If the bias is subconcious, moving to this would still have an effect.

In general, it could be enforced as a random identifier generated with each electronic application; this just burdens employers with implementing an electronic applications system, which is too high a regulatory burden (and would make dropping off a CV in person impossible/illegal, which is stupid.)

It could be a hash of the persons name, too, but then the public would have to learn what a hash was...

NI number works well in the UK, because it's convenient (and the original suggestion was specifically for the UK.) A similar system could be used anywhere.

"SSN equivalent in Poland has sex encoded"

That gets supplied when sending a resume?

Just a fun fact, this stopped being true as of June 25, 2011: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_number#Structu...

But since there probably aren't many two-year-olds applying for jobs nowadays the comment is still relevant.

Only for younger people - SSNs have only been assigned at birth since the 1980s. My mother was born in West Virginia but her SSN has a Minnesota prefix, because that's where she lived when she got her first job.

Someone who wasn't born a US citizen would only get assigned an SSN with their green card or work visa, and I'd imagine the prefix would indicate their first place of residence in the US.

So the most you can get from a pre-2011 SSN is that someone lived in some particular state in some particular year, and that information is likely inferable from the resume anyway.

There was never any plan to restrict anything else (although if your github URL is your name, like mine, I guess it would defeat the purpose.) The point was that people often put their name (like in the article) in a large font at the top - replacing this with a faceless number just reduces the initial "put the girls and people called 'Singh' in that pile over there" nonsense, at makes people actually read the CVs.