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65 ILR Rev.: J. Work & Pol'y 82 (2012)
Do Anonymous Job Application Procedures Level the Playing Field

handle is hein.journals/ialrr65 and id is 82 raw text is: DO ANONYMOUS JOB APPLICATION PROCEDURES LEVEL THE PLAYING FIELD? OLOF ASLUND AND OSKAR NORDSTROM SKANS* Despite anti-discrimination legislation and the potential for hefty fines, labor market discrimination remains an issue for ethnic minorities and women, particularly in the recruitment and screening process. The apparent failure of legal and voluntary interventions has created a call for anonymous applica- tion procedures (AAP), in which key identifying data is hidden from recruit- ers in the initial recruiting process. Using unusually rich Swedish data on actual applications and recruitments, the authors show that AAP increased the chances of both women and individuals of non-Western origin of advanc- ing to the interview stage. In addition, results show that women experienced an increased probability of being offered a job under AAP. However, appli- cants belonging to ethnic minorities were equally disadvantaged in terms of job offers under conventional and anonymous hiring procedures, suggesting that racial and ethnic discrimination may be harder to circumvent than gen- der discrimination. B oth scholars and policy makers have recognized that labor market discrimination is a significant issue affecting workers. Two questions are central to understanding its im- pact and mitigation: how prevalent is discrimination, and how can it be reduced? Recent research suggests that ethnicity and gender are used as screening tools in the selection to job interviews, despite anti-discrimination legislation and the possibility of hefty fines (e.g., see Goldin and Rouse 2000; Bertrand and Mullainathan 2004; Carlsson and Rooth 2007).' Equal opportunity policies and measures aimed specifically at promoting the status of women, racial and ethnic minorities, and workers of foreign descent have been in effect for decades, yet labor market disparities remain.2 This apparent failure of legislation, public interventions, and voluntary action has led to calls for anonymous application procedures (AAP) in which the applicant's name, gender, and country of origin are hidden from the recruiter in the initial stages of the hiring process. AAP is an issue under political discussion * Olof Aslund is Director General and Professor of economics and Oskar Nordstr6m Skans is a researcher and As- sociate Professor of economics, both at IFAU (the Institute for Labour Market Policy Evaluation), Uppsala Univer- sity and UCLS in Sweden. Both authors are research fellows at IZA, Bonn. Aslund is also a research fellow at CReAM, United Kingdom. Additional results, copies of the computer programs used to generate the results pre- sented in the paper, and data for replication are available by writing to the first author at olof.aslund@ifau.uu.se. This paper was accepted under the prior editors. Some studies on gender discrimination in hiring suggest that the bias varies across occupations. See Neumark et al. (1996) and Carlsson (2009). 2 See Tomaskevic-Devey and Stainback (2009) for a discussion of equal opportunity policies and Kalev et al. (2006) for a discussion on affirmative action and diversity policies. Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Vol. 65, No. 1 (January 2012). @ by Cornell University. Print 0019-7939/Online 2162-271X/00/6501 $05.00 82

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