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Recruitment procedures may have improved, but what employers think they already know about BME communities continues to be the biggest obstacle to successful BME recruitment.
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Why job candidates from BME communities are still disadvantaged in the labour market
Rethinking Recruitment is published by b:RAP© b:RAP 2006ISBN 1-905677-05-7 978-1-905677-05-4
Design: Cuthbert Design 0121 778 4407 [email protected]: Excel Print Ltd 0121 326 3483
Recruitment procedures may have improved, but what employers think they already know about BME communities continues to be the biggest obstacle to successful BME recruitment.
Introduction 01
Advertising 03
Applications 07
Shortlisting 11
Interviewing 15
Conclusions 21
Introduction:Rethinking recruitment
Businesses are now more aware than ever before of the need for fair and transparent equal opportunities policies in all matters relating to recruitment and selection. Not only does the law require this, but many businesses also pride themselves on their equal opportunity records and their concerted efforts to ensure a diverse and representative labour force. They also recognise that equal opportunities in the workplace begin with good recruitment practice.
So why are so many employers still reporting difficulties in recruiting staff from BME communities? And why do BME job-seekers report such a negative experience of recruitment? b:RAP recently surveyed over 400 BME people about their experiences of recruitment. We also spoke to a range of employers. We wanted to examine the real experience of job-seekers from ethnic minorities – and employers – at each of four key stages in the recruitment process:
Advertising
Applications
Shortlisting
Interview and selection
In each case we found a similar underlying problem: employers’ best efforts are being compromised by what they think they already know about BME job-seekers.
While it is obviously good practice for employers to review their recruitment processes in order to assess their potential impact upon different groups, it is our experience that organisations then find it very hard to interpret the findings of such reviews. And when such reviews do identify ‘equality gaps’, many organisations then find it difficult to identify the best response. It is at this point that many organisations then fall back on what they think they already know about candidates from BME backgrounds – and end up acting, usually unintentionally, on the basis of unexplored assumptions and stereotypes rather than evidence. Instead of exploring what it is about the culture of the organisation that fails to attract a diverse pool of talent from all sections of the community, the focus tends to be on ‘fixing’ processes and procedures in isolation from any wider lessons which might be drawn about the organisation.
This short guide is intended to help in these situations. It is about rethinking what are seen as common obstacles to BME recruitment. In each section we look at a common problem – the failure of people from BME communities to respond in sufficient numbers to job adverts, for example – examine the common explanations for and received ideas about the problem, and offer some new, evidence-based interpretations.
We hope you find it can help you think differently about some of the common reasons given for failing to recruit BME people – and more importantly, that it can help you put this thinking into practice to improve your recruitment.
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Advertising:Are you reaching BME communities?
The problem
Some employers we spoke to across the city reported a common problem:
“To widen the pool of talent available to us, we really want to attract people from the ethnic minorities, but they’re simply not applying.”The common interpretation
Many personnel specialists and senior managers believe the primary cause of this problem is the failure of ‘traditional’ approaches to advertising. While what the adverts say may be right, the adverts themselves are not in the right places.
The conventional answers to this problem are, first, to utilise more diverse ‘community’ advertising, with a greater emphasis on local radio and community newspapers; and second, to devise more targeted recruitment campaigns which are intended to reach people from black and ethnic minorities specifically. Such approaches are widespread and would seem to be common sense. But are they necessarily the ‘right’ answers? The evidence of our survey suggests a very different interpretation. Here’s why.
What does the evidence say?
Our survey indicated that community-based newspapers and radio are nowhere near as frequently used as sources of job information by BME job-seekers as employers have tended to think. Only 1% of those surveyed identified community newspapers as somewhere to look for job vacancies, and only 2% listened to community radio for news on job vacancies. “I don’t often buy community newspapers,” one interviewee told us, “but when I do it’s to find out what’s going on – you know, who’s playing where, what’s on, general gossip, that sort of thing really.”
The four most popular sources used by people looking for work were:
Online web sites (20%)
Local newspapers (19%)
National newspapers (16%)
And friends and/or family (14%)
The majority of those we surveyed used a combination of the above, although younger people also cited careers advisors and job centres as options they regularly used.
So, far from supporting the conventional answer of placing a greater emphasis on using community media, the evidence in fact suggests that BME people – just like everyone else – will tend to look at, listen to or read information sources that are appropriate to and reflect the type and status of the post or posts concerned.
