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What’s in a Name?
Sharon Hurley Hall and Jevin Lortie reflect on implicit bias
”What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet” — Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare.
How does your name affect your chances of getting work and the treatment you get? It can be a lot.
As we know implicit bias can rear its head when people are assessing resumes or looking at official forms. In the minds of white recruiters, there’s a perception that some names belong to Black people, while other names belong to “people like us”.
That’s worked for me, and against me. Sharon Hurley (as I was when interviewing), and Sharon Hurley Hall, don’t sound like most people’s perception of Black names (which isn’t a thing, by the way, as there are as many Black people with names inherited from the colonizers, as there are with names adopted or adapted from African languages).
So, it often means that I get through the door before people realize I’m not what they’re looking for. I talked about one notable experience of that in Interviewing While Black, but there have been others.
