Women Using Less Feminine Terms in Cover Letters Are Less Likely to Get Hired

https://journals.aom.org/doi/full/10.5465/amj.2018.1280.summary

by rustoo • 6 years ago

42 101 6 years ago

journals.aom.org

Raphmedia3• 6 years ago

I'd argue that those words are not feminine but merely less assertive. Women score higher on the agreeableness score[1] which is not a quality that is looked for in many industries - but they are not the sole owners of agreeableness. Plenty of men will score high and that doesn't make them feminine.

The paragraph in the article where they describe how minorities get more calls when they "whiten" their resume has me wonder if this theory couldn't be simplified.

What I mean by this is that when you try to join a company where the culture is geared towards white men in their twenties, you have to fit that culture. I'd also argue that they would find the same results for age if they looked for it.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3149680/

yokaze• 6 years ago

What I mean by this is that when you try to join a company where the culture is geared towards white men in their twenties, you have to fit that culture.

On the contrary, the study says the opposite (for women). If there is a cover letter by a fictive person, which appears to be a woman, which is trying "to fit in to that culture" by using more assertive terms, it will result in less callbacks. For fictive men, it is the reverse.

As the person is fictive, the actual supposed qualities of that person are irrelevant.

Raphmedia3• 6 years ago

I think we are sharing a very similar viewpoint.

What I meant by this is that you have to "fit" that culture and that by not "being" part of it you won't get hired even if you're trying your best.

fogihujy• 6 years ago

I'd never even consider to assign feminine or masculine traits to any of those words. Is this an "English as a first language"-thing?

Like you, I can see how some of those words could be more or less assertive, but I'd go as far as to argue that anyone connecting gender with assertiveness is outright sexist. :)

Broken_Hippo• 6 years ago

The words themselves aren't, but the traits are based in gender stereotypes.

Being less assertive is considered a feminine quality. Being too assertive earns someone a label of "difficult to work with" "bossy" or cruder, "bitchy".

ARandomerDude3• 6 years ago

Native English speaker here and I agree with you completely. When I saw the article I thought "What is feminine term?" until I got to the assertive stereotype.

nineplay• 6 years ago

What I mean by this is that when you try to join a company where the culture is geared towards white men in their twenties, you have to fit that culture.

That's the core of the problem isn't it? The source of gender discrimination and racial discrimination and religious discrimination and age discrimination is that there are a whole lot of teams at a whole lot of tech companies that are white men int their 20s, and have no interest in hiring anyone who isn't a while man in their 20s.

It's the reason 'culture' should be entirely removed from any sort of interview criteria - more specifically, interviewers should be warned that measuring a candidate based on 'culture' is an open door to discrimination.

More broadly. it's something that needs to be pointed out whenever discussions drag out about "why aren't there more of <X>?" and "Why do <X> make less?" It's because our entire industry does it's best to keep <X> out. It's not brain chemicals, it's not negative role models, it's not any other excuse that likes to get thrown up. It's deliberate, at least as deliberate as it can be.

mam22• 6 years ago

May depend on the job. What about an actress or a model ? Of even an interpreter.

Most regular jobs are just about building, "moving fast and breaking things" in a competitive environment. This is usually deemed "masculine" so no wonder using "feminine" terms is less rewarded.

Maybe the problem is that too many people think that women (including women themselves) cant be as "competitive" or "masculine" or whatever the term than men. There are plenty of examples in real life that show the contrary.

klipt3• 6 years ago

so no wonder using "feminine" terms is less rewarded.

The article says the opposite?

mam22• 6 years ago

No but its like saying oh the ground is wet when it rains

thinkingemote2• 6 years ago

Worth stating that actresses and models have agents who do the applications for them.

I suppose we should really look at recruiters in tech and see if using one gets better results.

eykanal• 6 years ago

Just want to mention that, as a hiring manager for over ten years now, I haven't looked at a cover letter once in that entire time.

thisisnico2• 6 years ago

Cover letter is completely useless and a waste of both parties time IMO.

Look at experience. Look at skills. Do they fit the position.

If yes, interview. If no, do not interview.

