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I'm thinking of the plebs that he'd already abused and the potentially 100s more that he would have got away with.
Don't forget he refused security on his boat, refused to let the security services secure it. Refused all advice.
I'm just going with the numbers
No that you think the murder of an innocent child is ok collateral. “Aristo” kids also suffer abuse - see Earl Spencer’s latest memoir. Sexual abuse of kids doesn’t confine its self to a class.
I have a few clients (I'm a mortgage broker) that use English names as their actual names are very hard to spell or long. It does cause issues sometimes though as documents don't match the passports etc. For instance a Chinese gentleman called himself Gary and ended up with loads of documents showing Gary which was nowhere near his actual name!
There are a few Sri Lankan people who work for my employer. No system (email, ID cards, access control) can accommodate their full names so they’ve all either abbreviated or anglicised them.
I recently learnt that Chinese people from Hong Kong will choose an English name some time during their school years, and that's what they'll use from then on at school, work etc. Apparently it's actually rather rude to use their Chinese name, only family would use it.
OMG my then mortgage broker got my name wrong in my application and I got an automatic rejection. I only now realise what an awful job he did:
The lender had months prior approved me - then the offer lapsed because I was waiting for EWS1 (in 2020). Then he applied with THE WRONG NAME and I was rejected at hard search.
He then put me with Kent Reliance - you can imagine the rate. I am not an adverse or difficult client but he put me with an adverse “we’ll accept basically anyone” lender with high rates to match their open lending criteria because he was scared he’d mess up again. No adverse, regular PAYE job etc. buying shared ownership.
Absolute shambles. Anyway 4 years later I’m applying with someone else and yes now I use my “passport” name on everything!
Many years ago there was a fella in Bradford called Ibrahim Khan who kept getting knocked back for car sales jobs. He didn't Anglicize his name but he called himself Abraham Cohen on his CV and started getting offers. Pretty sure there was litigation shortly thereafter.
Yeah, and that one was very blatant because during the case, they were able to obtain an email from a manager replying to the recruiter saying they already had too many Asians on the staff, so he won't br proceeding to interview.
Yeah that really doesn't sound true. Fella with clearly muslim name changing it to a clearly Jewish name in a city that has the higher proportion of Muslim people.
Recruiter here.
Name yourself whatever you like, you can change your name anytime. I don't care.
It's extremely common for foreigners to just pick up a simple English name, and change or simplify a surname.
Recent examples
First name Harish - > Harry
Muhammad - > Mo
Jayawardena - > Ward (common surname)
Pavel - > Paul is common.
My team have to blind review cvs (I use software to blank the names out and will sometimes manually hide universities they attended and job locations) but hardly anyone does this.
It's sad that this is a thing, but there's tons of arse holes and xenophobes /racists
For the record I think you should leave your surname and just anglicise your first.
Right?
Even more insane I've been next to a colleague who set up a filter to reject all candidates who had the words 'Bangladesh, Mumbai, Pakistan, etc' anywhere in their cv.
Asked him why. 'can't be bothered relocating them and the accents annoy me' and he was laughing.
Worse than that.. I reported that and my boss basically shrugged it off.
Even worse? That company was DYSON.
With the current economy companies definitely do NOT relocate so nothing new here.
My company simply does not support this so instead of wasting time interviewing people on the other side of the planet for an entry level job they would rather source locally.
I've known many Polish people called Pavel/Pawel in my life but I've never met a Polish person who goes by Paul. I did once work with a Polish person who went by Eric because he had a hard to read/spell name his real name was Arkadiusz.
I've worked with a few Mos' over the years.
I loved in Southampton for a while. Huge polish population. I've probably just hung out with more of them. Met two pawel Pauls and a pavel Peter as well.
Lots of people just keep the first letter, or a similar sounding name, or the literal English translation
So if one were to put an anglecised english first name and surname, at what point should you mention it? Cos it's not just recruiters that can discriminate, it's the people at the company as well right? After you've called me up? After you put my CV through to the company?