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But our survey also indicated that informal and ‘virtual’ networks are of increasing importance. An organisation’s ability to recruit from the widest possible pool of talent is profoundly affected by word of mouth – the experiences of existing and past staff – and ‘bad news’ always spreads faster and further than ‘positive spin’. Word of mouth remains one of the most powerful forms of communication – for both good and bad news.
Rethink your approach
Below, we explain how some of these lessons can be built on to develop a more comprehensive and informed approach to getting your recruitment messages across as widely as possible.
Become an employer of choice Ensure that your staff are advocates for the organisation by making sure they have a positive message to convey rather then a negative one. This is one of the quickest ways to ensure that potential recruits – from both ethnic minority and majority backgrounds – begin to view you as an ‘employer of choice’. If you can demonstrate an evidenced commitment to long-term, cultural change within the organisation – where equality is taken seriously, racism and discrimination tackled and equality is a mainstream issue from the top to the bottom of the organisation – then this news will spread.
Organisational ‘health check’ Checking your organisation’s ‘state of health’ in terms of staff’s perceptions, feelings and experiences, is a useful mechanism for understanding the sort of organisational messages that are being ‘broadcast’ through social as well as professional networks. This health check could include:
Conducting and analysing an employee satisfaction survey.
Analysing the data you hold on staff grievance and disciplinary matters.
And auditing the confidence and competence of managers, leaders and Board members regarding ‘race’ equality.
Advertising Don’t assume that your advertising is effective. Use distinct reference numbers or check-boxes which will enable you to identify where people found out about the vacancy. This data can then be used to evaluate which options are most effective and efficient.
Utilise your ‘virtual’ networks Using formal and informal networks to cascade job information by e-mail is a good idea. You can use your own networks, but you can also use other organisations’ too, which can sometimes help you to tap into a much wider and sometimes unexpected talent pool. But it has to be well organised. Duplication is common and there can also be delays – this is especially important and needs to be factored into your schedule if you are working to tight deadlines. If you do use informal email networks, with a heavy reliance on others for forwarding, then make sure the subject line is clear and accurate (and interesting!) and of course ensure that it is clear to readers who they should respond to.
Work across sectors We can all be quite ‘blinkered’ when looking for new recruits and we don’t always recognise the potential that recruits from other less familiar sectors may have. Developing contacts and networks across the public, private and voluntary sectors can help spread the word more widely and effectively – as well as sometimes producing surprising outcomes and ‘new blood’.
Websites Given the increasing importance of websites, perhaps it is time to review yours. Are you using all available opportunities to communicate and promote the aims and values of your organisation, to detail progress towards achieving your equality goals and to promote vacancies or forthcoming recruitment needs? Does your website encourage interaction and get site visitors thinking about the organisation? For example, consider:
Quizzes that enable visitors to check their thinking against the values you uphold and pursue.
Virtual tours.
‘Vox pop’ video clips of employees talking enthusiastically about their work and what the organisation means to them.
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Outreach to young people Young people may not traditionally consider you an ‘employer of choice’. Consider introducing career development days, open days and ‘roadshows’. Invite young people and their parents/carers to these and provide opportunities to talk about the different career options within your organisation, field or sector. If you operate in a ‘difficult’ sector – such as social care, for example – this may also be a prime opportunity to dispel myths or preconceptions about the work you do, and also to emphasise the full variety of functions you recruit to (such as medical, legal, financial, marketing, IT and managerial staff).
Tell the truth – don’t pull punches Take a long hard look at the key messages your adverts and other organisational information project. How will they be received? Evidence suggests that smiling images of diversity and worthy equal opportunities statements have become a bit tired and clichéd. Job-seekers are more sophisticated than they were twenty years ago and are now likely to view such approaches as being more about compliance than real intent. Try instead to overcome cynicism and scepticism by acknowledging past organisational barriers and what you’ve done to remove these. Use your data from staff surveys and organisational health checks to develop powerful new messages about the positive benefits that working for your organisation will bring.
Avoid unintended consequences Ideally, by emphasising in your advertising strategy the ways you seek to find the right person for the job, your approach to recruitment should make ethnicity, age, gender, sexuality, and religious affiliation non-issues. Vacancy information that appears to ‘target’ under-represented groups can often have unintended consequences. Individuals from the targeted groups may take this to mean: it’s your colour (or gender, age, sexuality, or religion) that is most important to us, rather than your skills, knowledge, experience, expertise and qualifications.
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Applications:Where have the BME applicants gone?
