Testing my liberal credentiels

I recently received a CV from a Canadian national, Fisher Scott. Two things struck me about the CV:

1. The name seemed a bit strange: I would have thought Scott Fisher was more likely
2. The technical capabilities weren't quite right, but it may be worth an interview anyway.

I therefore gave the guy a call and left a message asking him to give me a call for a phone interview.

It was only much later that I admitted to myself that a third thing had struck me:
3. It would be nice to have another native English speaker around the place.

The following day, I received another CV. One thing struck me about this CV:

1. It was identical in every way to Fisher Scott's CV, except that the name of the applicant was Mohammed and the native language was marked as Arabic rather than English.

This engendered feelings of both panic and amusement and I showed it to my boss. He displayed only feelings of panic: journalists or worse still, the government, were testing us to see if we were racist employers. He asked me to call the Algerian candidate and invite him for an interview.

I have to admit that I felt like I had been stung and was against calling, and, when he arrived, I asked him if he was here as Fisher Scott or Mohammed - a low blow. When I pressed him on why he had sent two versions of his CV, his reply shocked me, "When I apply as Fisher Scott, I get about 25% replies (either positive or negative). When I apply as Mohammed, I am lucky if I get a single reply.". When I asked him how he expected to get a positive reaction when a bogus Fisher Scott turned up, he replied, "I just hope that the interviewer can put that aside and that I will be judged purely on my technical and personal aptitudes.". He explained that this was a common approach for north African job-seekers.

We hear often about the plight of what they call the "visible minorities" - unemployment levels for the 30-39 year-old African-descent population is running at >30%. What a terrible state of affairs and one that I had never had brought home to me so clearly.

Now I have to ask myself whether I am equally guilty of racism: would I have called the guy if the first version I received had been the Algerian version? Deep down I have to admit that I might have passed over it if it hadn't been for the Anglo-Saxon name. As a minor consolation, I can say that this means that I might also have dismissed it if the CV had come from Monsieur Blanc. I wonder how many times my CV has been rejected because of my name? One thing for sure is that it is less often than the poor Fisher Scott.

If anything positive came out of it, it is that I have learnt my lesson. I just hope that France as a nation can do so too, but from what I see around me, I fear it won't be any time soon.

As to the glaring question, "Did you hire him?", the answer is, "No, he was rubbish". And that is based on purely objective reasoning.