British Prime Minister David Cameron announced last week the UK will take actionable steps to reduce discrimination, by removing the names of applicants on resumes seeking employment and entering into colleges or universities.
Cameron wrote an open letter in The Guardian stating he spoke with a young black woman who had to use a more “white sounding name” on her resume before she began to receive calls back for interviews. The Prime Minister said that type of behavior was unacceptable.
“Such racism in 21st-century Britain, I said, was a disgrace, and I committed our party to ending discrimination and finishing the fight for real equality.”
To combat the issue, Cameron said some of the UK’s biggest employers have agreed to hide the names of applicants, in hopes to reduce racial bias.
“We have managed to get some of the biggest graduate employers to pledge to anonymise their job applications – in other words, make them name-blind. That means those assessing applications will not be able to see the person’s name, so the ethnic or religious background it might imply cannot influence their prospects.”
Cameron continued by saying close to a dozen companies, which employ 1.8 million people have taken this pledge.
“Some research has shown that top universities make offers to 55% of white applicants, but only to 23% of black ones. The reasons are complex, but unconscious bias is clearly a risk. So we have agreed with UCAS that it will make its applications name-blind too, from 2017.”