ethnic groups were contacted to pass off on the names.

“We employed various names for each ethnic group to avoid employing a singular, stereotypical name that might skew the outcomes. With input from members of the ethnic communities, we used three names for each occupation and varied the names between occupations,” said Leibbrandt.

“Examples of names are Memei Cheung and Yong Huang (Chinese names), Jennifer Brown and Peter Smith (English names), and Ankit Gupta and Neha Singh (Indian names).”

The results themselves are believed to have revealed a “glass cliff” finding, according to senior lecturer Dr Mladen Adamovic.

“Although the glass cliff finding could be perceived as encouraging because ethnic minorities were not disadvantaged in the recruitment for leadership positions during the pandemic, the leadership prospects of ethnic minority leaders are unclear,” said Adamovic.

“The lack of positive responses for many applications, including those with English names, made it more difficult to detect discrimination.”

“Ethnic minority leaders are often appointed during times of economic uncertainty, which can place them at higher risk of underperformance and subsequent dismissal.”

The study from Monash seeks to advocate for long-term strategies that can create increased support for ethnic minority leaders, such as mentoring and leadership development.

“Organisations can make the recruitment team more diverse by including minority employees in the evaluation panel, increasing the likelihood of hiring or promoting ethnic minorities into leadership positions independently of a crisis context,” said Adamovic.

In regards to non-leadership positions, Chinese applicants received 42.3 per cent fewer positive responses, and applicants with Indian names received 44 per cent fewer positive responses than applicants with English names during the pandemic.

“One reason for these findings could be that government anti-discrimination initiatives and campaigns to reduce COVID-related discrimination against ethnic minorities had some bearing,” said Leibbrandt.

“Our research supports the finding that ethnic minorities are less likely to experience hiring discrimination when they apply for jobs that are difficult to fulfil by organisations. In contrast, when organisations have a wider pool of qualified applicants, such as during times of high unemployment, hiring discrimination is likely to increase.”