I have come to believe that businesses have a lot of the most interesting and useful data around. Here is yet another example of how, with the right data, an incredibly simple analysis can make an important point in an extremely convincing way.
JobApp Network helps other companies to hire. Applications can be made either over the phone or online. Edgar Johns, an employee at JobApp Network, analyzed data his company had on over 25,000 applicants to restaurant and retail job positions.
Looking at means in the data, he found something striking. Of those job seekers applying by phone, more than 40 percent were minorities. When it came to applying over the web, the share of minorities fell to less than 20 percent. His conclusion: as firms move more and more toward taking only online applications, there could be an adverse impact on minority applicants.
You can read the whole analysis here.
I’ve heard people argue this point without data before, but I’ve never been convinced. While minorities, overall, do have less high-speed internet access at home, it would seem conceivable that internet access would not be that different among the types of people applying for similar jobs. Also, in principle, access to internet at places outside the home (e.g. schools or libraries) might be sufficient.
Data make the point in a way conjecture and anecdote cannot.
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Is it really a case of limited internet access for minorities? Perhaps it is that they want to represent themselves in the best way possible. Speaking with someone over the phone demonstrates that you have a good command of English,are somewhat well-spoken, and can communicate clearly.
I am a caucasian who has acquired an oriental last name through my mother’s marriage- I always try to call or meet propsective employers rather than email, as I am afraid that I will be dismissed witout being given a chance.
I have always worried that people will (purposefully or not) think I am “not from here”, and assume that my language skills are poor, or apply other prejudices. Yes, this is illegal, but I’m afraid racial bias is still alive and well in our society.
Being white, but with a parent of oriental descent also lets me peek into both worlds: I hear what white people say & do regarding minorities, and I also get a small perspective on how minorities can be affected by the anglo-centric western society.
“Data make the point in a way conjecture and anecdote cannot.”
True but Einstein did a thing or two with conjecture and anecdote. Additionally, I urge caution with “the point.” Data doesn’t make any point on its own.
Some questions…what did the % breakout of phone to web look like? Ie did the vast majority of people use the web? 40% of 2% isn’t much. What is the minority representation in the generator (% the people of the area studied). Which minority group was more likely to win a job or was there any difference, the phone or web. Is it simply an expressed preference, meaning do minorities use option 1 (phone) over option 2 (web) until option 1 is eliminated..what would the dropout rate look like? I’d also put forth that “minority” the tag is lazy, ethnic groups might be more interesting. This may all be in the study. I should be less lazy myself and look.
Last…all my life I’ve NEVER applied for any job over the phone…not sure how that works. It’s been in person (pre internet) or over the web. I’ve had much better luck calling and showing up in person.
In the end I think it would boil down to digital divide based on opportunity, based on education and economic background.
This study suggests that people who use computers to apply for jobs tend to be different than those who use phones to apply for jobs. I suspect that once one controls for age, income, education, etc the race thing fades.
Is outside the home internet access really enough? Yes, anyone can access the internet from schools, libraries, etc. but you have to know that it’s available and have a certain comfort level using it in order to apply for jobs. I wonder how much education/comfort with technology plays a role.
I am familiar with IVR or phone-based job application processes and I can say with absolutely certainty that going through a complete job application by phone will take substantially longer than by web. Therefore, unless minorities enjoy wasting their time more than non-minorities, minorities are exhibiting a preference to apply by phone out of necessity–they don’t have have convenient internet access.
It is quite ironic that this is being discussed today, a day that has seen the Democrats make huge in-roads in the Congress, the Senate and obviously he Executive Branch. I think that it is now a forgone conclusion that legislation LIKE the “Civil Rights Act of 2008″ will be passed. What is the implication of this? I strongly believe that we see a tidal wave of disparate impact lawsuits, which had been a largely dormant area of employment law under the Bush administration. If you read discriminations.us, the blog, you’ll see a few posts on this subject dating back to Jan 2008.
This comment by Bob may well be correct: “once one controls for age, income, education, etc., the race thing fades.”
However, strictly as a legal matter, that correction will not likely be made by courts. A court ruling on a disparate impact racial discrimination case will approach the statistics exclusively in terms of “the race thing.”
A prima facie case of discrimination can be made based on a sufficient showing that the employer uses selection methods that, on the whole, disproportionately preclude minorities or result in workforces not sufficiently reflective of the minority composition of the qualified population in the relevant geographic area.
At that point, the employer has the very difficult burden of proving that the selection methods used are, in essence, the best possible methods.
With a company such as JobApp Network providing a model of an easy way to reduce or eliminate the disparate impact of Internet-only applications at minimum cost and with no sacrifice of quality, I suspect meeting this burden will be virtually impossible for most businesses.
This is, necessarily, an oversimplification of some complex employment law. But the bottom line is that I think A. Verkerke is correct to the extent that this Internet-application issue will be one factor contributing to increasing disparate impact litigation.
However, such litigation had been relatively dormant for much longer than just the Bush administration years, and the increase has already been underway for several years. This trend does not require any legislative change to encourage its continuance.
George Lenard
http://www.employmentblawg.com
Survey researchers are currently working to better understand the impact of administering different modes (web, phone, etc) of the same survey on response rates and the resulting data quality. Self-selection of different groups of people (more- or less-educated, or higher- or lower-income) into one survey mode or another can often be shown to account for a majority of the differences in means between responses to the same question in different modes of the surveys. Surveys offered only electronically are also known to exclude lower-SES and older respondents– so much so that an organization that runs web surveys on a nationally-representative panel has issued “web tvs” to those without internet access to reduce such problems!
Does a firm’s decision to offer only web-based job applications, as compared to phone and web job applications, result in different ethnic/racial composition of a firm’s job applicants? What about their workforce composition? This seems to be a highly-salient “real-world” application of the problem facing survey researchers! Certainly worthy of further study!