Employers discriminate against religious (or irreligious) candidates, study finds
Religion (or atheism) hurts your résumé. Researchers Bradley R. E. Wright and Michael Wallace conducted an experiment using 9,600 résumés sent to employers in New England and in the South. They were résumés typical of college graduates searching for entry level work. The only difference was that some revealed a religious or irreligious affiliation. For instance, some would have the applicant leading a campus Jewish, Muslim or Atheist group on campus, whereas the control group résumés showed the applicant leading a group with no religious affiliation.
The control group with no religious or irreligious indication got 20 percent more responses on average than other candidates. And of the religious candidates, Muslims fared the worst by far, receiving on average 40 percent less interest from employers than the control group. Bradley R.E. Wright writes:
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Michael Brendan Dougherty is senior correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is the founder and editor of The Slurve, a newsletter about baseball. His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, ESPN Magazine, Slate and The American Conservative.
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