Georgia Greer works for Deloitte UK as a Resourcing Business Partner, Tax Consulting and was pleased to be asked to contribute to GSM London’s Corporate Careers Week as social mobility is something that resonates with her in her current role. She has previously worked for the Bank of England as Head of Recruitment and was also their Diversity Champion.
At Deloitte we are passionate about supporting young people from all backgrounds to develop the skills they need to get a job and succeed in the workplace. As a firm we are always on the lookout for the talent of tomorrow, which is why I was excited to have the opportunity to write this blog as part of the Corporate Careers week.
To give the best possible service to our clients we need people who think differently, come from a variety of backgrounds and bring a range of perspectives and experience. We can’t solve our clients’ challenges without sufficient diversity of thought in our organization. All too often in the UK, career paths are determined by a person’s social or economic background rather than talent and potential. Where you’re from should not determine where you are going. At Deloitte, we have a responsibility to help our students become the best they can be – regardless of their start in life.
There is a lot of research in the UK that highlights the challenges people from less privileged backgrounds face, regardless of their talent or their hard work, in gaining the same access to opportunities as those from more privileged circumstances. That’s why we launched our first annual Social Mobility Week in October, which saw us announce a series of measures to improve social mobility and to make sure that everyone has the chance to thrive, develop and succeed.
One of the biggest steps we are taking is a move to ‘contextualised’ recruitment. This means we make more informed choices about candidates by considering the context in which their academic achievements have been gained. We look at a person’s academic achievements and the factors underpinning them, such as the overall academic standing of the school they studied at, or the need to undertake part time work or caring responsibilities alongside studies. Most importantly, contextualisation allows us to look for a candidate’s potential, rather than focus purely on past performance.
We have also proudly joined a number of UK employers in pledging to anonymise application forms to help mitigate the influence of unconscious bias in the application process. This means removing applicants’ names and details such as the applicant’s school or university from forms, to enable a focus on the skills and attributes of the applicant and how they might fit with our requirements.
More broadly, the issues of employability and skills development have long been a core focus for Deloitte. For example, our Deloitte Access programme, seeks to improve social mobility and support a fairer society by giving young people from disadvantaged backgrounds the ambition, skills and opportunities they need to access professional careers. In the last academic year over 1,600 Deloitte volunteers supported more than 4,000 students in schools in disadvantaged communities across the UK.
We offer a number of opportunities for students to gain work experience with Deloitte. Spring into Deloitte is a two-day residential course aimed at first year undergraduates and during the summer holidays we offer a summer vacation scheme for around 350 penultimate year undergraduate students nationally to undertake three to six week placements with us. We are also currently open for Graduates to join us next year and we will be running Insight Days for interested students at our London offices in the coming months. If you’re interested in applying for any of these opportunities or just interested in finding out more about Deloitte and careers with us, please visit our careers website www.deloitte.co.uk/graduates.
Georgia Greer
Resourcing Business Partner
Deloitte LLP
