Volunteering at a church or mosque can reduce a candidate’s chances of advancing in the recruitment process, a new Belgian study has found.
Research conducted by Ghent University found that religion can be a disadvantage on the job market, not necessarily because employers think religious people are less capable, but because they fear colleagues and customers may be less willing to work with them.
The study, published by UGhent researchers Louise Devos, Louis Lippens and Stijn Baert, examined how 177 professional Belgian recruiters from Brussels, Flanders and Wallonia evaluate religious signals when looking at job candidates.
The recruiters assessed four fictional candidates, producing 708 evaluations. Each candidate's profile deliberately varied to separate religious identity from ethnic background, as that distinction was difficult to prove in earlier research.
Big takeaways from the research
Candidates who wrote they volunteered at a church or mosque received significantly lower hiring ratings than otherwise comparable candidates who volunteered for a secular community organisation. On the 11-point scale that was used, the difference was 0.676 points.
No significant difference was found when comparing Christian and Muslim religious volunteering. Additionally, displaying a religious symbol, such as a cross or headscarf, did not produce a significant effect in the main analysis.
However, recruiters did not appear to regard religious candidates as worse potential employees. The candidates who identified as Christian or Muslim tended to be rated more positively on several characteristics, including honesty-humility, agreeableness and conscientiousness.
Instead, the researchers found evidence that recruiters were thinking about how other people would react.
Recruiters expected colleagues to be less willing to work with candidates whose religious identity – regardless of faith – was apparent. Candidates that recruiters identified as Christian, Muslim or atheist received lower interview ratings than candidates whose religious position remained unclear.
Christian candidates scored 0.721 points lower on the 11-point hiring scale, Atheist candidates were 0.642 points lower and Muslim candidates were 0.478 points lower.
Volunteering is also generally considered an advantage on CVs, but the researchers found that the benefit might turn into a negative when the activity reveals a religious affiliation. The UGhent’s research found that candidates who volunteered for a general community organisation fared better than those whose volunteering experience came from volunteering at a church or mosque.
Difficulties from the study
When researching discrimination, biases towards religions and ethnicity can be difficult to separate. The research cites Belgium’s sizeable Polish and Turkish communities, which are predominantly Christian and Muslim, respectively, and a traditional name from either group might have subconsciously signaled the applicant's ethnic background and religious identity to a recruiter.
To combat this, the researchers deliberately varied names, religious symbols and activities independently. Their experiment included Belgian, Polish and Turkish names, while religious signals were introduced separately through photographs and volunteering experience.
The researchers also stressed that their experiment measured recruiters evaluations of fictional candidates and did not study actual hiring outcomes. However, they argued that their findings do provide evidence that religion can influence recruitment independently of ethnic background.
"Above all, our findings demonstrate that religious discrimination, alongside and on top of ethnic discrimination, deserves more research and policy attention," the researchers stated on Ghent University's website. "While anti-discrimination policy today focuses primarily on ethnic origin, religion as a separate ground for discrimination remains relatively underexposed."
