Applicants from ethnic backgrounds 57% less likely to be considered for leadership roles despite identical resumes, huge study finds

In contemporary Australia, a significant portion of business and political leaders are white individuals with English names. This raises the question: is there a glass ceiling for ethnic minorities in Australia? Discrimination in leadership positions not only violates equal opportunity principles and anti-discrimination laws but also undermines social cohesion in a society.

Furthermore, the business case argument suggests that the Australian economy loses millions of dollars each year as organisations fail to select the best-suited employees for leadership roles, relegating ethnic minorities to positions below their qualifications.

Empirical Study

Our research team conducted one of the largest international discrimination studies, submitting over 12,000 job applications in response to more than 4,000 job advertisements. This study focused on name and ethnic discrimination during the recruitment process for leadership positions.

Our research is the first resume study to include leadership roles (such as management, team leader, and frontline leader positions) in its investigation of ethnic discrimination. Resume studies involve responding to real job advertisements using nearly identical resumes for fictional candidates, with names altered to represent different ethnicities.

We examined six distinct ethnic groups by modifying the names on otherwise identical resumes to reflect Arabic, Australian Aboriginal, Chinese, English, Greek, and Indian backgrounds. The applications targeted jobs advertised in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane, across twelve different occupations.

Results

Our findings reveal a higher degree of ethnic discrimination during the recruitment process for leadership positions, providing new evidence of a glass ceiling for ethnic minorities in Australia.

Percentage of positive responses for all leadership and non-leadership job applications:

Note. N (leadership jobs): English = 358; Arabic = 134; Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander = 136; Chinese = 155; Greek = 140; Indian = 148; non-English = 713;
N (non-leadership jobs): English = 3736; Arabic = 1553; Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander = 1562; Chinese = 1464; Greek = 1480; Indian = 1463; non-English = 7522. Source: ‘Is there a glass ceiling for ethnic minorities to enter leadership positions? Evidence from a field experiment with over 12,000 job applications’.

For leadership roles, applicants with English names received 26.8% positive responses, while those with non-English names received 11.3% positive responses. This indicates a 57.4% reduction in positive responses for ethnic minorities despite having identical resumes.

For non-leadership roles, applicants with English names received 21.2% positive responses, while those with non-English names received 11.6% positive responses, reflecting a 45.3% reduction in positive responses for ethnic minorities.

These results suggest that recruiters are more likely to perceive applicants with English names as potential leaders, while they are less likely to view ethnic minorities as prototypical leaders.

Customer contract increases discrimination

Ethnic discrimination for leadership positions was higher when the advertised jobs required customer contact. For these customer-oriented jobs, job applicants with English names received 30.6% of positive responses for their job applications, while applicants with non-English names received 11.1% of positive responses. 

The customer contact finding suggests that recruiters may think that customers expect and prefer to deal with a “prototypical” leader, which may manifest in more hiring discrimination against ethnic minorities. Customers are more likely to consider employees in leadership positions (as compared to employees in non-leadership positions) as representatives of the organisation.

In contrast, ethnic discrimination in recruitment was not influenced by the city, the sex of job applicants, and whether the job advertisement emphasised learning, creativity, and innovation.

Recommendations

The ethnic discrimination findings are particularly striking because the resumes in our studies indicate that the ethnic minority applicants in our study were educated and have worked in Australia. This provides strong evidence that the reported hiring discrimination is caused by the name and not by visa issues or a lack of language skills or local experience.

To tackle the discrimination issue, organisations could try using anonymous job applications, in which the applicants’ names are hidden in the initial recruitment phase. 

Further, it might be important to improve the training of recruiters to reduce ethnic discrimination in the recruitment of leadership positions. This could help recruiters become aware of potential stereotypes. Relatedly, organisations can implement diversity management and inclusion practices to support the recruitment and promotion of ethnic minority employees and leaders. 

Finally, organisations can try to develop leadership development programs for ethnic minority employees.

Mladen Adamovic is a senior lecturer at King’s College in London and previously served as a lecturer at both the University of Melbourne and Monash University.