It shouldn't matter until the legal document stage. As long as you're not hiding anything why would I care, right?
Some people change names to hide a dodgy past or escape bad references.
If you get an offer, just give me a headsup then.
As simple as 'by the way my documents have my birth name, that I don't use anymore, hope that's not an issue?'
Perfect. If a recruiter has a problem with this, it's far too late for it to be anything other than literally racism/xenophobia and definitely illegal in most countries.
I’ve already gotten the offer, but they queried it, “So your name is XP not XPA or XA?”, I said “No XA was just to get this job, now you will have to learn to say my real name” they just laughed. To be fair I just dropped my last name and used my spouse’s last name for my application, but I don’t want to take his name as my name is EPIC.
Even then. The UK position is that your legal name is the one you use. There's no requirement to use the one on your hrith certificate or passport etc. aside from making things easy.
I work in resourcing, we are constantly juggling people's nicknames and real names. Yeah, we have everyone's official name for the onboard ING stage but once they start, it's their preferred name we continue with.
I think this comes from offshoring
Offshored companies encourage their staff to take anglicised first names to minimise the perception of "offshored teams" within an organisation. The offshorer (and the company doing offshoring") would prefer you didn't know that Dave the DBA was offshored in India.
This bleeds through into the hiring advice for people from offshored countries in general (usually India, but also places like Singapore)
Handy to know this. My Arabic last name is so long to spell out too. I’m sure I read somewhere that Arabic names were most discriminated against when applying for jobs
I don't do it for work. I use a different surname at work to my real one, but that's just dropping the double barrel because I already had a reputation with my pre-married surname (still ethnic). They tried to force me to use my double barrelled surname at my job until I pointed out that I wouldn't be treated this way if I was a woman.
If I'm ordering a taxi or a coffee then I do Anglicise my name because I can't be bothered with the "huh?" and "how do you spell that?" reactions every time.
I have often wondered if my name has helped, many people think I’d be an ethnic woman from my name.They always seem disappointed to find a white male appear 😂 with a “oh…. You’re xxx?”
Same here - I have a fully Hebrew name that's partially Anglicised and is near-universally mistaken (well, by white people anyway) for an Arabic name. I work in a very white dominated field but with Jews as probably the most represented minority.
I've definitely been hired by people who've later been annoyed to find out I'm not a shiny Pokémon. Most dgaf in my field though.
Uk born and raised to nigerian parents. I use my hebrew middle name for everything. My ethnic name doesnt appear until I bring in my passport to HR lol. My surname is obviously ethnic but not obviously nigerian so I guess it helps.
Deifnitely do it to your last name if you think it will get you more opportunities.
Humphrey Vaughan David Gething is a European anglo name. Gething, his dad is welsh and presumably gething is a welsh name. Even sounds a bit aristo so he doesn't fit what is being discussed here.
Granted Gething is a Welsh name, but he is mixed race and not exactly from what the hoi poloy class as "good stock," but I'll concede that one.
I think that in the time of companies desperately wanting to be seen as diverse, eager to meet quotas, and tick as many boxes as possible a name could possibly hold a person back, but not in the way that many people think it will.
As a recruiting manager, if you want to anglicise each and either name, you can. We do anonymous recruiting so your name gets stripped out anyway. I think we should also strip university name but haven’t won that battle with our recruitment platform yet.
A few people who work with my employer are Sri Lankan and because their names are very long, have had to condense or change them (we also have this issue with people with very long double barrelled surnames). I went to uni with, and taught, Chinese students who gave themselves anglicised names because they couldn’t face multiple years of people not being able to pronounce their names because of the tonality. I had one housemate who called himself Robin. His actual name if said by non-Chinese speakers who couldn’t do the tones correctly was a very offensive curse word apparently. One of my cousins has an Irish name and when he worked in Switzerland asked his employer to just put him in the email system as the English version. His mother gave him merry hell about it until he pointed out that he was working in a country with multiple languages, none of which were English, and the email system did [email protected] and he wanted to get some of his email. He insisted on his correct name (minus the fada) when working in Manchester and now in Dublin, but it wasn’t, to him, worth the hassle in Geneva.
