IT’S OFFICIAL: TOP FIRMS FAVOUR ‘POLISHED’ APPLICANTS FROM PRIVILEGED BACKGROUNDS (EVEN IF THEY’RE LESS CLEVER)
The UK’s top employers have been slammed for sidelining the UK’s bright working class applicants in favour of more privileged, “polished” candidates – who may even have less impressive grades.
Delving into the ‘non-educational barriers to the elite professions’, researchers for the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission found that former pupils of fee-paying or selective schools won 70% of the most lucrative graduate jobs last year, despite making up only 11% of candidates. To break into top jobs, state school candidates needed higher qualifications than their privately educated peers.
A number of factors are to blame. Top firms tend to recruit from Russell Group universities – where those from comprehensive schools are under-represented. Those from well-off backgrounds are also more likely to apply for the best jobs (perhaps indicating greater confidence they will be accepted?).
But most shocking are revelations about how employers define ‘talent’ when assessing applicants. This is not just about academic results. Desired attributes include drive resilience, strong communication skills and above all confidence and ‘polish’ (which participants in the research acknowledge can be mapped to middle-class status and socialisation). Those who had travelled abroad were also more likely to be considered favourably over those who had not, giving further advantage to those from wealthier backgrounds.
The report – based on interviews with staff from 13 elite accountancy, law and financial services firms – found that organisations are “systematically excluding bright working-class applicants” from their workforce.
Commission chairman Alan Milburn, the former Labour health secretary, said:
“This research shows that young people with working-class backgrounds are being systematically locked out of top jobs. Elite firms seem to require applicants to pass a ‘poshness test’ to gain entry.
“Inevitably that ends up excluding youngsters who have the right sort of grades and abilities but whose parents do not have the right sort of bank balances.
“Thankfully some of our country’s leading firms are making a big commitment to recruit the brightest and best, regardless of background. They should be applauded. But for the rest, this is a wake up and smell the coffee moment.”
Graduate Fog is deeply concerned by these findings, which show that candidates from wealthier backgrounds have a huge advantage over those with the same academic results from less privileged backgrounds. We know that many firms acknowledge their need to improve on diversity and social mobility – yet few seem to understand the subtle ways that their supposedly sophisticated recruitment processes carelessly filter out some of the best candidates. We also question whether it’s right that we should teach graduates ‘how to pass as posh’ in order to compete for the top jobs. Here’s another idea: is it the business world that needs to change, to become more inclusive?
*WHAT’S YOUR EXPERIENCE?
Do candidates from private schools have the edge over those from comprehensives when it comes to applying for the top graduate jobs? Do employers focus too much on classist criteria like ‘polish’, accent, mannerisms, etc? We’d love to hear about your views and experiences. Have you say below…
Lots of RTs on Twitter but no comments yet… So I’m going to kick off as I think this is fascinating stuff!
Interesting points from Twitter user @DedicatedPeeler on the importance of ‘polish’ – in his / her case when trying to start a career in law. He / she says law is definitely a world where you need to know the rules of the game, but this all-important ‘polish’ can be learned.
Key questions that occur to me…
– Should employers stop making ‘polish’ a selection criteria and instead offer jobs to the best graduates (based on academic results, eagerness, interest in the role, etc) etc and just train them in polish when they start, if they don’t have it already? Or is this horrible and patronising?
– Are we looking at this whole issue wrongly? Instead of coaching those from less well off backgrounds in ‘how to pass as posh’, should we instead be embracing the fact that they’re NOT posh? Is it in fact business culture that needs to change to become more inclusive of everyone?
I’ve just been reminded of a job I applied for aged 24 where I was told that I didn’t ‘sound right’ – because I was too posh! It was on the real-life desk of a weekly magazine. I didn’t complain because I figure my (middle class) accent has definitely helped me more than hindered me in general. Plus I think they were probably right, it wouldn’t have been ideal in that job.
I also feel I should declare (not that I’ve ever hidden it) that I was at private school (Godolphin and Latymer, an independent day school in London). I’ve always felt that I was taught two things: 1) how to pass exams and 2) how to feel (or at least look) confident in pretty much any setting you find yourself in. No.1 was helpful in getting me into (and through) university, but No.2 has definitely been more helpful ever since.
I remember noticing at university that I was more outspoken than most of the other girls in my tutorials (where I was in the minority being from a private school), even when they had done the reading and I hadn’t. Hm, thinking about it, perhaps the main thing private schools teach is how to blag it? I had no idea that would be such a key skill to have in life, but I suppose it really is.