The fluff around everything else is just fluff.

ineedasername3• 6 years ago

It tells you if the person can't communicate beyond bullet points in a resume. It's easy to hype up achievements in previous positions. An interview will help there, but if a cover letter demonstrates difficulty communicating, that is a signal you can use to effectively filter those candidates and not waste time on an interview.

Sholmesy• 6 years ago

I find that surprising.

I've at least read the cover letters of those I'm about to interview, feels rude not to.

Consultant32452• 6 years ago

I barely even skim the resume. I don't believe there is reliable information on anything that can be prepared in advance. I'm sure I've had false negatives, but in 10+ years of hiring I've never recommended someone be hired who wound up being bad.

nomdep• 6 years ago

So I suppose that is also part of the culture. At companies like Basecamp or Twist, the cover letter matters way more than the CV.

extra__tofu• 6 years ago

That's...your loss?

Why brag about ignoring a valuable indicator that applicants spend considerable time writing?

11235813212• 6 years ago

I didn’t see it as a brag. The idea is that the cover letter influences the hire in undesirable ways more than it provides relevant information. Think systemically removed from the hiring packet rather than gleefully deleted.

We do use the hiring letter, because the ability to write is important to us, but I understand why it might not be considered.

watwut• 6 years ago

It does not seem to me valuable indicator for technical position. Maybe if you are looking to fill position in marketing.

Even if you want to test communication skills, cover letter is completely unlike normal on the job communication for most of us. Cover letter shows how great you are at selling yourself. Technical person communication skills are more about clarity, ability to express complicated ideas, ability to simplify complex things for management, negotiation about deadlines etc.

scaryclam2• 6 years ago

You should really start reading them. Many contain valuable information about the candidate and would help you do you job more effectively. I also work as a hiring manager and would probably have discounted more than one really good hire if I'd not read the cover letter and gained context that didn't fit into their CV.

nashashmi2• 6 years ago

Second this. Flat resumes with bulleted features are so incomplete. They don’t show personality or character. They don’t have emphasis. Just a bland list of tasks done.

leetcrew• 6 years ago

can you expand on this a bit? I usually try to go for the joel hiring criteria, "smart, gets stuff done". from this perspective, it's kind of hard for me to see what valuable information could be in a cover letter that shouldn't already be in the resume itself. I just want to see if they've done anything similar already and how it turned out.

jjav• 6 years ago

Not the OP but I've also never read a cover letter. It's not that I wouldn't read one if offered, but I've never received a cover letter in 20+ years of interviewing people. Either nobody writes one or HR filters them out.

ineedasername3• 6 years ago

To me a cover letter tells me if the candidate can write & organize their thoughts effectively.

It also tells me if they really did any research into their prospective employer. Especially useful when they forget to swap employers and accidentally leave in the name of another place they're applying to.

mdorazio• 6 years ago

I fill probably 10 positions a year. I never ask for a cover letter, but if someone sends one I'll pretty much always look at it. I will say that I don't place much weight on the cover letter content unless it specifically highlights something relevant to the position not sufficiently covered by the resume. Usually I just look at the cover letter as a secondary confirmation that the person can write reasonably well and knows what the position is about.

However, I pretty much never read thank you/follow-up emails after an interview and don't care if candidates send them or not.

ATsch4• 6 years ago

I think this is very good and should be done more. Unless you're hiring someone to write cover letters, they're a distraction that measures an irrelevant skill and is mostly useful as a way to introduce an incredible amount of biases into the hiring process early.

See also: attaching pictures, "hobbies" section and other irrelevant personal details.

salamanderman3• 6 years ago

So "culture" and team cooperation and coordination are not things you place any stock in?

patja• 6 years ago

I always found it helpful to have a writing sample for evaluation, especially if the position requires effective written communication skills.

newsclues• 6 years ago

Why as a hiring manager would you overlook the datapoints in the cover letter?

quadrifoliate• 6 years ago

I am curious – do you also usually look more for technology-focused experience rather than a more general view of what the candidate's skills look like?

In my view, hiring manager that ignore cover letters usually also have very strong go/no-go criteria like “We won't hire anyone who doesn't have prior Java experience”, etc.