The problem
Some employers, despite being broadly happy with their advertising, report a different problem:
“People from BME groups see our adverts. They request application packs. But an analysis of the ethnic profile of those who complete and return application forms to us reveals that people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds are under-represented.”The common interpretation
Many employers attribute this fall-off at the application stage to BME people being less educated and less qualified than their white counterparts. This assumption of BME educational under-achievement leads them to two conclusions:
First, that people from BME backgrounds do not apply because they lack the qualifications essential for the post; and
Second, a concern that the application form itself may not be sufficiently ‘user-friendly’ or that BME applicants will require particular guidance and support if they are to successfully complete the form.
What does the evidence say?
In fact, many people from BME backgrounds are highly qualified, articulate, literate and numerate. What is the case, however, is that data regarding educational attainment and skills is frequently misinterpreted and the ‘evidence’ for low attainment is routinely thought to apply to all within a specific ethnic group. Success is rarely accounted for. The message that needs to be repeated, loud and clear, is that there is diversity within diversity: don’t let the so-called evidence lead you to further inadvertent stereotyping.
It is also vital that other variables are considered. For example, while the data does indicate that a disproportionate number of people from some BME groups are under-achieving, it also indicates beyond doubt that a disproportionate number of white, working class boys also under-achieve. Underachievement and low levels of literacy and numeracy cross ethnic boundaries and are compounded by racism, class and poverty, amongst other factors.
In fact, only 36 respondents to our survey said they had ever failed to complete an application because they lacked the skills, experience or qualifications for the job. And only 17 people said they had at one time or another not completed an application form because the form itself was too difficult. Indeed, when asked whether they had ever struggled to complete an application, three-quarters of our sample said no. Of the one-quarter who had, the most commonly cited reasons had far more to do with the quality and construction of the application form itself than with any innate lack of skills, qualifications or language competence amongst applicants, although a small proportion of the sample (about 10% in each case) did acknowledge that they lacked confidence in their written skills or would find additional guidance on completion of the form helpful. Respondents drew attention to:
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Application form questions lacking clarity.
Badly constructed application forms.
Difficulties in identifying examples which would illustrate how they met the person- or job specification.
The ‘user-friendliness’ of application forms, then, and the availability of support and/or guidance emerge as issues of some significance but by no means at the top of the list. In any case, these affect those from both BME and white ethnic backgrounds and thus poorly designed or badly worded application forms are likely to affect many people in deprived communities adversely and not just those from a BME background.
But employers must also consider that some people do not apply because on reading further information about the job they find it simply doesn’t appeal to them. Over half of our respondents said that on at least one occasion they had sent for an application form which they subsequently did not return and the two most common reasons given were “the job didn’t appeal to me” or “the job wasn’t what I thought from the original advertisement.”
Rethink your approach
So, the reasons why people from BME backgrounds may request but not complete and return application forms is by no means as clear-cut as received ideas suggest. Below, we offer some suggestions for how these lessons can be built on to develop a more comprehensive and informed approach to solving your recruitment problems.
Get your processes right
We identified a number of areas in which refining recruitment and selection processes across the board – i.e. not just for BME candidates but for all candidates – can sometimes offer much wider, mainstream improvements that benefit all candidates and improve employers’ internal systems overall. Here are some examples:
Review the construction of application forms and the support systems available to applicants This is likely to benefit all future applicants, as well as ‘equality-proofing’ your approach overall. Involving newly appointed staff in the review process while the experience of their own recruitment is still fresh in their minds can also offer additional benefits. However, in these instances do be clear with newer staff about the contribution you expect them to make: just because they are newer recruits (and may in addition be from a minority ethnic background) doesn’t mean they are recruitment specialists.
Review person specifications and job descriptions In particular, focus on a critical analysis of the essential qualifications, experience and skills you are looking for. Involve staff that regularly have occasion to write person specifications and job descriptions. Consider consulting new appointees after, say, 6 months to check original specifications against the reality of their jobs.
Make your paperwork work for you Does your application form (and associated paperwork) help you spot and assess potential, or does it merely enable you to sift out those who do not meet the prescribed criteria? There is a subtle difference. Identifying how best the potential of applicants can be assessed at the first stage of the process – i.e. through the application form – not only makes your paperwork work harder for you, it will also help you begin to work out ways to explore applicants’ potential more thoroughly and fairly in your interview and related assessment processes.
