Resume screening and racialized names
Why a stronger resume does not enter a neutral receiver system
A field experiment sent fictitious resumes to employers in Boston and Chicago. Resumes assigned White-sounding names received about 50% more callbacks than otherwise comparable resumes assigned African-American-sounding names.
What transition is actually failing?
Resume advice often assumes the receiver evaluates evidence neutrally. In practice, identity cues, institutional routines, and biased priors can change how the same Substance is weighted before a candidate reaches interview.
What the study tested
Researchers varied names associated with perceived race across fictitious resumes and also varied resume quality while tracking employer callbacks.
How the framework reads the result
Receiver-conditioned interpretation includes harmful and unjust priors. A communication framework must not redescribe discrimination as a candidate messaging failure or imply that the burden belongs entirely to the applicant.
This is Violet’s theoretical interpretation, not a mechanism directly established by the original outcome alone.
What Violet would examine next
- Separate communication friction from discriminatory selection.
- Use structured evaluation criteria tied to job requirements.
- Delay or mask identity cues where lawful and operationally appropriate.
- Audit callback and progression rates across groups and stages.
- Treat unequal response to the same evidence as a system-level failure requiring governance, not copy optimization.
What the result does not prove
The study does not identify every mechanism behind employer decisions or establish the size of discrimination in every contemporary market. It clearly warns against attributing all resume outcomes to document quality.