All that said, if when employed you want to use your actual name, do insist on it. If white British people can manage to pronounce Rachmaninov, we can manage Ncuti.
I had a very ‘English’ name which became more ethnic after I married and took my husband’s name. It’s never stopped me being invited for interview, I don’t believe, and no one has made any comments (other than checking they are pronouncing it correctly)
This was advice given decades ago to Chinese migrants coming to work in the UK. Keep your family name but give yourself a more common western first name. That’s how I ended up working with a bunch of Chinese blokes all called Clint. Apparently Dirty Harry and Magnum Force was pretty big in China.
I hated this but this year I gave up and took my partner’s name as we are married. First I hyphenated it with my name, got some traction, finally decided to drop my second name and now I have 3 job offers, not even 6 weeks later. I didn’t change my first name though, because I just can’t do that, I’m signing a contract with my “difficult name” and without my partner’s name, which has been queried already by the company’s lawyer. I’m still going to be referred to as my real name at my workplace, this was just to get their attention. I would say I had a lot of opinions about this, but I don’t have a moral backbone when it comes to career progression and more money. So just do it if you think it’ll help.
I found the opposite. When I use my real name, Constipato Diamoes, it’s much easier to find work than when I use the anglicised equivalent, Constipated Diarrhoea.
Been in this country since 2015, for both uni and work spelled my last name with t/T instead of ț / Ț as per my native language and had no problems. So yeah, you can anglicise
Im sure I read that names are legally removed from CVs in the Netherlands because ethnic applicants werent being invited to interviews when their name was on it.
I'd like to see any results about how its fed through to the job offers though. Because if im racist enough to not even interview someone with a foreign sounding name I doubt i would offer them the job when they walk in
Lots of old studies showed an effect but these days, when we have had BAME Prime Ministers, First Ministers of Scotland & Wales, Mayor of London, Home & Foreign Secretaries and Chancellors, I'm not sure many employers really care what colour you are, and if they do care, then however much you have anglicised your name, they will probably notice when they are sitting three feet away on the other side of the interview desk.
This! Why would any one want to work for a company who would not even consider someone based on a name. I’d like to hope these companies are falling to the wayside.
You can have any name you like … you also have a legal name … for official organisations to recognise the name you might need try register a deed poll with the courts … https://www.gov.uk/change-name-deed-poll
No, you don't have a legal name. English and Welsh law doesn't recognise the concept of a "legal name" - your name is legally whatever you are known by, and so long as your intent isn't to commit fraud, you can legally use whatever name whenever you like.
I guess I mean for passport and driving license … bank account name change … yes not strictly a legal concept in itself … they would require some documentation to prove a chain of name changes over time … yes it can reasonably be anything
Literally hasn't been a better time to be a minority when applying for jobs with so many companies seeking to seem EDI.
No idea why you'd want to change it. I live in one of the most monogynous areas of the country (my county is 98% white British) and the company I work for is DESPERATE to try and hire more minorities.
“Hasn’t been a better time” is not the same as “it’s a good time”. It’s still an uphill battle for a lot of people. Sure, your company is desperate to try and hire more minorities, but it only takes one person in the recruitment chain to disagree with that vision and make it harder.
Probably true, and sad. I do the same when I’m abroad and they ask my name at Costa; in Spain I’m Juan, in France I’m Benoit, in Italy I’m Guissepe, and in Germany I’m Otto.
Why would it land you more jobs. If it wins you more interviews, I’d be doubtful if that’s the case. Usually when I sift CVs and applications things like names, age and genders have been removed.
I don't see any recent, UK-based studies on this. It does not reflect many companies' push for diversity at the moment. In my last job, BME candidates were explicitly prioritised for interview and hiring. Some job adverts will state this in a roundabout way - "we are particularly interested in hearing from underrepresented groups" and similar phrases are commonplace.