Make adjustments as part of a wider process of organisational change Scrutiny of, and changes to, recruitment processes are more likely to result in positive outcomes if they are part of an open and honest appraisal of the overall culture
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of the organisation: make it your goal to identify and remedy policies, procedures and processes that may contribute to institutional discrimination.
Ensure that staff have the skills they need – including equality skills Focused professional development designed to build the confidence and competence of staff at all levels is now part of the culture for the vast majority of good employers. But it is still rare for such training and development to include competencies in equality. b:RAP has always believed that equality competencies don’t just happen ‘naturally’ but are as important to an organisation’s overall developmental culture as, say, customer service skills or specific service delivery expertise. Equality competencies can be developed and strengthened – and they can be reviewed periodically too, and remedial action taken where this might be indicated. Consider including staff and organisational development sessions on:
Understanding, interpreting and using data effectively.
Challenging assumptions and stereotypes.
Identifying and sharing good practice in relation to application forms and job descriptions.
And recognising and acknowledging discrimination and how to address this.
Using equal opportunities monitoring data Our survey revealed that potential applicants are often concerned by – and sometimes, as a result of personal experience, cynical about – employers’ equal opportunities monitoring practices. If you ask for such information, then it is also good practice to offer the assurance to candidates that this personal data is not available to those responsible for short-listing and interviewing. In addition, consider offering some ‘real world’ examples of how your organisation uses such data to inform, develop and implement better equality practice.
Language and ‘categories’ In terms of the ethnic monitoring categories you use, adopt broad categories (perhaps those commonly used in the Census) that include an ‘Other’ category, with an opportunity for people to specify which group category best describes them. Review this process. If you find a significant number of people who choose the ‘Other’ category define themselves in the same way then incorporate this new category in your form, thus better reflecting local demographics.
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Shortlisting:BME candidates − are you shortlisting too few?
The problem
But even those employers who find BME applicants applying at levels that are proportionate with the demographic profile of the city frequently report a further problem:
“…we’re shortlisting fewer BME candidates from the pool of applicants than should be the case.”The common interpretation
Many employers assume that people from BME backgrounds, because of failings in the education system or past discrimination, are less qualified than their white counterparts and as a consequence may be unable to meet the relevant short-listing criteria for certain posts. For similar reasons many also assume that BME candidates will lack experience, or will lack the confidence to identify and demonstrate the experience they do have.
In acknowledging that some BME candidates will have experienced disadvantage or discrimination, such reasoning is generally well-intentioned.
The conventional response of some employers is to develop ‘access to’ routes – sometimes in collaboration with post-16 education or training providers – so that specific minority groups can be ‘targeted’, thus offering the opportunity for disadvantaged job-seekers to acquire ‘on the job’ qualifications and experience, particularly in areas of greatest skill shortage.
Similarly, at middle and senior management levels, employers will often initiate mentoring schemes for BME staff, aimed at building BME employees’ confidence and supporting them in gaining the relevant experience for more senior roles. Such schemes are often reinforced with leadership training programmes for those BME employees identified as having the potential to progress.
But do such approaches ‘stack up’ when compared with the evidence? Our own and other research suggests they don’t and can sometimes have unexpected consequences.
What does the evidence say?
In fact, very few of our respondents (36) indicated that they commonly found themselves lacking the skills, experience or qualifications required by the post they were applying for. Our sample, then, did not bear out the need for ‘remedial’ provision. But other research suggests that such ‘positive discrimination’ approaches can also have more serious long-term effects.
For example, targeted ‘ethnic minority posts’ and access routes are often ‘segregated’ in that they open up limited, entry-level positions, which offer only limited scope for subsequent mainstream progression within the organisation. There is also widespread evidence to indicate that many existing employees perceive targeted opportunities as unfair. As a consequence ‘targeting’ can be a source of damaging friction and resentment between co-workers and this in itself may off-set all of the intended benefits, creating longer-term interpersonal problems that can become more challenging to resolve than the original problem was.
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Similarly, mentoring strategies and leadership training opportunities can raise unrealisable expectations amongst BME staff. Research suggests that only a small minority of BME employees supported through such strategies subsequently achieve senior positions either within their own organisations or elsewhere in their chosen professions. The consequences of such approaches, then, can be limiting rather than supportive.
Rethink your approach
While targeted recruitment, mentoring and leadership development schemes appear to be commendable ways of addressing a legacy of discrimination, they have a central failing: they neither address the roots of institutional discrimination and disadvantage within the organisation, nor examine the underlying causes of the original problem – the persistent failure to shortlist proportional numbers of BME candidates. In this sense, targeted approaches can often side-step what are core organisational problems.
