Working class recruits failing ‘poshness test’ in bid to secure top jobs
YOUNG people from workingclass backgrounds are being systematically excluded from jobs in top legal and accountancy firms, an official report has found.
Alan Milburn, the chairman of the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, accused firms of imposing a “poshness test” effectively excluding recruits whose parents do not have “the right sort of bank balances”.
A study of 13 “elite” law, accountancy and financial services firms carried out for the commission found 70 per cent of job offers last year went to graduates who had been to feepaying or selective state schools. The former Labour Cabinet minister said the findings should be a “wake up and smell the coffee moment” for employers who needed to ensure their recruitment practices were “genuinely meritocratic”.
“This research shows that young people with workingclass backgrounds are being systematically locked out of top jobs,” he said. “Elite firms seem to require applicants to pass a ‘poshness test’ to gain entry.
“Inevitably that ends up excluding youngsters who have the right sort of grades and abilities but whose parents do not have the right sort of bank balances.
“In some top law firms, trainees are more than five times likely to have attended a feepaying school than the population as a whole.
“They are denying themselves talent, stymying young people’s social mobility and fuelling the social divide that bedevils Britain.”
The survey found that, at leading accountancy firms, typically 40 to 50 per cent of applicants had been educated at the elite Russell Group universities – which includes Glasgow and Edinburgh – and that they received 60 per cent to 70 per cent of all job offers.
“The high proportion of applicants from these universities is a direct result of elite firms’ recruitment and attraction strategies, which comprise a variety of campus visits and targeted advertising specifically devised with this aim in mind,” the report said.
“The educational and socioeconomic background of Russell Group students is not representative of the UK as a whole nor within higher education.”
The report urges firms to overhaul their recruitment policies to encourage candidates from a wider range of educational and socioeconomic backgrounds, while ensuring they had similar levels of support to those enjoyed by their more privileged peers.
Mark Boleat, policy chairman of the City of London Corporation, the local authority for the financial centre known as the Square Mile, said: “Today’s report indicates a huge threat to Britain’s social mobility and our economic growth.
“While more employers are creating paid internships and apprenticeships to attract bright young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, too many are still guilty of hiring in their own image.
“Drawing from a narrow pool of private school and Russell Group educated applicants will lead to a skills shortage and generation of wasted talented.”