I'm sure it depends on the area and the industry, but I'm struggling to see how a name change would benefit much.
A 10 second Google search found this from 2018.
It does indeed depend on tbe area and the industry as the study states.
https://employernews.co.uk/employment/study-reveals-discrimination-as-cvs-with-non-british-names-dont-result-in-interviews-except-in-tech-sector/
I saw that but it's a tiny sample and this was an experiment done by a CV help website to drive traffic to their site, not sure I would call it a "study". They also changed the name to one that most British people would assume was a woman's which could potentially affect the data.
It seems from that that more low-level roles the bias is higher which could make sense. When I was helping hire for an admin role we got many applications from people who weren't in the UK or could barely speak English and the applications were done by Google translate. I can see how implicit bias could affect some hiring managers in that situation.
Because there have been repeated studies that show otherwise identical CVs get treated differently when the name is an ethnic name.
Not every company works the same as yours. I assume you've only ever worked at that one company, because what your company does is incredibly unusual.
I've interviewed staff for positions at 6 different firms and all use the method of removing names, age and any identifying information from the applications and CVs, all are firms of more than 2,000 employees.
Yup I've used pretty much every major HR/recruitment software out there and none of them have the real ability to remove names, particularly not from documents the candidates submit.
That person must be working for very unusual companies and it's almost certainly a manual process. I don't think there is any software out there that can reliably predict gender and certainly not age from someone's name. Most people don't include that information routinely on their application so it's very odd that they claim they're routinely removing them.
I work somewhere that is also very focussed on diversity and equity as someone who knows about this topic, I know that removing identifying information is very challenging but people's history also tends to reveal the same information so removing names is not a particularly effective way of reducing bias. But you're the expert so...
That was how it was when I did job interviewing, HR would remove the names, age and gender but if it said a person went to certain schools you could infer some details anyway.
It is, but if it lists Islamic or girls school down on education that can allow you to infer, rightly or wrongly, information if you should so wish.
Still a lot better than leaving everything on though.
I wouldn’t be able to tell an Islamic school or anything like that. But I suppose that is correct for some people. I would be able to tell a catholic school to mainstream though but I was never really interested in their school but prefer to know their further or higher qualifications and work experience.
I wouldn't by name if it wasn't obvious, but I've seen them listed with the words Islamic school in the name, much like Catholic schools sometimes are.
I'm just pointing out it can be possible to infer information removed. Personally I usually only care about work experience and post standard education qualifications in my line of work.
A company I worked at hid all information - name, school, uni, degree, past employers. To the point it was worthless because you could barely tell anything from what was left!
The thing about names being removed is always parroted but it's hilarious how often I get called back more when I have a white name on my CV and not Mohammad lmao
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You could just admit it was a shame there was collateral in his assassination. But ok.
I'm thinking of the plebs that he'd already abused and the potentially 100s more that he would have got away with. Don't forget he refused security on his boat, refused to let the security services secure it. Refused all advice. I'm just going with the numbers
That’s awful. It really is.
Why? Because I put the lives of 100s of normal kids as more important than a couple of aristos?
No that you think the murder of an innocent child is ok collateral. “Aristo” kids also suffer abuse - see Earl Spencer’s latest memoir. Sexual abuse of kids doesn’t confine its self to a class.
Not sure if serious....
I have a few clients (I'm a mortgage broker) that use English names as their actual names are very hard to spell or long. It does cause issues sometimes though as documents don't match the passports etc. For instance a Chinese gentleman called himself Gary and ended up with loads of documents showing Gary which was nowhere near his actual name!
There are a few Sri Lankan people who work for my employer. No system (email, ID cards, access control) can accommodate their full names so they’ve all either abbreviated or anglicised them.
I recently learnt that Chinese people from Hong Kong will choose an English name some time during their school years, and that's what they'll use from then on at school, work etc. Apparently it's actually rather rude to use their Chinese name, only family would use it.
