Do they have a breakdown of the methodology in how they submitted the applications? Surely they didn’t submit 80,000 applications to each company they were using for the experiment. I assume they divided those applications up amongst the companies on their list they were using.
So, there needs to be more information on how they conducted their experiment, like, did they have an equal amount of application with black sounding names as there were white sounding names? Did they submit equal numbers of applications of each type to each company? What were the names they used that they claim sounded black and what were the names they used that sounded white? You know, not everyone may agree that some names are indicative of a particular ethnicity. Were the skills and qualifications for each of the applicants all the same? Or different?
What about the companies themselves? How many of those companies had the people doing the interviews who were black or other minority as opposed to white? Did anyone go to these companies for a comment? To see what the company was thinking?
It’s entirely possible that it was other things on the application other than the name that was the deciding factor. They cited some companies contacted presumed white applicants 43% more often. How many applications were sent to those companies? If it was a small number, that 43% might be just a few people. Only 2 of the companies apparently are in that group, the other ones appear to be in the other group of 9.5%.
They say they used 100 companies as their sample size, so does that mean they sent 800 applications to each company? Or were there different numbers to different companies in different cities? They showed 2 companies with a 43/33% gap, but said others were around 9.5%. They listed 16 companies, so were those bottom 14 companies those that had the 9.5%? What about the other 84 companies? Were they also in the 9.5% or were they lower?
What is the racial breakdown of these companies? Do they have an almost entirely white work force, suggesting a pattern of discriminatory practices? Or do they have a fairly diverse mix of employees that would suggest they hire all kinds of people?
I mean, it’s entirely possible these stores did a horrible injustice, but, you have a study that doesn’t give any methodology on how they conducted this experiment, and then they go and name and shame some of those companies on the internet (defamation lawsuit here??)
Basically you have a study that was conducted the doesn’t give any information on how they conducted their study, doesn’t give details on their findings, doesn’t have any information about them contacting the company to get any kind of explanation, or a chance to refute the claims, or explain their own methodology in their hiring practices.
It appears they are trying to get the reader to believe the reason for the gap was based on the name only, when there may be other explanations…that they never bothered to ask for?