[As a candidate, I like filtering out such employers; so I'm wondering if I should play with including some kind of tracking link in my cover letter that would track if the employer had clicked on it; and filter out employers that didn't.]

salamanderman3• 6 years ago

That sounds like you're depriving yourself of information that could indicate emotional intelligence, communication skills, intent in applying, etc. I think you're only hurting yourself and your team (admittedly by an amount that is difficult to quantify). Why don't you read cover letters?

goatinaboat• 6 years ago

Just want to mention that, as a hiring manager for over ten years now, I haven't looked at a cover letter once in that entire time.

Same, don’t look at blogs or Github either.

The CV/resume is the “sales brochure” to get a phone interview, I don’t look at that either once the candidate advances to in-person.

syndacks• 6 years ago

Like a teacher who assigns homework but doesn't grade it, a lover who receives a letter and doesn't return one, or a politician who runs on an issue she don't enact -- you're a hypocrite, an unprofessional one, and if karma hasn't already paid you a visit, you are due for one soon.

AussieWog93• 6 years ago

"The authors suggested several strategies for making the hiring process more gender neutral: - Anonymous résumés, in which names are removed from cover letters and applications."

The Australian public service tried this a couple of years back. It too backfired.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-tri...

duckmysick• 6 years ago

I don't understand the article. First it says "thousands of public servants have been told to pick recruits who have had all mention of their gender and ethnic background stripped from their CVs." But then it says "adding a woman's name to a CV made the candidate 2.9 per cent more likely to get a foot in the door." I feel like I'm missing something. Is there a link to a full study? Did someone manage to reproduce this study elsewhere?

Also, there's this fragment: "Last year, the Australia Bureau of Statistics doubled its proportion of female bosses by using blind recruitment. Professor Hiscox said he discussed the trial with the ABS and did not consider it a rigorous or randomised control trial." Isn't it too harsh? Does that mean all of the real-world case studies should go to the bin because the organizations didn't have randomized control trials at every step of their operations?

scythe• 6 years ago

The cover letters were then evaluated by 360 managers who make hiring decisions. They perceived that women who used more feminine language are more hirable than women who used less feminine terms. There was no difference for men. As for likeability, the managers perceived that women who used less feminine language were significantly less likeable than woman who used more feminine terms. Men who used more feminine language also were perceived as more likeable than men who did not.

It seems we might infer that "likeability" is considered important in "hireability" for women but not men. What I like is that there should be other ways to test this hypothesis that don't involve cover letters.

go133• 6 years ago

Are people not fed up with the "equality" propaganda produced by those who neither properly studied math at school, nor understand the fundamentals of statistics like the difference between correlation and causation?

earthtobishop• 6 years ago

Yup!

u103• 6 years ago

Do you have any examples of "'equality' propaganda"?

dx87• 6 years ago

The "wage gap" is the one I see most often. It's presented in a way that makes it seem like women get paid significantly less than men, but in reality there's almost no gap when you account for the same position and experience level.

raxxorrax• 6 years ago

I wouldn't call it propaganda and I think the perception of the prevalence of gender discussion is just because these topics are clicked, which ensures the topic is further expanded. The discussions are interesting though because they are an elegant mix of the most alluring and repelling opinions.

But to the topic, this "propaganda" often feels misdirected in its ambition to lessen gender differences as in penalties on job markets and other forms of discrepancies while continuing to separate men and women as if they were complete distinct creatures.

The strategy seems strangely analogous to rubbing that mosquito bite in hope it will stop itching.

MyHypatia• 6 years ago

There is plenty of work by those who have properly studied math and correctly apply statistics and repeatedly find that unequal hiring and compensation practices reward things other than merit.

cvbcvbcvbcvbc2• 6 years ago

Not really. There is a huge replication crisis. Even the famous "anonymous orchestra auditions" have been debunked afaik.

onion2k2• 6 years ago

One of the authors is Sonia Kang, https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=AYjR5XIAAAAJ&hl=..., who has a couple of thousand citations of her academic papers. If she was getting the math wrong or making fundamental statistical errors I don't think people would be quite so keen to build on her research.

