Project Consultant

Position Summary

The Equal Rights Center (ERC) seeks consultant for correspondence testing investigation

The ERC, a national non-profit civil rights organization, is seeking a consultant to provide technical assistance on a short-term civil rights investigation, with the option to potentially assist with longer-term projects in the future.

This project will involve matched pair correspondence testing. Correspondence testing, sometimes referred to as “resume testing,” is an investigative technique in which investigators send pairs of job applications to potential employers from fictitious job applicants who appear to be equally qualified and similarly situated. Applications and resumes are carefully constructed so that paired job applicants appear to differ from one another only in respect to a single variable under investigation—which may include factors such as race, sex, color, religion, disability, or familial status.

This method has been used in previous investigations and academic studies, and the ERC is partially modeling its investigation on the projects linked below:

• Systemic Discrimination Among Large U.S. Employers: https://www.nber.org/papers/w29053
• Unequal Opportunity: Uncovering Discrimination at Chipotle Mexican Grill: https://www.seiu32bj.org/chipotle-discrimination-report/#page-1

The consultant will need to perform the following tasks:

1. Develop digital tools using Python to perform the following functions:
   • Monitor and sort online job listings
   • Scrape resume data from LinkedIn profiles to generate a data bank for the creation of fictitious job applicant resumes
   • Automate submission of online job applications and document all job application submissions

2. Perform quantitative statistical analysis of the resulting data set and prepare a summary of findings for use in a final report

Compensation: Because this is a consulting position, we will need you to submit a proposal that states your own proposed hourly rate for completing the necessary work. If we choose to interview you, we will provide you with the details you need to put together your proposal. We have already secured funding for this project, and we are willing to negotiate rates for the right candidate.

Commitment: We estimate this work will require anywhere between 15-20 hours/week for the next two-three months. If we form a good working relationship, we have other similar projects in the pipeline for which we may choose to hire you. All work can be completed remotely.