Canadian HR Reporter

November 2, 2015

Canadian HR Reporter is the national journal of human resource management. It features the latest workplace news, HR best practices, employment law commentary and tools and tips for employers to get the most out of their workforce.

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CANADIAN HR REPORTER November 2, 2015 10 NEWS RECRUITING FINANCIAL PROFESSIONALS? O er positions to over 190,000 Members Highly targeted advertising Immediate matching resume database access FOR MORE INFORMATION, cpacanada.ca/CPASource TELEPHONE•416 204 3284•EMAIL•TGardiner@cpacanada.ca 14-126a_EN_CPAsource_fullpagead_9.625x7.indd 1 10/8/2014 3:40:37 PM Mobility Week" by Deloitte whereby the firm hopes to ac- cess a more diverse pool of talent while improving social mobility by increasing opportunity for, and investing in, the development and training of young people. Improving social mobility is one of the U.K.'s biggest chal- lenges, said David Sproul, senior partner and chief executive of De- loitte UK. "ere is also a clear business imperative to get this right. In order to provide the best pos- sible service and make an impact with our clients, we need to hire people who think and innovate differently, come from a variety of backgrounds and bring a range of perspectives and experience into the firm. We truly value this dif- ference," he said. "Our response to this challenge reflects the value we place in the U.K.'s education system and the hard work that young people and teachers put in to achieve good exam results. Contextualization allows us to recognize these im- portant qualifications for young people, whilst also ensuring that, for example, 3Bs at A level in a school where the average student achieves 3Ds is identified as ex- ceptional performance." is approach makes perfectly good sense, particularly in the U.K. where classism and impedi- ments to social mobility are mas- sive — much greater than they are in Canada, according to Wendy Cukier, vice-president of research and innovation, and founder of the Diversity Institute, at Ryerson University in Toronto. "What this is adding is an ef- fort to compensate in places… where the social structure is very rigid and if you went to Oxford or Cambridge (universities), the op- portunities that are there for you are massively better than if you graduated from London Polytech- nic, regardless of your ability," she said. "It seems to me that what this particular service is focused on is to try to address those invis- ible barriers that are associated with your family background and status." How it works Essentially, it's a plug-in that con- nects to the applicant tracking system, said Yasmina Kone, sales and marketing co-ordinator at Rare in London, U.K., the diversi- ty recruitment firm working with Deloitte. "A candidate will fill in a form as they usually would but with these extra questions and with this extra data capture. en, once they hit submit, the specific questions that are social mobility metrics for us will get sent to… our algorithm place." is means Deloitte then has the information in its applicant tracking system, said Kone, "so when they look through all of their candidates, they can see at a glance where on a scale of disad- vantage one might be." "ey're able to see, alongside the school that they went to, how that school was performing, so what percentile that school was in, and that just allows you to un- derstand the grades a little better, so the candidate who got A, B, B from an underperforming school will look more impressive than they would otherwise." e system is meant to disad- vantage anyone, said Kone. "e point is just to equal the playing field a little, so people who didn't go to good schools will be considered if they have still achieved strong academics." e idea of anonymizing CVs to combat unconscious bias has been around for awhile and is hugely important in levelling the playing field, said Cukier. "But, more important, it's critical for developing the pool of applicants in the first place, and reaching further upstream to make sure that youth growing up in more marginalized environ- ments understand the range of opportunities that are available to them and are equipped to be suc- cessful, because very often it has nothing to do with intelligence or hard work, and it has everything to do with understanding what opportunities exist and being able to navigate those unspoken rules." Systemic discrimination is much more difficult to prove than overt discrimination and, unfor- tunately, systemic discrimination is much more prevalent, she said. "And we know from the re- search that talks about the ex- periences of racialized people in the workplace and perceptions of unfairness, and the unintended, that very real tendency of peo- ple to prefer people who are like them, and to surround themselves with people who are like them… so more likely to pick 'someone from my educational background, someone who went to my school, someone who shares the same in- terests as I do,' and so on. And the unintended consequence of that is often to exclude people who are equally well-qualified and also to deny them access to many of the supports that they need in order to make them successful." Boosting diversity e system is meant to combat prejudice but it's also about boost- ing diversity, said Kone. "The contextualized recruit- ment system allows you hope- fully to have more diverse hires because it's showing you everyone and their merits in their context," she said. "And it might even be down to whether or not someone has rel- evant work experience and they weren't able to get work experi- ence… because they were spend- ing their Saturdays working in a retail job so they could make some money." In looking at the achievements of a student who graduated from Ryerson while carrying a 20-hour- a-week job as the child of a taxi driver, it would be important to contextualize that in contrast to the child of a judge who went to one of the Ivy League institutions and had all his expenses paid for, said Cukier. "Frankly… individuals who have had to struggle in order to achieve a university education, have had to balance earning an in- come to support their family and often other kinds of challenges, have more often more strength of character, resilience and tenacity than individuals who have had ev- erything handed to them." And it's not just about focus- ing on the hiring process but fo- cusing on building the applicant pool, said Cukier, "and equipping young people with the knowledge and skills they need to make good choices and also to succeed in an interview." Looking ahead, Kone said there has been quite a lot of inter- est from American firms about the system, and Rare is doing re- search looking into it. But, at the moment, the way the algorithm works is very U.K.-specific, with the focus on schools there, she said. Anonymity intended to even playing field DELOITTE < pg. 1

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