The LinkedIn Catfish Experiment: How Aliyah Jones Exposed Racial Bias in the Job Market

Dec 27, 2024

By “Listening to Black Women” Staff

In an age where diversity and inclusion have become corporate buzzwords, Aliyah Jones, a 26-year-old African American woman, dared to ask: Are these promises of equity reflected in real opportunities for Black professionals? To answer this, she conducted a bold and groundbreaking experiment on LinkedIn that not only vindicated but validated the lived experiences of countless Black women navigating systemic bias in the job market.

The Experiment

Aliyah Jones created a fake LinkedIn profile posing as a white woman with similar qualifications to her own. Over the course of eight months, she tracked the responses, interactions, and opportunities this fabricated persona received, contrasting them with her real-life experiences as a highly qualified Black woman.

The results were damning. While Jones’s real profile often encountered silence or rejection, her white persona was met with enthusiasm, job offers, and networking opportunities that she rarely experienced in her own professional journey.

Her experiment was meticulously documented on social media, where Jones shared her findings through TikTok videos that quickly went viral. You can watch her breakdown of the experience here:

What It Revealed About Systemic Bias

Jones’s findings validated the suspicions and frustrations of many Black professionals, particularly Black women, who have long felt that their qualifications are scrutinized more heavily, their ambitions questioned, and their access to opportunities limited simply because of their race.

Jones noted that despite her stellar qualifications, she often felt overlooked in hiring processes where less-qualified colleagues seemed to excel. Her LinkedIn experiment offered undeniable evidence of what many Black women have been saying for years: racial bias continues to shape perceptions and decisions in the professional world.

Why This Matters for Black Women

Jones’s experiment strikes at the heart of a crucial issue. For Black women, professional spaces are often fraught with microaggressions, tokenism, and the constant need to overperform to be considered “equal.” The experiment highlights that the barriers we face are not imaginary but systemic and pervasive.

It also underscores the need to be vigilant about how diversity and inclusion initiatives are implemented. Too often, these efforts amount to surface-level platitudes rather than tangible, measurable change.

A Call to Action

Aliyah Jones’s work is more than an experiment; it’s a call to action for employers, HR professionals, and job seekers to confront their own biases and demand accountability in hiring practices. It’s also a rallying cry for Black women to continue advocating for ourselves and each other in the workplace.

Jones’s experience reminds us that we must remain skeptical of superficial “inclusion” initiatives and vigilant in ensuring that systemic barriers are dismantled—not just papered over with buzzwords.

For more on Aliyah Jones, follow her TikTok or view her original LinkedIn experiment documentation on YouTube.

Closing Thoughts

Aliyah Jones’s experiment offers a sobering reminder of the work that remains to be done to achieve true equity in the workplace. But it also validates the voices of Black women who have long spoken out about these injustices. Her courage in sharing this experiment is a testament to the power of naming and exposing systems of oppression, and it’s a story that demands our attention—and our action.