TeViecia “Viece” Kuykendall struggled to find a job for three years and says she suspects her hard-to-pronounce name was part of the reason. “I felt like it was a struggle to get people to my résumé,” she explains. “And the worst part is that I have to put my full name, TeViecia, on application forms, even though [my nickname] Viece is what’s on my résumé, and that’s somewhat easier. All the good stuff is on my résumé. I started spelling my name phonetically in parentheses, and that’s when I started to get phone calls.”
Kuykendall – whose name is pronounced Te-vee-cee-ah Kirk-ken-dahl – eventually got a job working as a school teacher at an alternative campus in Angleton, Texas. And her story isn’t an anomaly.
