Why a job recruiter won’t say which university you went to

DELOITTE is to stop telling recruiters where candidates went to university to prevent ‘unconscious bias’.

Interviewers will be denied background information on education and exam results until a job offer is made.

The professional services giant hopes the move, during next year’s round to fill 1,500 vacancies with graduates and school leavers, will rid the firm of its reputation for favouring those from top schools and universities.

But critics questioned whether the policy, aimed at preventing discrimination against those from deprived backgrounds, was the best way to spot real talent and suggested it was a form of social engineering. Alongside the new ‘blind’ interviewing, Deloitte will use ‘contextual’ data to identify candidates who have excelled in challenging circumstances.

David Sproul, senior partner and chief executive of Deloitte UK, said: ‘We are working hard to ensure that our talent pool is diverse and reflects the make-up of today’s society.

‘We want to show that everyone can thrive, develop and succeed in our firm based on their talent, regardless of ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or any other dimension that can be used to differentiate people from one another.

‘This includes an individual’s social or economic background, which we know continues to be used to hold some people back. Improving social mobility is one of the UK’s biggest challenges.’ Deloitte said the blind interviews will ensure that job offers are made on the basis of ‘present potential, not past personal circumstance’. An algorithm will be used to assess information about past setbacks alongside academic results.

It will take into account disadvantages such as attending an underperforming school or coming from a deprived area.

So an applicant getting three B grades at A-level could be seen as ‘exceptional’ if the average for their school was three D grades.

Deloitte is the latest graduate recruiter aiming to look beyond academic results. Accountancy firm Ernst and Young has scrapped a requirement for school leavers to have the equivalent of three B grades at A-level or graduates to have an upper second class degree. It has removed all academic and education details from its application process. And PricewaterhouseCoopers has said it will stop using A-level grades as a threshold.

But Alan Smithers, professor of education at Buckingham University, questioned whether the policy was the best way to spot talent.

He said: ‘There’s an element of social engineering here. The emphasis should be on identifying untapped talent, not saying for moral reasons you’ve got to take someone who went to university having had free school meals.’

Deloitte, based in the US, is the largest company of its kind in the world and has been named by Bloomberg Business as the best place to launch a career.

‘Show everyone can thrive’