Outreach & Recruitment:
Inclusive Hiring Practices

On 26^th September, Bloomberg kindly hosted a Power of Inclusion Social Mobility Workshop on Inclusive Hiring Practices, to bring together representatives from different sectors and businesses to explore their hiring practices and learn from each other.

At the breakfast event, 69 individuals from a range of sectors based in the City and beyond met to explore effective practice, consult each other on challenges and identify opportunities to learn from other organisation’s progress. Dan Robertson, Director of FAIRER Consulting, Chaired the workshop and kicked the morning off by welcoming attendees and touching on the Change Starts Together framework that underpins the Power of Inclusion programme before introducing our first speakers.

As our hosts, the Bloomberg team kicked off the learning with an engaging panel discussion exploring their approach to recruitment. The conversation touched on topics including their apprenticeship programme, equipping hiring managers with the necessary tools and knowledge to break through bias, and strategic partnerships that support the recruitment processes.

The panel discussion was followed by our first keynote speaker, Jacqueline Girow, Executive Director at London & International Insurance Brokers' Association (LIIBA). Jacqueline focused on effective outreach programmes and provided an overview of LIIBA’s work with the charity, UpReach, to provide industry insights to undergraduate students. Utilising external partnerships like LIIBA and UpReach’s collaboration was a key theme throughout the morning’s discussion.

Elouise Essex, Early Careers Manager at Ashurst LLP, delivered the next keynote speech providing an overview of the work Ashurst LLP have been conducting around inclusive assessment practices. Elouise shared Ashurst’s journey of using psychometric testing, including gamification and situational judgement tests, as a tool to assess candidates.

Inspired by the panel discussion and keynote speeches, participants of the workshops then dived into conversations exploring strategies to ensure recruitment processes address inclusion through an intersectional lens. Solutions proposed in the discussion section included leveraging software to minimise bias, providing hiring managers with training, posting job opportunities in various channels, providing thorough information on logistics during the interview process, and developing bespoke partnerships with schools.

The workshop closed with the in person launch of the 2024 edition of the Change Starts Together campaign video. The campaign aims to increase the visibility of socioeconomic diversity in the City and through the video we hope that more businesses will seek to develop their own internal storytelling campaign. We would be delighted to hear from you if you would be willing to share your story in a future video or blog.

To further explore the learnings from the workshop, you can now access speaker recordings on this Hub.

Get in touch with us here if you would like to discuss how the Power of Inclusion initiative can support your business’s social mobility strategy.