Demographic Information in Job Application Materials--Writing Notes - YouTube

So last semester, when I was teaching Job  Application Documents, I had a student who  

had served in the Korean military--and  he had done well in the Korean military,  

he had advanced in rank, he had a position of  responsibility, and stuff like this--and so as  

a line on the resume it was potentially a pretty  impressive line because it showed a lot of good  

stuff: leadership, ability to follow orders,  ability to work with others, management skills,  

and communication skills, etc., etc. So there was  a good argument for putting it on the resume and  

applying for a job with US companies. But there  was a couple of potential concerns that we had,  

we discussed pretty extensively. In addition  to all of the potentially good stuff that that  

entry would tell potential employers, it also  tells them a couple of things that you might  

want to be cautious about. One being that this  applicant is a Korean national. And that may or  

may not make a difference, but nationality is  a protected identity category and employers...  

and so there's potential discrimination concerns  if they don't hire you, and I mean... and it's  

entirely possible that you will actually have  someone reading your resume who's gonna say,  

"I don't want Koreans working here" or whatever  it is, but I suspect that's probably somewhat  

less of a concern (that may be overly optimistic  of me). But the other thing, the other aspect of  

this student's identity that that line on  the resume revealed is that he's a veteran,  

which is also a protected category. And  so you don't necessarily need to avoid  

any references that tell an employer about your  demographic identity or demographic categories,  

but you want to be cautious about that because  those are the... really the reason that they  

are protected categories is because these  are things that people have have used as a  

basis for discrimination. So you want to avoid  that. You want to be judged on your own merits,  

I think, or most applicants do anyway. You  also don't necessarily want to put your  

potential employer in a position where they're  concerned that you could then sue them and say,  

"you didn't hire me because I'm a Korean," or  "because I'm a veteran," "because I'm a woman,"  

or "I'm Jewish," or "I'm whatever it is." So you  want to be strategic about those decisions. You  

want to think critically about what the references  on your resume and application letter imply for  

potential employers. As always with Minor Musings,  if you found this advice useful or helpful please  

let me know, and if you have additional questions  or things that you want to get some feedback on,  

get some advice about, you can either shoot  me an email at [email protected] or you  

can post a comment on any of my Minor  Musings videos. Thanks for watching.