Study suggests bias against 'black' names on resumes

Employers may be selecting or overlooking prospective job candidates for interviews based on their potential race as suggested by names, according to a recent study by two professors from the University of Chicago and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

To test whether employers might discriminate against job applicants with black-sounding names, associate professors of economics Marianne Bertrand with Chicago's Graduate School of Business and Sendhil Mullainathan with MIT conducted an elaborate experiment. They fabricated resumes for multiple "phantom" job seekers with common black and white names. The professors then sent out nearly 5,000 resumes for 1,300 job openings advertised in newspapers and on online job sites throughout Chicago and Boston.