{"id":77,"date":"2017-07-13T18:55:16","date_gmt":"2017-07-13T22:55:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aig.alumni.virginia.edu\/dearaapaan\/?p=77"},"modified":"2026-08-21T11:08:37","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T15:08:37","slug":"asian-american-help-hurt-employability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aig.uvaalumni.org\/dearaapaan\/2017\/07\/13\/asian-american-help-hurt-employability\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cDoes being an Asian American help or hurt my employability?\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I was asked this question during a talk with UVa APA students a while ago.\u00a0 At the time, I answered that, in general, being Asian American was an advantage initially for helping get through the door.\u00a0 But once inside, I told them they would have to overcome extra hurdles to rise in the organization.\u00a0 My remarks were based on my observations of large government and private organizations which have HR \u201cdiversity\u201d goals.\u00a0 For these organizations, a qualified minority might get a slightly longer look.<\/p>\n

Since my talk, I\u2019ve come across an NPR story<\/a> from Feb 2017 which documented a Canadian study that showed that a resume with an Asian sounding name, versus the same resume with an Anglo name, got 28 percent less call backs for interviews.\u00a0 Other studies have shown that being an Asian-American (actually being an identified minority) is detrimental to getting employed.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

For a glass half-full interpretation, the same study done 50 years ago might show that Asian-American would get 80% less call backs.\u00a0 For the glass half-empty interpretation, the current study should have shown no difference in call backs.\u00a0 So what can we make of this?\u00a0 Yeah, I know, life is unfair.\u00a0 But I do feel that Asian-American employability has gotten better (consider what our parents went through) and I am guardedly optimistic that it will continue that trend.<\/p>\n

So my initial view seems to be valid only for a limited group of organizations.\u00a0 Maybe one adjustment to a job hunting strategy is to put more emphasis on organizations that have diversity targets\/goals where your odds are better.\u00a0 That is unless the company has an over abundance of Asian-Americans already and you won\u2019t count as a minority for diversity purposes.<\/p>\n

Give me your thoughts on this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  I was asked this question during a talk with UVa APA students a while ago.\u00a0 At the time, I answered that, in general, being Asian American was an advantage initially for helping get through the door.\u00a0 But once inside, I told them they would have to overcome extra hurdles to rise in the organization.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":84,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-career"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\u201cDoes being an Asian American help or hurt my employability?\u201d - Dear AAPAAN<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/aig.uvaalumni.org\/dearaapaan\/2017\/07\/13\/asian-american-help-hurt-employability\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"\u201cDoes being an Asian American help or hurt my employability?\u201d - 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