New ways to tackle diversity Using Algorithms for Social Mobility


Putting social mobility at the heart of student recruitment


EY levelled the playing field for student recruitment by removing arbitrary screening against UCAS points, introducing an assessment suite scored against a weighted algorithm for all candidates, and providing candidate feedback reports for every candidate’s further development and career progression. Dr Alex Linley, CEO of Capp, Emma Judge, Head of Student Recruitment (Interim) at EY and Dominic Franiel, Student Recruitment Senior Manager at EY explain how they did it.


E Dr Alex Linley Emma Judge


Y will receive c. 30,000 applications for our UK graduate and school leaver programmes


this year. In order to meet the challenge of recruiting talent from a diverse population and widening opportunities to all, we were focused on how to deliver an innovative student recruitment process that widened access to opportunity, at the same time as ensuring that candidates are a match for our business and the capabilities required. EY has a relentless focus on the quality of its people, who need to meet the high demands of a professional environment and client expectations. Whatever the recruitment process, we need to ensure that a high calibre of candidate is consistently delivered to the business.


Dominic Franiel EY is able to ensure that


candidates are measured and judged across multiple dimensions of their match for the role, rather than being rejected on the basis of a single assessment


As a Champion of the Social Mobility Business Compact, EY are committed to ensuring that fair opportunity is provided to all people regardless of background. As a result, we have worked with Capp to design a process that enabled us to remove the need for academic screening criteria (based on UCAS points or degree class), and instead to use assessment analytics that were known to be predictive of later performance.


All applicants to EY’s UK student programmes now complete a series of four assessments that enable a comprehensive assessment of their match for the role. These


assessments include a Situational Strengths Test that provides a series


of realistic job previews and tests a candidate’s responses in these situations, and a Business Behaviours Test that assesses the core commercial skills for the role.


The assessment suite also includes a Numerical Reasoning Test that is time-recorded rather than time-limited (the clock counts up, not down, and candidates can take as long as they need, but their time taken is used in the score calculation), and so demonstrates no adverse impact against gender, ethnicity or social mobility.


Crucially, all candidates complete all of these assessments. In this way, EY is able to ensure that candidates are measured and judged across multiple dimensions of their match for the role, rather than being rejected on the basis of a single assessment.


All candidates receive a comprehensive feedback report on their performance across the assessment suite, in service of their development and further career progression. Successful candidates progress to a telephone interview for the next stage, before a final assessment centre and Partner interview. Unsuccessful candidates are ‘declined to Jobmi’, being invited to join Jobmi, the job matching site, for the opportunity to be matched to their perfect job.


In further support of social mobility, we are using Capp’s Social Mobility Distance


Travelled Tool, the most comprehensive monitoring of social mobility being used in UK recruitment. This captures information on a candidate’s social background, defined across four areas: • Personal background (including gender, ethnicity, disability, time in Local Authority care, refugee, unemployment and carer status)


• Family background (including postcode sector, free school meals, income support)


• Parental background (including university attendance, unemployment and occupational status)


• Educational background (including school attended, qualifications gained, university degree).


Through analysis of this data throughout the recruitment process, we are able to demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of the factors influencing social mobility through the process, as well as role modelling best practice of how to apply this in practice in support of our status as Champions of the Social Mobility Business Compact.


By widening access to opportunity in enabling more people to apply for roles with us, using a recruitment process that assesses every candidate on multiple dimensions that predict later performance, and the comprehensive measurement of social background to allow analysis of adverse impact, EY are truly showing how to level the playing field across UK student recruitment. n


www.agr.org.uk | Graduate Recruiter 21


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