Listing affiliation with gay activist groups hinders one’s chances of landing a job interview.
The Week (“Why gay men don’t get job interviews“):
Harvard researcher András Tilcsik wanted to know if employers discriminated against gay applicants, so he and his colleagues sent out two sets of fake résumés for 1,769 office or managerial job openings in seven states. One version of the résumé suggested that the applicant was gay. The other did not. Otherwise, they were all but identical. The results? The gay “applicant” was 40 percent less likely to get called in for an interview. The study, the first of its kind, appears in The American Journal of Sociology. Here’s what you should know:
How did Tilcsik indicate that one applicant was gay?
The “gay” résumé listed a stint as treasurer of a collegiate gay organization. To separate any “gay penalty” from general anti-liberal political bias on the employers’ part, Tilcsik listed involvement with a “progressive and socialist alliance” on the other set of résumés in place of the gay group. The apparently heterosexual lefty was contacted 11.5 percent of the time; the gay treasurer was called back only 7.2 percent of the time — a 40 percent hit.What’s behind this double standard?
Geography played a pretty big role. Callback rates for the two résumés differed widely in Southern and Midwestern states — Texas, Florida, and Ohio — but were more equal in Western and Northeastern states: California, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and New York. “This doesn’t necessarily mean that there is no discrimination in those states,” Tilcsik says. “What this does show is that discrimination in white-collar employment is substantially stronger for the Southern and Midwestern states in the sample.”
This isn’t exactly shocking. Indeed, I’m shocked at the number of résumés I get that list affiliations with political activist groups of any stripe on them: it’s just asking to be put in the “REJECT” pile unless the position is with a similarly-aligned organization.
Then again, with so many people disclosing all manner of things that used to be intensely personal via social media, this may just be a fact of modern life:
But the study does suggest that it’s tough being “a proud gay man looking for a white-collar job in America,” says Jonathan Higbee in Instinct. Maybe gay men “need a bit of affirmative action.” Besides, given the ubiquitous use of social media by prospective employers and head-hunters, “being out and proud on a candidate’s Facebook profile” could negate any attempt to remove gay references from your résumé. Maybe this double standard is actually a “blessing in disguise,” says Daniel Villarreal at Queerty. Being preemptively rejected might at least protect gays from entering “a homophobic work environment.”
Despite the fact that I’ve been writing a political blog for going on nine years and sharing my thoughts on Twitter for nearly five, I’m still cognizant that everything I put up is subject to scrutiny. If you’re searching for a job, you should probably make sure your Facebook presence doesn’t raise any flags. If you’re looking for a job in corporate America, you probably shouldn’t be dressed like South Park’s Mr. Slave in your profile picture.
While prudence is advisable in shaping your public image, you shouldn’t have to hide fundamental aspects of who you are. G-rated pictures of you and your significant other, for example, are not something that should hurt your chances of landing a job. Then again, most people make their accounts visible only to “friends,” anyway.