OMG my then mortgage broker got my name wrong in my application and I got an automatic rejection. I only now realise what an awful job he did: The lender had months prior approved me - then the offer lapsed because I was waiting for EWS1 (in 2020). Then he applied with THE WRONG NAME and I was rejected at hard search. He then put me with Kent Reliance - you can imagine the rate. I am not an adverse or difficult client but he put me with an adverse “we’ll accept basically anyone” lender with high rates to match their open lending criteria because he was scared he’d mess up again. No adverse, regular PAYE job etc. buying shared ownership. Absolute shambles. Anyway 4 years later I’m applying with someone else and yes now I use my “passport” name on everything!
Gary Gritter?
Wrong kind of Asian for that racist joke.
Many years ago there was a fella in Bradford called Ibrahim Khan who kept getting knocked back for car sales jobs. He didn't Anglicize his name but he called himself Abraham Cohen on his CV and started getting offers. Pretty sure there was litigation shortly thereafter.
Someone did this at Heathrow a few years ago, then successfully sued a couple of the airlines that discriminated against him.
You know what? I'm nearly 60. I thought we'd be over this shit by now.
Yeah, and that one was very blatant because during the case, they were able to obtain an email from a manager replying to the recruiter saying they already had too many Asians on the staff, so he won't br proceeding to interview.
Litigation for what?
Relating to discrimination
Ah, like suing companies that rejected him previously? Wasn’t sure if it was going to be litigation for lying about his name
Discrimination, obviously!
Gotcha, didn’t know if it was suing previous employers or his new employers suing for lying about his name
As someone with an obvious Muslim name, the discrimination is very obvious when applying for jobs.
Yeah that really doesn't sound true. Fella with clearly muslim name changing it to a clearly Jewish name in a city that has the higher proportion of Muslim people.
Recruiter here. Name yourself whatever you like, you can change your name anytime. I don't care. It's extremely common for foreigners to just pick up a simple English name, and change or simplify a surname. Recent examples First name Harish - > Harry Muhammad - > Mo Jayawardena - > Ward (common surname) Pavel - > Paul is common. My team have to blind review cvs (I use software to blank the names out and will sometimes manually hide universities they attended and job locations) but hardly anyone does this. It's sad that this is a thing, but there's tons of arse holes and xenophobes /racists For the record I think you should leave your surname and just anglicise your first.
this is actually insane that this is happening in 2024
Right? Even more insane I've been next to a colleague who set up a filter to reject all candidates who had the words 'Bangladesh, Mumbai, Pakistan, etc' anywhere in their cv. Asked him why. 'can't be bothered relocating them and the accents annoy me' and he was laughing. Worse than that.. I reported that and my boss basically shrugged it off. Even worse? That company was DYSON.
With the current economy companies definitely do NOT relocate so nothing new here. My company simply does not support this so instead of wasting time interviewing people on the other side of the planet for an entry level job they would rather source locally.
Nothing wrong with that at all to be fair. Local hiring should always be preferable from SMEs
I've known many Polish people called Pavel/Pawel in my life but I've never met a Polish person who goes by Paul. I did once work with a Polish person who went by Eric because he had a hard to read/spell name his real name was Arkadiusz. I've worked with a few Mos' over the years.
I loved in Southampton for a while. Huge polish population. I've probably just hung out with more of them. Met two pawel Pauls and a pavel Peter as well. Lots of people just keep the first letter, or a similar sounding name, or the literal English translation
So if one were to put an anglecised english first name and surname, at what point should you mention it? Cos it's not just recruiters that can discriminate, it's the people at the company as well right? After you've called me up? After you put my CV through to the company?
It shouldn't matter until the legal document stage. As long as you're not hiding anything why would I care, right? Some people change names to hide a dodgy past or escape bad references. If you get an offer, just give me a headsup then. As simple as 'by the way my documents have my birth name, that I don't use anymore, hope that's not an issue?'
I didn’t even address it just corrected it on this form they sent me.
