Tips for employers on sourcing more diverse talent

GQ|Littler's senior counsel Natasha Adom suggests employers should reassess the criteria in job advertisements in order to engage more diverse candidates, “if [on employers’] ‘must haves’ is that talent must come from Oxbridge or other ‘elite’ universities, they will naturally be limiting their talent pool and excluding other good candidates".

Employers should be asking themselves: “is a candidate with three As from an elite school really academically superior to one with three Bs from an inner city comprehensive?"

Natasha notes that “it’s harder to recruit diverse talent if they’re not in the room to begin with”.

In order to attract diverse talent in the interview processes "you should also give interviewers training to spot, challenge and avoid unconscious bias,” she adds. Anonymising candidates' names is a good way to avoid bias, she says, as studies have shown that even where candidates have identical CVs, those with non-English sounding names are less likely to be successful.

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