UK employers less likely to consider applicants with Muslim-sounding names: study

London: A Muslim sounding name on the CV affects an applicant’s chances of being called in for a job interview for managerial posts in the UK, a new report has claimed.

Muslim men are 76% less likely to be employed than their white Christian counterparts, according to a study by the Research Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship at the University of Bristol.

BBC teamed up with social scientists at the university to examine discrimination at managerial level jobs by submitting job applications for 100 sales jobs with two identical CVs with the names “Adam” and “Mohamed”.

The CV with the English name Adam received 12 positive responses and four inquiries from head-hunters but the one with Mohamed only attracted four positive responses and two inquiries.

“What we’ve identified very clearly is the Muslim-sounding person CV is only likely to get an interview in one out of three cases,” Professor Tariq Modood, director of Bristol University’s centre for the study of ethnicity and citizenship who led the study, told BBC.

“I thought the response rate would be less than 50% (for the Muslim-sounding name) so it’s worse than I thought, especially in a city like London. It’s so diverse, people coming in and out of the city, from different parts of the world, looking for work, a city very hungry for talent. Yes, it’s worse than I thought,” he said.

Jonny Gifford from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development said name-blind recruitment was the best solution.

“It’s (name-blind applications) clear it makes a difference to the numbers of people from minority groups, in particular for ethnic minorities, who get a chance of getting an interview. It’s also a really easy thing to implement. There’s no real reason to not be doing this,” he said.

The BBC’s findings will be aired on its ‘Inside Out London’ show.