Women in Financial Services
Stop recruiting the best person for the job without considering the best person for the business!
Mark.Freed / 16 Mar 2017
With all the evidence pointing to the fact that diverse teams perform better, why are we still recruiting for the best person for job and not taking a critical look at the hiring processes.
As the co-founder of E2W, a firm dedicated to helping banks collect the gender dividend and the careers of women in that industry, I talk to a lot of recruiters and hiring managers at Banks. I am regularly told, having discussed the benefits of gender diversity, that "that's OK but we will still recruit the best person for the job."
For the vast majority of hiring managers the best person for the job means someone in their own image. The statistics tell the story.
I have rarely heard any manager say I want the best person for the team, the department, division or firm. Why not? If the evidence is true about diverse teams performing better then managers should actually, given the current diversity statistics, be giving priority to diverse candidates. If we don’t think strategically about recruitment we will fail to hire a diverse workforce and therefore fail to hire the best employees for the business.
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