Gay Resumes Get Fewer Calls
After being told a thousand times that cis white gay men were the most privileged people on the planet, definitely more privileged than Christian
white straight men, a professor goes and performs a study like this:Harvard University researcher Andras Tilcsik sent two realistic but fictitious CVs to 1,700 white collar job openings, such as managerial positions.
One CV mentioned relevant experience in a university gay society as a treasurer, while the other listed experience in the ‘Progressive and Socialist Alliance’.
Mr Tilcsik said that since employers are likely to associate both groups with left-leaning political views, this would separate any ‘gay penalty’ from the effects of political discrimination.
The results showed that applicants without the gay reference had an 11.5 per cent chance of being called for an interview. However, CVs which mentioned the gay society had only a 7.2 per cent chance. The difference amounted to a 40 per cent higher chance of the heterosexual applicant getting a call.
When I look for jobs I also wonder about whether I should effectively out myself on my resume. Apparently, I shouldn’t, although it’s kind of hard not to mention previous work experience on Bilerico and PageOneQ since I worked on both sites so long and learned a lot from my involvement in both projects.
There’s a school of thought that it’s best for everyone to come out in every part of their lives since that’s the only way things will advance, although I’ve noticed that proponents of that tend to have jobs where being queer is an asset (like working in LGBT media). I remember going to a certain straight person’s lecture and being told that everyone should come out, and if they lose their job, well, don’t worry, you didn’t want that job anyway. She was married to an oil exec and never worked a day in her life.
I definitely won’t fault any LGBT person who doesn’t want to out themselves to a potential employer, especially in this economy. Jobs aren’t that easy to come by, homophobia isn’t over, and an employer who only wants to employ straight people will find it easy to do so.
But the data is good to know for those of you out there who are deciding whether or not to de-gay your resume.
Not to mention that it is totally legal to discriminate against GLBTQ employees in the majority of U.S. states: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_LGBT_civil_rights_July_2011.svg