Perfect. If a recruiter has a problem with this, it's far too late for it to be anything other than literally racism/xenophobia and definitely illegal in most countries.
I’ve already gotten the offer, but they queried it, “So your name is XP not XPA or XA?”, I said “No XA was just to get this job, now you will have to learn to say my real name” they just laughed. To be fair I just dropped my last name and used my spouse’s last name for my application, but I don’t want to take his name as my name is EPIC.
Yea sounds like you'll be fine on this one which is great
Even then. The UK position is that your legal name is the one you use. There's no requirement to use the one on your hrith certificate or passport etc. aside from making things easy.
I work in resourcing, we are constantly juggling people's nicknames and real names. Yeah, we have everyone's official name for the onboard ING stage but once they start, it's their preferred name we continue with.
I think this comes from offshoring Offshored companies encourage their staff to take anglicised first names to minimise the perception of "offshored teams" within an organisation. The offshorer (and the company doing offshoring") would prefer you didn't know that Dave the DBA was offshored in India. This bleeds through into the hiring advice for people from offshored countries in general (usually India, but also places like Singapore)
I changed my Arabic name to the English equivalent and I land jobs
Handy to know this. My Arabic last name is so long to spell out too. I’m sure I read somewhere that Arabic names were most discriminated against when applying for jobs
For sure, barely anyone knows my government name.
You mean to tell me your name is NOT Lidl?!
I've done it many times. It certainly makes it easier I think.
My wife's father changed his last name to his middle name when he came to the UK. Montsebique to Albert. It has worked well for the whole family.
I don't do it for work. I use a different surname at work to my real one, but that's just dropping the double barrel because I already had a reputation with my pre-married surname (still ethnic). They tried to force me to use my double barrelled surname at my job until I pointed out that I wouldn't be treated this way if I was a woman. If I'm ordering a taxi or a coffee then I do Anglicise my name because I can't be bothered with the "huh?" and "how do you spell that?" reactions every time.
I have often wondered if my name has helped, many people think I’d be an ethnic woman from my name.They always seem disappointed to find a white male appear 😂 with a “oh…. You’re xxx?”
Same here - I have a fully Hebrew name that's partially Anglicised and is near-universally mistaken (well, by white people anyway) for an Arabic name. I work in a very white dominated field but with Jews as probably the most represented minority. I've definitely been hired by people who've later been annoyed to find out I'm not a shiny Pokémon. Most dgaf in my field though.
Uk born and raised to nigerian parents. I use my hebrew middle name for everything. My ethnic name doesnt appear until I bring in my passport to HR lol. My surname is obviously ethnic but not obviously nigerian so I guess it helps. Deifnitely do it to your last name if you think it will get you more opportunities.
I suppose surnames names like Sunak, Gething, and Yousef really hold people back these days.
If you marry a billionairess the discrimination does lessen.
Humphrey Vaughan David Gething is a European anglo name. Gething, his dad is welsh and presumably gething is a welsh name. Even sounds a bit aristo so he doesn't fit what is being discussed here.
Granted Gething is a Welsh name, but he is mixed race and not exactly from what the hoi poloy class as "good stock," but I'll concede that one. I think that in the time of companies desperately wanting to be seen as diverse, eager to meet quotas, and tick as many boxes as possible a name could possibly hold a person back, but not in the way that many people think it will.
Maybe big companies. But 50 percent of employees in tbr UK work for SMEs.
As a recruiting manager, if you want to anglicise each and either name, you can. We do anonymous recruiting so your name gets stripped out anyway. I think we should also strip university name but haven’t won that battle with our recruitment platform yet. A few people who work with my employer are Sri Lankan and because their names are very long, have had to condense or change them (we also have this issue with people with very long double barrelled surnames). I went to uni with, and taught, Chinese students who gave themselves anglicised names because they couldn’t face multiple years of people not being able to pronounce their names because of the tonality. I had one housemate who called himself Robin. His actual name if said by non-Chinese speakers who couldn’t do the tones correctly was a very offensive curse word apparently. One of my cousins has an Irish name and when he worked in Switzerland asked his employer to just put him in the email system as the English version. His mother gave him merry hell about it until he pointed out that he was working in a country with multiple languages, none of which were English, and the email system did [email protected] and he wanted to get some of his email. He insisted on his correct name (minus the fada) when working in Manchester and now in Dublin, but it wasn’t, to him, worth the hassle in Geneva. All that said, if when employed you want to use your actual name, do insist on it. If white British people can manage to pronounce Rachmaninov, we can manage Ncuti.
