Employers' diversity recruitment won't improve unless candidates understand all roles available

Career filter bubbles mean candidates stick with roles they know, impacting employers’ diversity processes

• Unless employers tackle this engagement gap, candidates are unlikely to find them, and vice versa

• Young candidate’s story included

• (photos available)

According to SortYourFuture, unless employers tackle the engagement gap between themselves and potential applicants, many candidates are unlikely to find their ideal role or employer, nor are employers likely to find ideal candidates. 

The resulting cost to employers is high: poor productivity and engagement, high attrition as well as repeating recruitment and training costs. A recent report from Deloitte(1) showed that 49% of millennials wanted to quit their current roles in the next two years (comparison, 38% in 2017). 

‘Career filter bubbles’ develop when the same kinds of people go into the same roles, because of the range of social networks, experiences, and opportunities they have access to. Indeed, recent research(2) into pathways towards ‘elite professions’ showed that young people consider roles that they know about and are familiar with. For instance, if a child has a parent who is a doctor, they are 24 times more likely to become a doctor too. The OECD’s report, ‘Drawing the Future’(3) which asked 7-11 year olds to draw what they wanted to be, also showed that children’s perceptions about their future roles can be formed early on, shaped by gender stereotyping, socio-economic background and their environment.

Lucy Griffiths, CEO and Co-Founder of Sortyourfuture.com says, “When you place this in the context of an environment where achieving diversity is the highest priority for recruiters as organisations seek to recruit a more balanced workforce(4), it’s clearly an area that employers need to consider carefully.” 

Griffiths says that many employers are missing a fundamental part of the diversity and inclusion puzzle. “Employers are improving their recruitment and selection processes to ensure they don’t exclude diverse candidates at the selection phase, but a key area where we aren’t seeing enough focus is opening up access in the pre-search research phase. This is the fuzzy front end of career decision-making, which can be heavily influenced by the social, cultural, and economic capital candidates have access to.” 

“This complex area is incredibly difficult for anyone recruiting. If potential candidates don’t know that your organisation exists, if they don’t know what kinds of roles are available, or they don’t feel your roles are ‘for them’, how will they even get to the application stage? This compounds the career filter bubble problem.”  

The secret is to think like a marketer, says Griffiths, to listen to those from the under-represented groups that an organisation wants to attract. It’s about understanding your audience, where they are, what they do, what they’re interested in and the barriers they face – small and large. To do that, you have to listen. At its heart it’s about engagement, and to engage you need to understand. Unless you have engagement, the next steps in the recruitment and selection process can’t do what they need to do.

SortYourFuture is launching to bridge the discovery gap between employers and diverse candidates. Sort’s new approach helps young people navigate the vast range of career options before them, simply and intuitively, and, crucially, helps them discover roles and employers they may not have had access to via their own personal networks.

It also nurtures potential candidates to develop the skills they need before applying - instead of relying on ‘one-click’ mass application systems that encourage unsuitable candidates to apply. Employers promote their employer brand and build an audience using the kind of browsable, engaging content that young people love. 

About www.Sortyourfuture.com

Sort was created to tackle fundamental problems in the recruitment and career education systems. It helps make sure everyone has access to the best opportunities - opportunities that are suited to them - based on their potential, not their past. It tackles inequality by widening access to information and career opportunities for everyone who can benefit from them, breaking down barriers to achievement, and helping everyone find work they love.

Sort uses technology to help all young people to be heard, be themselves and take charge of their own career planning. 

It helps employers engage with diverse young people, those they may not have been reaching with recruitment messages before.

Young people will use Sort like a Pinterest for careers combined with a Match.com for opportunities – discovering over 1000 job roles and related employers - based on interests and attributes.

A young candidate’s story - Charlie Timbrell: 

I had no idea what I wanted to do. I was told through careers testing at school that my ideal job roles were entrepreneur or gardener, but at the time, neither resonated nor helped. I’m a creative, I have lots of ideas and love spending time with nature – the sort of things that were a bit stifled at school. 

I had loads of ideas of going into TV, media, advertising, and that makes sense as I was exposed to that as a child (my parents were in advertising). And I tried it - I spent 6 months working at an advertising agency – but ended up dreading going in every day; it made me very anxious. I felt no connection to it and had no sense of purpose. 

Now? My degree in Geography from Manchester University helped me gain a two-year graduate scheme at an environmental resource management company as a risk and data analyst. It’s a stepping-stone towards discovering what I want to do and offers so many transferable skills. I know, now, that I need something practical, something that helps people directly, perhaps something in health and wellbeing. 

Sources:

1 Deloitte (2019), The Deloitte Global Millennial Survey 2019 [online]. Available at: https://www2.deloitte.com/global/en/pages/about-deloitte/articles/millennialsurvey.html 

2 Friedman, S. (2019), The Class Ceiling, Policy Press, London. 

3  OECD (2019), Drawing the Future [online]. Available at: https://www.educationandemployers.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/DrawingTheFuture.pdf

4 High Fliers Research (2019), The Graduate Market in 2019 [online]. Available at: https://www.highfliers.co.uk/download/2019/graduate_market/GMReport19.pdf