Again, these lessons can be built on to develop a more comprehensive and informed approach to solving your recruitment problems and we offer some suggestions below.
Keep it neutral – using applicants’ personal details Research has demonstrated how unacknowledged and unconscious discrimination – particularly in relation to ethnicity, gender, disability and age – can be addressed at the short-listing stage by ensuring the removal of all personal information from application forms before they are seen by the shortlister(s). It is good practice to remove the applicants’ names, addresses, age, school/university names and any other obvious status indicators from the documentation your shortlisting team receives. Although an individual who is determined to discriminate can still infer some personal details – by estimating age from an applicant’s education or employment dates, for example, or their gender based upon assumptions about the type of work undertaken – the removal of personal details undoubtedly makes this much harder. It also sends out a clear message internally about the kind of practices your organisation is seeking to discourage.
Shortlisting – work out your criteria and underpinning rationale It is increasingly common practice for organisations to devise clear and objective short-listing criteria with an accompanying rationale. Clear, objective and focused shortlisting criteria will not only help your shortlisters; as part of overall improvements in your recruitment processes, they will also provide a better outcome. But in addition they will also enable you to provide unsuccessful (non-short listed) applicants with clear, reasoned and objective feedback. They will also help provide evidence, should this ever be required, that you followed fair, transparent and systematic procedures throughout the recruitment exercise. Many involved in recruitment find that such arrangements also help them act with greater confidence. It may also be useful to construct a pro-forma of common errors or shortfalls found in application forms – such as spelling, grammar, or routine omissions – that shortlisters can easily tick as they work their way through the application forms. If this is something you have yet to do, or you wish to review your existing shortlisting criteria, you might consider drawing upon external expertise to support and guide you through the review.
Relevant experience – does it tell the whole story? The relevant experience demanded of applicants is a key short-listing issue that warrants special attention. Of course relevant experience will be central to the shortlisting criteria you draw up for any given post – but does it tell the whole story? Lack of experience does not necessarily equate to lack of ability or potential to do the job in hand. Given the legacy of discrimination, some BME applicants may not have been given the opportunity by previous employers to gain a level of experience that fairly and adequately demonstrates their competence. Similarly, some well-qualified people from BME backgrounds may be employed in positions that do not reflect their potential or abilities. If during the short-listing process you identify candidates with potential who match most but not all of your shortlisting criteria you might consider two options:
Invite the candidate to be interviewed anyway, but alert them to the criteria they have not yet satisfied.
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Contact the candidate to ask some focused questions regarding the criteria they apparently do not meet, offering them a set time to respond.
Either option will bring an added dimension of fairness to your shortlisting process – but it is important to note that any applicants approached in this way must be treated objectively and transparently, so ensure that your explanation of the process (or situation) is clear and unambiguous.
Ask questions that call for responses which can be assessed and ‘rated’ It can be a mistake during the application process to use questions that are overly descriptive and/or subjective. Such as, “tell us about your people skills”, or “tell us how you work as part of a team effectively”, or “provide an example of how you have learnt from a previous difficult or challenging experience”. Are applicants clear about how their responses to such questions will be assessed? How will you rate the responses to such questions? While many professional people will be practised in responding appropriately – and may also have professional and social contacts who can offer advice and guidance – some BME candidates, because of the legacy of discrimination, may not. In such circumstances, you may inadvertently add to this discrimination and exclusion. It is better to ask questions that encourage specific responses that can be rated, such as (for a manager), “can you give an example of a staff management issue you have resolved in which your people skills played an important part?” or “can you give an example of your techniques for developing and motivating a staff team?” Such questions have several advantages:
They enable applicants to answer based on real experience rather than more generalised description.
They enable your shortlisters to rate responses more objectively according to the level and depth of experience indicated.
And they also signal to applicants the specific areas in which you regard direct personal experience to be most important.
Avoid ‘deficiency model’ thinking Finally, think very carefully about the implications of the strategies you adopt to redress discrimination. In particular, avoid those based on ‘deficiency models’ which focus on the weaknesses (real or assumed) of people from specific groups (whether by ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation or disability). As in all previous instances, what may appear to be relatively minor changes to specific procedures are best understood – and likely to be more sustainable – as part of your organisation’s overall equality and diversity policies.
