Major brands pledge 'no-name' CVs in bid to end hiring discrimination

Hoping to tackle CV prejudice, major employers have agreed to hide candidate names on their application processes.

UK employers are more likely to offer interviews to candidates with ‘white-sounding names’, according to The Financial Times (FT). Government research in 2009 found those with non-white names were less probable to be selected, despite their applications being identical.

At his conference in Manchester, David Cameron promised to end this discrimination in the workplace. The Telegraph reported that during the keynote address, he said: "Do you know that in our country today, even if they have exactly the same qualifications, people with white-sounding names are nearly twice as likely to get call-backs for jobs than people with ethnic-sounding names?”

He discussed the case of Jorden Berkeley who was a Black graduate aged 22 and rejected by several employers before being advised by a careers consultant to use her middle name. Cameron continued: "One young black girl had to change her name to Elizabeth before she got any calls to interviews. That, in 21st-century Britain, is disgraceful."