I’m known to assign racism to a lot of my negative experiences, to the point where those closest to me no longer call it when they see it (if I’m in earshot) for fear of opening a can of worms. One of my many consistently negative experiences is job hunting. Admittedly, it doesn’t help that I dropped out of university twice, but it’s not like I put that on my application. So, why don’t I make the shortlist of candidates invited to interview?
If you read my last
post, you'll know I very recently joined the 7.7 percenters. Well, since my
initiation, a lot’s happened. For example; I've learned the recruitment industry is yet another in a long
line of industries to cash in on the DIY culture. By DIY culture I don’t mean the anti-consumerist
ethic, of which I am a born believer. No, I’m talking about the evil culture in which you
have to jump hoops and do all their work for them before the power-holders will
meet you less than a quarter of the way.
Let me get
this right; I’m supposed to create an account and profile for every recruitment
agency, upload my CV, portfolio, and in some cases photograph, references and CRB
(that I have to pay for) before you’ll even forward my application to the
advertiser?
Go to hell.
Go to hell.
So, I’m now on Arts Jobs minding my own business when an ad pops up from an agency website left open in another tab, and I have to go and click on it - I
never ever do that. Actually, that's a good point, I'm sure ABP was blocking my pop-ups before I installed Windows 8, but anyway, the pop-up leads me
to a blog and the blog leads me to a survey, where interestingly there’s another
unsuspecting job-seeker who’s just left a well thought-out comment
on racism in recruitment.
He quotes from a Harvard essay concluding ‘racial discrimination in the labor market is still very much at large’ – their findings show an alarmingly high percentage of American employers still prefer to employ people with ‘white sounding names’. Not much of a revelation, you might think (but never say out loud).
I can barely breathe on reading these words. Don't get me wrong, of course that very same thought has ran across my mind a hundred times and has been the main feature of a hundred ‘post 9/11’ tirades, but to read it in a non-YouTube environment, well, let’s just say it hurts.
He quotes from a Harvard essay concluding ‘racial discrimination in the labor market is still very much at large’ – their findings show an alarmingly high percentage of American employers still prefer to employ people with ‘white sounding names’. Not much of a revelation, you might think (but never say out loud).
I can barely breathe on reading these words. Don't get me wrong, of course that very same thought has ran across my mind a hundred times and has been the main feature of a hundred ‘post 9/11’ tirades, but to read it in a non-YouTube environment, well, let’s just say it hurts.
I’m in bed
thinking about it all night and hardly getting any sleep, fully aware the
UK is no different, if not worse, especially my town. The next morning, just
out of curiosity, I open a new email account and begin applying for jobs in the
name Emma Jones. Other than the name I don’t change one word of my CV.
I can almost hear my heartstrings playing a major to minor chord-change when Emma gets a response before me. I'm crushed, to say the very least. Emotions and indeed separate identities become increasingly difficult to control once the phone starts ringing.
I should never have put a phone number down but I wanted it to be a fair test.
This one company rings up merely to inform her that her application is being considered. Come on, who does that? Why is Emma getting so much respect? Luckily at this point I'm out on my Brompton and miss the call. But later on, somewhere between bitter envy and humiliating despair, I decide to respond to the message; simple enough, as I have a white sounding voice, but that’s another topic.
I'm now speaking to a bloke who I manage to convince to interview me the following day due to a pending job offer (fictional, of course). If it didn't go against every fibre of my being I guess I'd have made a pretty good salesperson. Anyway, so I attend the interview and quite frankly there are absolutely no issues or double-takes when I arrive. But then, what are they going to say?
Hang on a minute, you’re not white. With a name like Emma Jones, you led us to believe you’d be white. Please leave the building in a respectable manner as we have real white people at work here.
I can almost hear my heartstrings playing a major to minor chord-change when Emma gets a response before me. I'm crushed, to say the very least. Emotions and indeed separate identities become increasingly difficult to control once the phone starts ringing.
I should never have put a phone number down but I wanted it to be a fair test.
This one company rings up merely to inform her that her application is being considered. Come on, who does that? Why is Emma getting so much respect? Luckily at this point I'm out on my Brompton and miss the call. But later on, somewhere between bitter envy and humiliating despair, I decide to respond to the message; simple enough, as I have a white sounding voice, but that’s another topic.
I'm now speaking to a bloke who I manage to convince to interview me the following day due to a pending job offer (fictional, of course). If it didn't go against every fibre of my being I guess I'd have made a pretty good salesperson. Anyway, so I attend the interview and quite frankly there are absolutely no issues or double-takes when I arrive. But then, what are they going to say?
Hang on a minute, you’re not white. With a name like Emma Jones, you led us to believe you’d be white. Please leave the building in a respectable manner as we have real white people at work here.
Of course nobody's going to say that and obviously I realise there are lots of ‘non-white’
people with white sounding names in the UK and hundreds of them might even be
called Emma Jones, but that’s hardly the point. My name isn’t Emma Jones and my
name didn’t get me into that building.
Okay, so I make it through to a second interview, fight off three other candidates and actually get the job. I’m so pleased with myself and totally caught up in the hype that I’m actually considering changing my name to Emma Jones before the employment contract commences (deed poll is quicker than one would think). Then I picture the faces of my family and friends on hearing I've changed my name to Emma Jones... I decide I'd rather come clean to the company.
Okay, so I make it through to a second interview, fight off three other candidates and actually get the job. I’m so pleased with myself and totally caught up in the hype that I’m actually considering changing my name to Emma Jones before the employment contract commences (deed poll is quicker than one would think). Then I picture the faces of my family and friends on hearing I've changed my name to Emma Jones... I decide I'd rather come clean to the company.
Maybe they’ll understand. I’d understand if I were in their shoes. Why wouldn’t I employ a liar?
Maybe not.
So, the next day I send them an email thanking them for their consideration and informing them I'll be taking up the other offer (the fictional one). My interviewer rings me up in response and tells me how disappointed the company is and would I reconsider. My sliding door - But in the moment I freeze, and apologise, and thank him politely.
So, the next day I send them an email thanking them for their consideration and informing them I'll be taking up the other offer (the fictional one). My interviewer rings me up in response and tells me how disappointed the company is and would I reconsider. My sliding door - But in the moment I freeze, and apologise, and thank him politely.
As I'm writing this, I’m seeing that perhaps I'm the exact kind of fraudster that causes the racial profiling I’ve spent most of my life being a bitter victim of... Oh dear God, I need to think...