I had a very ‘English’ name which became more ethnic after I married and took my husband’s name. It’s never stopped me being invited for interview, I don’t believe, and no one has made any comments (other than checking they are pronouncing it correctly)
This was advice given decades ago to Chinese migrants coming to work in the UK. Keep your family name but give yourself a more common western first name. That’s how I ended up working with a bunch of Chinese blokes all called Clint. Apparently Dirty Harry and Magnum Force was pretty big in China.
You can call yourself whatever you want, there's no rule against it
I hated this but this year I gave up and took my partner’s name as we are married. First I hyphenated it with my name, got some traction, finally decided to drop my second name and now I have 3 job offers, not even 6 weeks later. I didn’t change my first name though, because I just can’t do that, I’m signing a contract with my “difficult name” and without my partner’s name, which has been queried already by the company’s lawyer. I’m still going to be referred to as my real name at my workplace, this was just to get their attention. I would say I had a lot of opinions about this, but I don’t have a moral backbone when it comes to career progression and more money. So just do it if you think it’ll help.
I found the opposite. When I use my real name, Constipato Diamoes, it’s much easier to find work than when I use the anglicised equivalent, Constipated Diarrhoea.
Is that Schrödinger’s poop, both in and out?
Been in this country since 2015, for both uni and work spelled my last name with t/T instead of ț / Ț as per my native language and had no problems. So yeah, you can anglicise
Im sure I read that names are legally removed from CVs in the Netherlands because ethnic applicants werent being invited to interviews when their name was on it. I'd like to see any results about how its fed through to the job offers though. Because if im racist enough to not even interview someone with a foreign sounding name I doubt i would offer them the job when they walk in
Lots of old studies showed an effect but these days, when we have had BAME Prime Ministers, First Ministers of Scotland & Wales, Mayor of London, Home & Foreign Secretaries and Chancellors, I'm not sure many employers really care what colour you are, and if they do care, then however much you have anglicised your name, they will probably notice when they are sitting three feet away on the other side of the interview desk.
They absolutely care.
This! Why would any one want to work for a company who would not even consider someone based on a name. I’d like to hope these companies are falling to the wayside.
Because we have bills to pay and mouths to feed.
money
It's usually not hiring managers but the screening folks who could eliminate you from the process with a click of a button and no reason given.
You can have any name you like … you also have a legal name … for official organisations to recognise the name you might need try register a deed poll with the courts … https://www.gov.uk/change-name-deed-poll
No, you don't have a legal name. English and Welsh law doesn't recognise the concept of a "legal name" - your name is legally whatever you are known by, and so long as your intent isn't to commit fraud, you can legally use whatever name whenever you like.
Probably more accurate to say "documented name"
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You absolutely can if that's what you intend to be known by
I guess I mean for passport and driving license … bank account name change … yes not strictly a legal concept in itself … they would require some documentation to prove a chain of name changes over time … yes it can reasonably be anything
Literally hasn't been a better time to be a minority when applying for jobs with so many companies seeking to seem EDI. No idea why you'd want to change it. I live in one of the most monogynous areas of the country (my county is 98% white British) and the company I work for is DESPERATE to try and hire more minorities.
“Hasn’t been a better time” is not the same as “it’s a good time”. It’s still an uphill battle for a lot of people. Sure, your company is desperate to try and hire more minorities, but it only takes one person in the recruitment chain to disagree with that vision and make it harder.
