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Cancer Survivors Are Less Likely To Get Hired, Says Study
Trending News: Is It Harder To Find A Job If You've Had Cancer In The Past?
Why Is This Important?Because discriminating based on health history is still discrimination.
Cancer survivors not only have a tougher time getting callbacks from potential employers, says this study, but managers tend to discriminate on them in different subtle ways.
Long Story Short
We like to think we’re in a post-racist, post-sexist, post-discriminatory culture, but we’re definitely not. And while discrimination based on skin color, religion, gender and sexual orientation are often discussed as needing improvement, discrimination based on health records tends not to be talked about so much.
Technically under the Americans with Disabilities Act, it is illegal to discriminate on cancer survivors, but a recent study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology by the America Psychological Association noted a noticeable problem with how cancer survivors are treated when they go for job interviews.
Five researchers, two guys and three women between 21 and 29-years-old, were sent out undercover on the job hunt to 121 retail stores at three large shopping malls in Southern U.S. states. (Yes, the sample size is super small, but bare with me, the results are pretty intriguing.)
On their job hunt, the researchers snazzed up their resume with their own experience to pertain to the job, but removed the stuff that made them overqualified. The participants were then selected at random to pretend to be cancer survivors, which meant adding “cancer survivor” to their resume and wearing a hat that said “cancer survivor” on it.
After the interviews were tallied up, it turned out that only 21% of those who listed themselves as cancer survivors received callbacks for interviews, while nearly 37% who didn’t list themselves as cancer survivors received got a callback — a statistically significant difference, according to the researchers.
Sure, there was only five people participating and wearing a hat to an interview at all is probably a bad call, but the researchers found further reasons to believe those listed as cancer survivors suffered from discrimination.
"Basically, people are more likely to discriminate in very subtle interpersonal ways,” explained lead researcher Larry Martinez to Science Daily. “There's less eye contact. There are shorter interaction times when speaking with managers. There are more negative interpersonal behaviors from managers, like frowning, brow furrowing and less smiling — fewer cues that communicate to applicants that they are interested in hiring them for the job."
Further boosting Martinez’ theory that cancer survivors are discriminated against by potential employers, they posted an online survey asking people who are employed full-time and had management or experience as an interviewer to give their opinions of cancer survivors as employees. The results of the web survey found that the 87 participants tended towards calling cancer survivors higher in “warmth” than in competency.
"Managers and employees should be mindful of the fact that although societal attitudes toward cancer survivors are generally quite positive, with people often viewing them as champions who have successfully overcome a traumatic experience, we nonetheless might perceive them as being less desirable employees simply because of their history with cancer," Martinez said.
Are you a cancer survivor and have experienced discrimination while looking for a job? Why aren’t cancer survivors treated with more of a positive opinion considering the way surviving the disease is often equated with determination and perseverance? Start the discussion and find out what other guys think on guyQ.
Ask The Big Question: How are cancer survivors treated in the workplace after they get the job.
Own The Conversation
Disrupt Your Feed: Never wear a hat to an interview, ever.
Drop This Fact: A recent study found that men with higher fitness levels were less likely to get cancer.