I think your ad hominem attack is a bit unjustified. You can disagree with the research without suggesting the author is incapable of making a cogent argument.

seieste• 6 years ago

In general citation count is not a useful metric to determine research quality (separate from whether it applies here)

e.g. Brian Wansink's citation count is 33,969 and h-index is 85 [0]. Over a dozen of his papers were retracted after finding statistical anomalies:

"These problems included conclusions not supported by the data presented, data and figures duplicated across papers, questionable data including impossible values, incorrect and inappropriate statistical analyses, and "p-hacking". As of 2020 Wansink has had 18 of his research papers retracted (one twice), seven others have received an expression of concern, and 15 others have been corrected. On September 20, 2018, Cornell determined that Wansink had committed scientific misconduct and removed him from research and teaching activities; he resigned effective June 30, 2019."

[0] https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ME4wxCUAAAAJ&hl=en...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Wansink

bluntfang• 6 years ago

I'm personally fed up with the "racism and sexism don't exist" propaganda.

simonh2• 6 years ago

I don't think this is a fair criticism, and as it's phrased so generally I doubt it's based on any actual evaluation of the article to see whether it's making any errors with respect to correlation or causation.

I do accept that the majority of the pay gap between men and women are attributable to factors within the control of employees. Choices about having children and taking career breaks, willingness to work long hours, unwillingness to take dangerous jobs. These are all reasons why in general a lot of women earn less than a lot of men.

This article isn't making general claims though. It's evaluating specific indicators of bias in specific circumstances, and on the face of it seems to have a compelling case. It does seem wrong that women using assertive terms should suffer a lower likelihood of getting an interview or role than men that use the same language.

The fact is that in some sectors for some roles there is good evidence of bias in selection. This is bad for applicants and bad for employers who are missing out on good candidates. The fact that some other industries may even have a pro-female bias doesn't excuse anything either. I can accept that and want to do something about it, while still being a Jordan Peterson fan and without being a neo-Marxist social justice warrior.

clarkmoody• 6 years ago

Of course this begs the question: What about job performance?

Instead of trying to fix the "problem" they've identified, why not take the study further to see if there exists any correlation between use of feminine language in the cover letters (for men and women) and career outcomes (educational outcomes for the MBA students)?

mariodiana• 6 years ago

I'm thinking I've heard it said that the benefit of hiring women is that they bring a special something that men lack — a unique perspective, and all that — but now I'm hearing I'm supposed to be concerned that women who, on the face of it, seem to lack that special something are passed over? Which is it?

Cactus2018• 6 years ago

The journal paper - COVERING IN COVER LETTERS: GENDER AND SELF-PRESENTATION IN JOB APPLICATIONS https://journals.aom.org/doi/pdf/10.5465/AMBPP.2019.275

How gendered language was measured:

We used a computerized text analysis tool, Linguistic Inquiry Word Count (LIWC; Pennebaker, Booth, & Francis, 2007) to compute a measure of gendered language for each job application material (Gaucher et al., 2011).

How women self-reported downplaying their gender:

Job seekers downplayed gender incongruence by: removing gender-incongruent hobbies or extracurriculars; describing themselves with less gender-incongruent language; altering their name; or removing gender-incongruent job experiences.

RIMR• 6 years ago

This is one of those reasons I think that progressive social theory is so important. People are so quick to write people off as "SJWs" when they point out the small sexist or racist nuances that exist in the world, but those little things add up, and create vastly different life experiences for people based on their immutable characteristics.

This kind of bias is predictable, so there's no excuse for allowing it to have any affect over your hiring process. The people making hiring decisions either need to be trained in such a way that minimizes unfair or unlawful biases influencing their decisions, or they need to be given the bare minimum information as to avoid even having extra information that would influence their decision.

thinkingemote2• 6 years ago

Minimal information can also be discriminatory.

SpicyLemonZest5• 6 years ago

I worry that the implications here lean on the authors' use of frankly sexist stereotypes. If you don't filter the study through their perception that agentic language is masculine and communal language feminine, it becomes a lot less clear that these findings are relevant to the proportion of women in senior management.

krapp2• 6 years ago

If you don't filter the study through their perception that agentic language is masculine and communal language feminine, it becomes a lot less clear that these findings are relevant to the proportion of women in senior management.

