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Unveiling ethnic hiring discrimination in Australia during the COVID-19 pandemic

During the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia, hiring discrimination against ethnic minorities applying for leadership positions significantly decreased. However, discrimination persisted for non-leadership roles, highlighting uneven recruitment practices across different job levels.

But the fall may be due to the "glass cliff" theory, where organizations appoint more diverse leaders in times of crisis, possibly to absorb blame for poor performance.

The study, the first of its kind, involved researchers from Monash Business School and King's College Business School London.

in Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, the study investigated hiring discrimination against job applicants with Chinese and Indian names applying for leadership and non-leadership positions before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, to determine if ethnic discrimination in recruitment changed because of an external labor market shock during the pandemic.

The study involved the researchers, including Professor Andreas Leibbrandt, from Monash Business School's Department of Economics, submitting 1239 job applications for leadership roles and 7179 for non-leadership job positions to 3500 job advertisements across six professions in Australia.

"We manipulated the names on identical resumes, and analyzed the differences in the responses received for applicants with Chinese, English and Indian names to measure hiring discrimination," Professor Leibrandt said. "We included applicants with English names as a comparison group.

"For every job listing, we refrained from sending more than three resumes to a single job to prevent alerting recruiters to our field experiment. We concentrated on current job ads that were no more than one week old to increase the likelihood of receiving positive replies.

"We employed various names for each ethnic group to avoid employing a singular, stereotypical name that might skew the outcomes. With input from members of the ethnic communities, we used three names for each occupation and varied the names between occupations. Examples of names are Memei Cheung and Yong Huang (Chinese names), Jennifer Brown and Peter Smith (English names), and Ankit Gupta and Neha Singh (Indian names)," Professor Leibbrandt said.

The study found that ethnic hiring discrimination largely vanished for leadership positions during the pandemic, for which discrimination was most pronounced before the pandemic.

Senior Lecturer Dr. Mladen Adamovic, from King's Business School at King's College London said, "Although the glass cliff finding could be perceived as encouraging because ethnic minorities were not disadvantaged in the recruitment for leadership positions during the pandemic, the leadership prospects of ethnic minority leaders are unclear."

"The lack of positive responses for many applications, including those with English names, made it more difficult to detect discrimination," Dr. Adamovic said.

"Ethnic minority leaders are often appointed during times of economic uncertainty, which can place them at higher risk of underperformance and subsequent dismissal."

To address this, the study advocates for long-term strategies that include mentoring, leadership development, and increased support for ethnic minority leaders.

"Organizations can make the recruitment team more diverse by including minority employees in the evaluation panel, increasing the likelihood of hiring or promoting ethnic minorities into leadership positions independently of a crisis context," Dr. Adamovic said.

Regarding non-leadership positions, the external labor market shock did not increase hiring discrimination against ethnic minority job applicants.

Chinese applicants received 42.3% fewer positive responses and applicants with Indian names received 44% fewer positive responses than applicants with English names during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"One reason for these findings could be that government anti-discrimination initiatives and campaigns to reduce COVID-related discrimination against ethnic minorities had some bearing," Professor Leibbrandt said.

"Our research supports the finding that ethnic minorities are less likely to experience hiring discrimination when they apply for jobs that are difficult to fulfill by organizations. In contrast, when organizations have a wider pool of qualified applicants, such as during times of high unemployment, hiring discrimination is likely to increase," he said.

Gaining a deeper understanding of ethnic discrimination at the initial stages of career entry offers insights for leaders in the business, political, and educational sectors to address ethnic biases.