From The Washington Post:
In the U.K., Deloitte will stop looking at what school job applicants attended
Resumes say a lot about job candidates: where they've worked, what they've accomplished, how long they've stayed put on the job and, of course, where they went to school. While employers may think that last piece of information tells them something about applicants' intelligence and capabilities, it also creates a huge potential for bias about the person's background and level of affluence.
To try to correct that problem, Deloitte's U.K. business announced Monday that it will begin using a school-blind hiring process to help address unconscious bias. As it recruits its next crop of 1,500 entry-level employees and junior associates out of school—roughly half of the 3,000 employees it hires each year in the United Kingdom are new graduates—the professional services firm plans to "hide" education pedigree from its recruiters and interviewers up until an offer has been made, unless the applicant actively chooses to disclose it.
Deloitte also plans to use software from the diversity recruitment firm Rare to compare applicants' grades against standardized data. The software, which is already in use in the U.K. at more than a dozen major law firms, reveals how applicants performed relative to their peers within their school, an effort to help better contextualize candidates' abilities.
All Hail Diversity!!! I wonder how long they will keep this practice in place - the ability to get into a specific school shows a lot about a person's drive to succeed. If I was hiring, I would want the best people I could afford. The idea of muddling everything into a dull monochromatic gray has no appeal. This has happened before in our fire departments with poor results. (here and here).
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