So – the Mail on Sunday is sounding off about some of the work the Government is undertaking to prove or disprove the theory that discrimination exists in the form of applicants for jobs getting eliminated because they have names that give away their ethnicity, gender or age.
Apparently the Department of Work and Pensions sent out two thousand applications using false names to judge the response. The Mail characterises it as to see ‘if they are racist’. And how dare they waste businesses’ time. And the CBI joins in. How dare they etc.
Well – I say well done Government. I am glad they are carrying on testing my idea about anonymous job applications because if my theory is proved that by removing names and replacing them with a number on applications we end up with people not being discarded from the first sift of applications because their name shows they are black, female or old – that will be a very, very good thing. And it won’t cost business anything virtually.
And if the CBI are confident that I’m wrong? Well, they shouldn’t be worried about evidence being gathered to find out!
Lynne Featherstone 
The truth is that they are probaly bored with this sort of thing.I have a friend who works in HR for a large company and they spend quite a lot of time comparing CVs because it is a common scam to send the same CV in an 'ethnic' name and in a 'non ethnic' name. If the 'non ethnic' name is offered an interview then a claim of race discrimination ensues.
Hi transfattyacid! Well – if my idea comes into being – firms will be freed of such accusations as without names on applications – they cannot be accused of racism. So – that's win win!
Replace name on job applications with "a number"? What number? Mobile phone number? (Assuming that you the applicant have a mobile phone, of course.) So presumably you would not have to submit an address either? Sorry, Lynne, but this potentially has enormous unintended consequences. Such as: someone organising a campaign against a business could arrange for it to be bombed with hosts of bogus applications giving non-existent mobile phone numbers, and whose senders would be untraceable. A sort of denial of service attack. To keep order there would have to be a whole industry of trusted service providers through whom you would have to submit your applications (after showing your ID Card and having it verified through the joke method of calling the call centre). Huge costs. A bit of commonsense please, despite the undoubted problem of discrimination in recruitment.Having been an employer, albeit running a small business where we used a recruitment agency to insulate us from all of this, it nevertheless horrifies me on both cost and risk grounds.
Dreamingspire – as Lynne mentioned, some firms do this already, which is pretty good evidence that it's possible to do this.Here's one possible way: applications require personal details (name etc.) to be on a separate sheet. One person in HR initially processes them, assigning a reference number that is put on the application and also on that separate sheet, which is then kept securely until it is time to contact people to invite them for interviews.
Here is an idea that doesn't cost business money and doesn't add effort – and might really change the world for many who suffer rejection after rejection for no good reason. Dreamingspire sees only difficulties – whereas I see real potential and a few issues to resolve. Mark's idea is one possibility – but I am sure there are others – something like the National Insurance number. It is not that difficult.
Personally I'd prefer the government actually jus made sure those doing the same job got the same pay first of all. (see the recent cases in the north east).Before the government starts interfering with private companies they need to get their house in order first. I.e. equal retirement age and pension benefits (right now rather than sometime in the distant future), equal and transferable paternity/maternity leave and equal pay for everyone (and to stop being so obsessed with gender).
No, I don't see only difficulties. What I do see is no need for legislation in this area, indeed very strong arguments against legislation – the comments posted on Liberal Conspiracy in response to your article there are excellent illustrations of that.Please keep well away from NuLabour's huge mistake of legislating instead of leading the country. LDs have some great leaders, and all the rest of LD MPs will I hope be always emphasising leadership as the way to good government (although Nick Clegg's response to Brown's statement to the House – answering the Labour election manifesto – was very disappointing, failing to see the essential difference between targets and entitlements).
The point is – that if my idea gets translated into best practise and changes the life chances of those who face this sublimal discrimination on job applications – then that will be fantastic – a real step change. It doesn't have to be legislative if it becomes the norm by other methods – in fact much better. But the way that this has found traction is through being proposed in the Bill. It is very simple and cost free. So let's see what the work the DWP is doing shows. If there continues to be 'significant discrimination' then I would suggest this is a jolly good way to eradicate it in first sift.
Agree with you now.
Interesting comments about national insurance numbers.Those "in the know" knows which combination of digits are assigned to immigrants who have indefinite leave to remain. You can still filter those out.
Ian – well I am clearly not in the know and will check this with the DWP at some point. But I am not saying it has to be NI number – that just seemed a simple and existing number that could be used. I am sure not beyond wit of man (or woman) to overcome this hurdle if what you are saying about 'knowing' who are immigrants turns out to be true.
How will this proposal deal with the prejudice in favour of and previlage of public school educated candidates – like yourself and Harriet Harman?
This isn't a panacea for all ills – but it will (in my view) cut out that first subliminal discard that stops so many getting through the first stages of job applications. The name is the most critical as we all read a heck of a lot into names. Yes – there will be employers who look for other pre-quals – but not the vast majority. Anyway – we will see what the experimental work the DWP shows and then take it from there. And why is it that comments that are snide are always from anonymous?