The Brokerage The Overlooked Advantage - Flipbook - Page 21
This approach supported the shared sentiment from research participants regarding the
importance of authenticity in corporate messages and approach, pointing out that organisational
commitment to increasing diversity and representation is one of the things they consider in a
potential employer. When researching companies Brokerage Candidates told us that they look for
consistency between the overarching equity, diversity and inclusion statement and strategy and
their actual experience of the different recruitment stages. ‘Signals’ of authenticity might include
visible diversity across the organisation (for example, among the senior leadership team or on the
hiring panel), types of questions asked in the application materials, as well the way managers react
to responses and examples that draw on experience of growing up disadvantaged.
Recommendations
When asking questions as part of the interview process hiring managers could emphasise to
candidates that examples could draw on life experiences - whilst being mindful to assess the
level of skill, not the context in which it was developed.
Similarly, any questions about personal experiences should clearly relate to the skills and
qualities required for the role, to avoid coming across as a tick-box exercise.
One practice frequently mentioned by employers working with the Brokerage is using scenariobased interviews and assessment centres to appreciate a candidate’s potential. Rather than
drawing on examples from previous experience, these approaches invite candidates to imagine
what they would do in situations that model a typical workplace challenge. Performance in
situational interviews has been shown to be a good predictor of on-the-job performance[36],
and the method could be particularly effective at capturing the kinds of socioemotional
strengths that underrepresented young people bring.
Consider using games and team working tasks during recruitment to enable candidates to
demonstrate their skills, creativity and potential in action. The Brokerage young people agreed
that they felt much more empowered when asked to do presentations or tackle scenario-based
tasks to demonstrate their skills, compared to completing assessments focused on previous
experience or psychometric tests that typically look for ‘the right’ answer.
To ensure fairness and invite diverse perspective during the recruitment process employers
also highlighted the importance of a highly structured approach for assessment, with required
competencies pre-defined and understood by the hiring team, and - in some cases - having a
standardised bank of questions that managers could choose from, with each question linked to
a specific competency being tested.
Moreover, diversity of the team shaping the recruitment process, as well as application review
and interview panels can support contextualising the experiences and examples shared by the
candidates.
[36] Latham, G. P., & Sue-Chan, C. (1999). A meta-analysis of the situational interview: An enumerative review of
reasons for its validity. Canadian Psychology/Psychologie Canadienne, 40, 56–67.
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