TikToker Says She Changed Her Race And Name On Her Resume And Landed Job Interviews After Receiving No Callbacks For Over 6 Months

After struggling to land a job, the content creator came to TikTok to speak out against the companies she’s applied to.

“The past six months I’ve been angrily and aggressively looking for a new job,” she said in the video. “Absolutely no callbacks, no text backs, no email backs. I changed my resume three times. I’ve been putting in applications — at least three every single day for the past six months.”

Under the built-up frustration, Dee Realz took some advice of changing both her name and race on her resume and applications. The switch resulted in the callbacks that she had previously lacked for half a year.

“I changed my first name to be my middle name so it sounds a little less ‘ethnic.’ And then I was watching this Ted Talk of this girl who was saying, ‘Hey, change your race to white.’ And I was like, ‘What?’ Changed my race to white and I have four interviews next week. Same resume. Same qualifications. Same everything. Same middle name that I’ve had put on there for the past two months. Different first names, but for the past two months, it’s been my middle name. Boy, they gonna be mad when my Black a-s shows up for that job.”

Across the video’s comment section, people gathered to concur that they’ve faced a similar battle. Just like Dee Realz, some said that the switch of their race and names on applications is how they were able to secure jobs.

While some changed their race to Black or mixed, others shared about how they instead declined to fill out the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) questionnaire, which asks for race, religion, and sex.

A professional with HR experience joined in by sharing a tactic for Black people to consider when applying to jobs.

“As an HR professional blind resumes are the way to go! There’s soo much implicit bias it’s crazy. Omit anything that shows EEO data,” she said.