Wallonians Need Not Apply

The Washington Post reports on a study that assesses the impact of religious affiliation on job applications.

“Researchers Michael Wallace, Bradley R.E. Wright and Allan Hyde of the University of Connecticut sent 3,200 fake applications to 800 jobs within 150 miles of two major Southern cities through a popular employment Web site. Each employer got four résumés with comparable job qualifications. The only thing that set the fake job candidates apart was whether their résumés mentioned involvement with a religious group — such as membership in the Muslim Student Association or Hillel House, a Jewish organization.

“Résumés for the control group indicated no religious affiliation. The others indicated the applicant was atheist, Catholic, evangelical Christian, Jewish, pagan, Muslim or a made-up religion called ‘Wallonian.’”

Overall, employers preferred the control group that specified no religious affiliation. Of the religious groups, only Jewish applicants had “no statistically significant evidence of discrimination against this group across all eight indicators in the study.” The researchers concluded that “some employers seemed to favor Jewish applicants, as they were more likely than any other religious group to get an early or exclusive response from an employer.”

A lesson to all Wallonians, and Jews.