Women? Well, a female business owner will typically favour women over men, unless they want someone to shift heavy things. What a surprise.

Yes, there are exceptions, but the general trend seems to be that we tend to want to hire the people who most resemble ourselves. That’s not racist, that’s just humanity.

Commenter Correll, You’re so right, and Harvel Brown is so wrong. Self discipline, perseverance and education will work and will get you ahead, get on the bus with Harvel? Well, ten years from now, Harvey will still be waving protest placard, and stuck in slow traffic. Get off the bus, Harvel, throw the chip off your shoulder and make your own future.

As for “Mines”, Yolanda, it isn’t common usage in most of the english speaking world. My scottish friends were bemused when I asked. It’s not common in either lowland or highlands scottish. It would be considered wrongful and uneducated usage.

Fucked up world!

Just one thing: She wrote: “In the end, a total of twenty-four employers looked at Bianca’s resume while only ten looked at mines.” She seems literate enough, but I have to say that “mines” is not a word. Like “conversate,” it’s one of those AAVE words that has no place in the white workplace.

Best ditch it — especially if she chooses to try the Bianca White experiment again. It’s a dead giveaway.

I looooove your comment!

Thanks for enlighten us! 60 billion!!! Now, I know why I always felt the church White or Black was not there to help us! They take our money and do not give us job! WOW! I know now more than ever why I don’t go to church on a regular basis. How come our people are soooo blind?

First, I’ve utilized Monster as a job seeker, and I currently spent tens of thousands of dollars each year to use the Monster Database as an employer. As most job seekers never see the employer side of the Monster website, I can report that there is no explicit gender, race, age information given to the employer reviewing the resume. My guess is that if Monster is collecting this information, they are doing it for other purposes — primarily advertising (all those pop up ads you see when you’re on line — how do you think those advertisers target you — they buy that information from companies like Monster to target certain demographics).

I would suggest that more likely than race, the job seeker is more likely to encounter difficulties in finding employment because of various other things that the writer mentions or sometimes, doesn’t mention, in the article. For instance, the insurance industry has contracted significantly since 2008. Competitiveness for the fewer jobs in the market place make things like education, job stability/tenure, and continuing education more important. The writer explicitly states that she left the industry to complete her degree. This was undoubtedly a factor in her difficulty with her job search. Additionally, she mentions that she has ten years of experience in the industry. What she doesn’t say is how many different employers she’d had during that time. If a person has ten years of experience, but has had five jobs during that time, it is HIGHLY likely, that their resume will not be at the top of the heap for consideration.

I could go on and on. However, before jumping to the conclusion that employers decisions are based on race because of a half-baked experiment with few controls and imbedded assumptions, take a close look at the job seekers full package and really consider how employers might view that.

Thank you so much for writing this article. Much love and success to you.

Mines did grab me also when reading the comments from writers and your response.

The only thing, we are not in Scotland. This is America. Am I missing something?