"I applied for 2,400 banking jobs with my 'Muslim' name. Rejected."

I'm a consultant with years of experience at a top European Bank. Like many candidates looking for a new job, I've spent countless hours applying to jobs with long and inefficient recruitment processes. As I've struggled, I've noticed that some candidates have been able to find new opportunities much faster than others.

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Out of curiosity, I changed my name in job applications from one with an openly Muslim connotation to one with more “French” cultural roots. In less than three months, I received more professional propositions than almost two years of active research by applying with my real name.

It's not for lack of trying before I changed the name. I sent out 2,000 applications last year and 400 in 2024. I received no invitations for interviews, nor even any positive feedback.

I'm not looking for pity. I just want to show that Western recruitment processes are opaque, cowardly, and hugely inefficient. It wastes the time of employees applying for these jobs and wastes the resources of the companies, potentially breaking the trust of candidates and potential clients too.

There have been steps in the right direction for transparency in this process. A couple of years ago, it would have been very bold for a company to display a salary range in the job description, now it's become much more common, and in some places legally mandatory. Is it so much to ask, then, for recruiters to stand up for more transparency?

This may surprise some, but I think we should allow job publications to have racial, ethnic or religious preferences. You may call it discrimination, but the essence of a job description is discrimination... based on skills, personality, experience, location, etc. Each human has a right to choose their acquaintances, so why is this right denied to moral entities and their recruiters. 

Companies should have the courage to openly prefer certain profiles to others, without needing to provide justification. The West wants to be a flag carrier of justice and freedom, but once the opportunity is given to us to fully enjoy that freedom, we castrate ourselves over political correctness.

This will all sound shocking for those with restrictive minds, but I hope it can at least open a worthwhile debate. Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Zerab Assad is a pseudonym.

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