Greening: I lost out on bank job because I ordered in English at Italian restaurant

perhaps she asked the waiter for breaded veal when the menu described it as cotoletta alla Milanese.

Or maybe she was tempted by the penne – but simply referred to it as pasta.

But Cabinet minister Justine Greening said she once failed to impress potential bosses when she ordered in english at a fancy Italian restaurant.

The education secretary said she made the faux pas when having lunch as part of a job interview for an investment bank.

Because the menu had been written in Italian, bosses had expected her to be ‘confident’ enough to speak in that language. The politician, who was a young graduate at the time, realised too late she had ‘failed a test’ and was shunned for the post.

she added the episode was an example of ‘unconscious bias’ against candidates from working class backgrounds, who may not have the same ‘polish’ as their more advantaged peers. speaking at the launch of the first social Mobility Index of employers, she said more companies needed to attract candidates from a wide range of backgrounds.

Comprehensive school-educated Miss Greening, the daughter of a rotherham steel worker, said it was about ‘changing attitudes’ within companies. recalling the incident, she said: ‘The interview was fine, and then I got taken out to lunch by two of the junior managers in this investment bank.

‘I remember trying to work out whether I should order the meal in Italian… or whether I should read the english translation underneath. In a split second, I decided I’m a non-pompous person, I will just read the english. and I could tell with the body language that I had just failed a test.

‘Because I was meant to have had the confidence, apparently, I think, to have just said it in Italian. It wasn’t that I didn’t have confidence – I absolutely had lots of confidence as a person. But I just had a different attitude as to how I felt it was appropriate to behave.’

Miss Greening, who studied economics at southampton University and was an accountant before she became Mp for putney, said she felt unfairly judged.

‘I had a sense of it being a test I had failed, not because I wasn’t going to do a great job at that company, but because I came from a different place and had a different attitude to that situation,’ she said.

‘These are the small things that add up to big differences in terms of whether or not in the end people, I think, get opportunities.’

she said she had been just one of many graduates who had ‘received the sharp end of unconscious bias’ because of their accent or behaviour. The Index, compiled by the social Mobility Foundation, ranks employers on opportunities they provide for poorer applicants. The top three companies this year are accountancy firms Grant Thornton and KpMG and construction giant skanska. Theresa May has vowed to help those from disadvantaged backgrounds get into top universities and firms.