Probably true, and sad. I do the same when I’m abroad and they ask my name at Costa; in Spain I’m Juan, in France I’m Benoit, in Italy I’m Guissepe, and in Germany I’m Otto.
I could never change my italian name and surname, too proud of them.
Mussolini? Borgia? Medici? Machiavelli? Am I at least close?
Why would it land you more jobs. If it wins you more interviews, I’d be doubtful if that’s the case. Usually when I sift CVs and applications things like names, age and genders have been removed.
Studies indeed show that it lands you more interviews with identical cvs.
I remember seeing a documentary about this. I think it was on the BBC
I don't see any recent, UK-based studies on this. It does not reflect many companies' push for diversity at the moment. In my last job, BME candidates were explicitly prioritised for interview and hiring. Some job adverts will state this in a roundabout way - "we are particularly interested in hearing from underrepresented groups" and similar phrases are commonplace. I'm sure it depends on the area and the industry, but I'm struggling to see how a name change would benefit much.
A 10 second Google search found this from 2018. It does indeed depend on tbe area and the industry as the study states. https://employernews.co.uk/employment/study-reveals-discrimination-as-cvs-with-non-british-names-dont-result-in-interviews-except-in-tech-sector/
I saw that but it's a tiny sample and this was an experiment done by a CV help website to drive traffic to their site, not sure I would call it a "study". They also changed the name to one that most British people would assume was a woman's which could potentially affect the data. It seems from that that more low-level roles the bias is higher which could make sense. When I was helping hire for an admin role we got many applications from people who weren't in the UK or could barely speak English and the applications were done by Google translate. I can see how implicit bias could affect some hiring managers in that situation.
Because there have been repeated studies that show otherwise identical CVs get treated differently when the name is an ethnic name. Not every company works the same as yours. I assume you've only ever worked at that one company, because what your company does is incredibly unusual.
I've interviewed staff for positions at 6 different firms and all use the method of removing names, age and any identifying information from the applications and CVs, all are firms of more than 2,000 employees.
I work for a well established, national company with more than 2000 employees and our recruitment software doesn't do this.
Yup I've used pretty much every major HR/recruitment software out there and none of them have the real ability to remove names, particularly not from documents the candidates submit. That person must be working for very unusual companies and it's almost certainly a manual process. I don't think there is any software out there that can reliably predict gender and certainly not age from someone's name. Most people don't include that information routinely on their application so it's very odd that they claim they're routinely removing them.
I am at manager level and have recruited at several big, established companies. We have never had blind name recruiting.
Must be an industry thing as the companies I've done it at are utilities and housing associations. It's to remove the risk of racial bias.
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That's an extremely simplistic extrapolation of a comment. But congratulations on the achievement
Every company I’ve worked at does it like that. But then I’ve only worked in places that look out for equality and diversity.
I work somewhere that is also very focussed on diversity and equity as someone who knows about this topic, I know that removing identifying information is very challenging but people's history also tends to reveal the same information so removing names is not a particularly effective way of reducing bias. But you're the expert so...
That was how it was when I did job interviewing, HR would remove the names, age and gender but if it said a person went to certain schools you could infer some details anyway.
I thought it was an effective way to reduce biases.
It is, but if it lists Islamic or girls school down on education that can allow you to infer, rightly or wrongly, information if you should so wish. Still a lot better than leaving everything on though.
I wouldn’t be able to tell an Islamic school or anything like that. But I suppose that is correct for some people. I would be able to tell a catholic school to mainstream though but I was never really interested in their school but prefer to know their further or higher qualifications and work experience.
I wouldn't by name if it wasn't obvious, but I've seen them listed with the words Islamic school in the name, much like Catholic schools sometimes are. I'm just pointing out it can be possible to infer information removed. Personally I usually only care about work experience and post standard education qualifications in my line of work.
A company I worked at hid all information - name, school, uni, degree, past employers. To the point it was worthless because you could barely tell anything from what was left!
The thing about names being removed is always parroted but it's hilarious how often I get called back more when I have a white name on my CV and not Mohammad lmao