Getting A Job

Is always hard, the competition for jobs is insane, some job posting get hundreds of resumes for each job opening. But if you are a member of a minority it is even harder and if you happen to also trans finding a job is just about impossible.

Transgender People Face Discrimination In Job Market
Despite increasing public awareness of transgender issues, transgender people continue to face high rates of joblessness.
NPR
By Gloria Hillard
March 26, 2016

And there's another movement we want to talk about - the one for the rights of transgender people. With celebrities like Caitlyn Jenner and Laverne Cox, transgender people probably have more high-profile advocates than ever before. Even so, challenges remain for men and women who physically change, or as many prefer, confirm their genders. A particular challenge is employment. Transgender men and women face high rates of joblessness and can be fired in many states for being transgender. Even in California, one of 19 states with employment protections for transgender people, finding and keeping a job can be a major struggle. Gloria Hillard reports.

I know of so many highly qualified trans people who cannot find jobs that match their qualifications and are underemployed or unemployed. Trying to prove discrimination is almost impossible during the hiring phase, it is easier to prove if you already have a job, but smart employers knowns ways around the law.

Unless a prospective employer does something really dumb like saying “We don’t hire people like you.” it is very hard to prove discrimination in hiring because there are so many excuses they can use like “you are over qualified”, or “you are not qualified” or even “you are not a match with our company vision.”

When I counsel trans people who are thinking about transitioning and are looking for a job I tell them to wait until they get a job and have at least one job review under their belt before they transition. It is tough love to tell them to wait but their odds of getting a job are a lot higher.

Listen to the whole interview...



Last fall a Washington D.C. study documented the employment discrimination.

Sting reveals anti-trans job bias
By Lou Chibbaro Jr.
November 4, 2015

The D.C. Office of Human Rights on Tuesday released the findings of a six-month study that showed 48 percent of employers appeared to prefer at least one less-qualified job applicant over a better-qualified applicant perceived as being transgender.

The study involved sending 200 “test” cover letters and resumes prepared by OHR to 38 employers that advertised 50 individual job openings, according to an OHR statement.

The statement says OHR sent two sets of cover letters and resumes to each of the advertised job openings from “applicants” who appeared to be transgender and another two sets from applicants who were portrayed as non-transgender. 

The report key findings were,

Among the key findings in the testing project:

• 48 percent of employers** appeared to prefer at least one less-qualified applicant perceived as cisgender over a more-qualified applicant perceived as transgender. 

• 33 percent of employers offered interviews to one or more less-qualified applicant(s) perceived as cisgender while not offering an interview to at least one of the more-qualified applicant(s) perceived as transgender. 

• The applicant perceived as a transgender man with work experience at a transgender advocacy organization experienced the highest individual rate of discrimination. 

• The restaurant industry had the highest percentage of responses perceived as discriminatory among the employment sectors tested, although the sample numbers are low and therefore not conclusive. 

This is something that I think the trans community knows about first hand but it is good that the report documents the discrimination.

** For determining rates of discrimination, only tests where one or more applicant(s) received a response were considered. This is in-line with best practices on correspondence testing.