Immigration.ca - Canada Immigration News - May 2009
A new study has shown that Canadian employers are more likely to grant a job interview to applicants with English names over applicants with Indian, Chinese or Pakistani names.
The study, which was conducted through an immigration and diversity research group called Metropolis, involved sending over 6,000 fake resumes in response to various job advertisements throughout the Toronto region.
Results showed that, in groups with the same education level and job experience, those with names like Greg Johnson had a call back rate of 16 per cent, compared to a rate of 11 per cent for names like Fatima Sheikh.
The rate dropped even further to 8 per cent when the non-English names had Canadian experience, but had foreign education. People with no Canadian experience and foreign education received callbacks at the rate of only 5 per cent.
Additional skills, volunteer experience and extracurricular merits added onto the mock resumes, did little to improve the prospects for foreign-named applicants.
“When sorting through resumes, employers are making split-second decisions based on subconscious stereotypes that they may not even be aware of,” said the study’s author, economist Philip Oreopoulos.
Though surprising to many, the study’s findings do help explain why the immigrant unemployment rate is more than double the rate of Canadian-born unemployment, at 11.5 per cent and 4.9 per cent, respectively.
Source: The Globe and Mail
