MIRROR
A young professional says she was only offered interviews for jobs relating to her degree when using a fake ‘English’ name on her application – despite sending identical CVs with her real name.
Georgiana Popescu moved to Leeds, West Yorkshire, in 2015 from Romania to complete her undergraduate and master’s degrees before starting her job search.
The 26-year-old claims she applied for more than 100 jobs with British firms but only secured roles in warehouses and retail – while her British coursemates went into jobs relating to their degree.
After feeling ‘inferior’, Georgiana decided to do an experiment – applying for 40 roles using two identical CVs and applications but simply changing her name to a traditionally British name, Sarah C.
She claims she ‘wasn’t surprised’ to hear back from 11 companies offering her interviews as ‘Sarah’, while her identical applications with the name Georgiana Popescu had been seemingly tossed aside.
Georgiana claims she even doubts her applications under her Eastern European name were read at all – as no one ever flagged the indistinguishable applications.
After years of having to do warehouse or retail work, she was delighted to finally land a job as a fraud analyst in March last year.
She only finally feels confident enough to speak out about her ‘heart-breaking’ experience three years on as she feared people’s reaction would tell her to ‘go back to her own country’ – but gained courage from others on TikTok.
Georgiana, originally from Bucharest, Romania, but still living in Leeds, said: “It’s a serious issue.
“I submitted the exact same CVs but with different names. I got 11 replies for Sarah and none for Georgiana.
“I got the feeling that it didn’t matter what I was doing, but that it would never be good enough because of my name.
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