Atlanta — The woman pulled her résumé from a pink file folder and handed it to a recruiter.
Across the top of the page, in bold type, she had printed her name twice: first as Mark, then as Meghan.
At the nation’s first transgender Career Expo on Friday, job seekers were encouraged to use their new gender names on the résumés. But Meghan, a 42-year-old transsexual who declined to give her last name because her current employer knows her as Mark, wanted to make sure prospective employers could find her, or him, if they ran a background check.
The etiquette of transgender résumés was just one of the myriad challenges faced by the job seekers who packed the Atlanta convention hall.
For transgender people — at Friday’s expo, they ranged from cross-dressers to those who had changed their gender through hormone therapy or surgery — the workplace is a minefield.
Many cannot find jobs. Even those who come out after they have settled in with a company risk losing their job. No federal civil-rights employment protection exists for transgender employees.
Only 12 states have passed legislation ensuring employment protection for transgender people. The House of Representatives is scheduled to vote later in September on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would prohibit discrimination against employees on the basis of gender identity.
The Career Expo — organized by the Southern Comfort Conference , the country’s largest annual gathering of transgender people — drew recruiters from more than 20 major corporations such as Microsoft Corp., Deloitte & Touche LLP, Ernst and Young, American Airlines, Hewlett-Packard Co. and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.
A growing number of national and international corporations are developing transgender policies and protections. According to a report by the Human Rights Campaign, 152 of Fortune 500 companies prohibit job discrimination against transgender employees.
In some ways, the Career Expo was like any job fair: Men and women walked from booth to booth, stopping to exchange business cards and promote their experience and skills.
There were some flamboyant scenes: A woman with hooped earrings carried a glossy platinum wig as she chatted with recruiters from Ernst and Young. At the other side of the room, a woman in pearls wiggled her hips playfully as she walked up to a Hewlett-Packard booth.
“Am I accepted?” she asked, coyly.
“Totally,” the recruiter said, reaching over the booth to shake her hand.
Hewlett-Packard, the recruiter said earnestly, earned a 100 percent diversity rating on the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index.
For many corporations, the expo was an opportunity to showcase their transgender -supportive policies.
The job seekers, in turn, had many questions for recruiters: How did they broach the subject with co-workers or clients? What was their restroom policy for “transitioning” employees? Did their health insurance cover counseling or hormone treatment or sex-reassignment surgery? How many transgender employees did they have?
Some participants remained skeptical about large corporations’ commitment to hiring transgender employees.
“The policies are all well and good,” said Jillian Barfield, 50, a transsexual from St Louis, after speaking to a recruiter from the law firm Alston & Bird. “But they don’t do any good if they don’t trickle down to the recruiters who actually interview us.”
Even when she had applied to companies with transgender-friendly policies, Barfield said, recruiters who sounded receptive on the phone were less so when they met her.
“They don’t say anything,” she said, “but you can tell.”
Some companies brought transgender employees to talk to the job seekers about their personal experiences.
Breanna Speed, a database administrator for the human resources company Hewitt Associates, made her gender transition this year after working for the company for seven years. She was nervous, she said, but after the CEO sent an e-mail to the staff explaining Wendell henceforth would be Breanna, the response was positive.
“I was touched,” she said.
Dana Kern, 44, an employee with J.P. Morgan who made her transition from David Kern a year and a half ago, said her HR department issued her a new e-mail address before she changed her name and allowed her to use female restrooms as soon as she wanted to.
“It takes such a lot of courage,” she said, beaming as a woman handed her a résumé.