"If you ignore the premise, the conclusion makes no sense. Therefore the premise is flawed."

SpicyLemonZest5• 6 years ago

What I'm saying is that such stereotypical premises are inherently flawed. If someone produced a study categorizing a high speech volume as "Hispanic language" and saying that Latinos like me get hired less when we use "Hispanic language" in interviews, I'd be pretty mad.

jtxx2• 6 years ago

what makes these terms feminine? isn’t this perpetuating these stereotypes?

salamanderman3• 6 years ago

Let me Google that for you. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=femi... https://scholar.google.com/scholar?start=10&q=feminine+terms...

jtxx2• 6 years ago

the trick here is Google Scholar it seems!

so, feminine in this case refers to Bakhtin & 'feminine dialogic'?

nashashmi2• 6 years ago

I read this as “when women/men rely less on their natural talents or put less forward their true natures, they sound weak and indecisive. Like they are still figuring themselves out.

I don’t understand this whole gender stereotype. It seems misplaced when one gender tries to portray themselves as different than who they are.

heyflyguy• 6 years ago

I am the worst case of insensitive behavior, and I will admit that when I read a female resume with those words I think "oh man, she is going to come in a pantsuit and try to make me feel like I am not doing to dominate her". Which, I wouldn't, but the prospect of a conflict is enough for me to archive the email.

cvbcvbcvbcvbc2• 6 years ago

“While we found that women are negatively impacted by this strategy, we found that men are less likely to cover because they are less likely to anticipate discrimination."

I can believe they somehow measured that "men are less likely to cover" (by some measure), but how do they know the reason is that they are "less likely to anticipate discrimination"?

I think it is a huge problem with such papers that they mix data with their personal beliefs and interpretation. It seems to be typical for feminist papers. They collect some data, then, in the summary, they claim "the reason we see this data is because of ongoing discrimination". Many people seem unable to distinguish the different parts of such papers or "studies".

There is one part to assert authority, "see we are doing the science thing", and then they use that to push their agendas.

I think since the media has destroyed its authority completely, this is the next frontier of politics to watch out for. We had to learn not to trust journalists, now we have to learn not to trust scientists. (Everybody can claim to be a scientist).

xchip• 6 years ago

I'd be quite concerned with anyone that uses those so called "masculine terms".

I don't want an aggressive, confident, challenging, outspoken and strong coworker. I want a team player.

mint2• 6 years ago

Masculine terms include: entrepreneurial confident aggressive challenging outspoken strong Feminine language is communal, reflecting a commitment to working with others. Feminine terms include: considerate committed supportive understanding

What makes these words m/f? Is it studies of how people perceive them? If that’s the case the authors seem to be missing the picture. In an equal world these words are gender neutral. And personally I don’t view them as having that division, but I guess others do and that seems to be the real issue.

drdec• 6 years ago

While you are correct (IMHO) to question the use of masculine and feminine to characterize these sets of words, in the end that is not actually relevant to the result. That is, if the authors had called the sets "cooperative words" and "aggressive words" instead, the result would still be interesting.

I suspect the authors chose masc/fem to describe the words because that makes for a more click-baity headline for the paper. Not so that it would peg the irony meter of people who notice that they are using gender stereotypes to characterize words in a paper ostensibly written to help reduce sexism.

WarOnPrivacy• 6 years ago

Website that wastes a third of the reading area to logo+menu is less likely to be read

belorn• 6 years ago

If the study had shown that women using less feminine terms were more likely to get hired we would have an article discussing how sexist the hiring process is. Now the data is showing that using less feminine terms makes women less likely to be hired and we have an article discussing how sexist the hiring process is.

The big takeaway from the study is that the language used impact success rate for women but does not have any effect for men, which makes the conclusion a bit odd. If women are punished for violating normative gender expectations, why are not men who use feminine terms punished? Gender norms are generally enforced for both women and men (as is often reported by transgender people). The article does not seem to put much thought on that question.

Women Using Less Feminine Terms in Cover Letters Are Less Likely to Get Hired

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