I had one interview with a public affairs consultancy where the first question was “You don’t sound as if you are from Basildon?”. They went on to remark on the type of applicant (in terms of accent/manners) they thought they would get from someone from my postcode. It was painful. I wasn’t entirely sure what to say. Needless to say I didn’t get the job. They hadn’t even read my CV before the meeting which is never a great sign.
Certainly, the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission is correct when they determine what employer’s mean by the ‘posh test’, in that it has nothing to do with a person’s demeanour at the interview, rather which schools they attended. I would even go as far as to argue that some employers look at which primary school you went to, in order to show consistency. Prep school, then the correct secondary school, then the correct university.
I am told time and again that 80 per cent of jobs are never advertised and are filled through networking. So, we must conclude that 80 per cent of graduate jobs go to children of parents who have the right connections.
In Call Centre work, graduates probably get in easier than many local working-class people because they have a better telephone manner. Everyone who goes to university is exposed to a ‘posh’ accent.
There are other countries where there is greater social mobility and I reckon it comes down to a combination of the style of democracy which a country adopts, along with the strength of parliament, as well as business attitudes towards entrepreneurship. Richard Branson criticised British industry for squeezing out the entrepreneur spirit. Trevor Bayliss had tremendous problems getting British industry to take him seriously regarding his invention of the wind up radio.
At every level, British industry doesn’t want a high-skilled economy. Of course, there are the exceptions, but most of British industry consists of small to medium size enterprises. For decades, employers have failed to invest in workers in apprenticeship, with a constant battle between government and employers over who should pay for apprenticeships.
But what is the Commission going to do. Does Alan Milburn have the teeth to change things? It seems simply just enough to bring it out into the open, and then the issue gets kicked into the long grass – again and again.
George Bernard Shaw suggested that “for every complex problem, there is always a simple solution which is wrong”…sadly, failed MP Alan Milburn, who was annointed as the csar for the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission (for some, as yet, inexplicable reason), one of the Quango’s which has yet to be removed from the social ecology (and the money wssted directed to something more useful), is clutching at straws.
There will be a correlation between the culture of a business, and staff recruited to work within that business, and if 80% of vacancies are never advertised, a fair proportion of recruits will be sourced from the Professional Network of Senior Managers. However, there are a plethora of factors which contribute to staff recruitment, the majority of which have absolutely no relevance for the candidate being able to do the job.
Although some plebs, such as Mr Alan Sugar, left school with a few mediocre grades at O level before becoming a Barrowboy, they acquired a massice chip on their shoulder,and will never recruit any woman on for fear of addressing the child care issue. Conversely, in the movie “The Firm”, it was made clear to Law Graduate (played by Tom Cruise) that if he were to be offered a job, he would need to get married to support the facade of the company – it wished to give the impression of being “Family Friendly”.
I’m not surprised by this research. At the risk of being accused of having a chip on my shoulder, I can only relay my own experience of the graduate job market as it relates to a working class bloke trying to enter journalism.
A gardener and one-time lorry driver, I completed a humanities degree (2.1) from a former poly, an MA in art history from a prestigious ’60s uni, and then, more recently (year’s later), an MA (with distinction) in journalism from a new uni. I also did four short-term magazine internships to complement my writing portfolio.
I virtually bankrupted myself to get into journalism and yet can’t get a job in the field for love or money, so I’ve ended up back gardening again. It appears no media organisation from the huge number I’ve applied to wants to risk employing a gardener from an obvious working class background. I can only conclude that the media seems reluctant to recruit outside of its own narrow middle class ‘posh’ confines and is thus missing the opportunity to employ those with different and unusual perspectives.
Sometime I wonder if I’m the most over-qualified gardener in the UK!
Does anyone else think that graduate schemes are elitist? They heavily favor those who did unpaid internships in top companies and those who went to LSE, Warwick, Oxford etc. A quick search through linkedin confirms this. It seems that it doesn’t matter if you have continually been employed in an average job in your hometown or volunteered in a charity shop. Graduates schemes consider it rubbish.
Who else is on the graduate scrapheap?
First Class Degree
AAB @ A level
5A* 2A at GCSE
All worthless apparently.
I hope this country goes into recession and employers have to live on the streets.
@ Anon
Totally worthless education. I work with school leavers….difference is I got into debt and they were smart enough not to.
I work for a company who seem to hoover up graduates who struggle to find graduate employment and offer them £16000 a year and a permanent job. Instead of putting more people on a graduate programme and a well-paid career path, themselves millions of pounds over a lifetime
Anon 2 what is the company?
Here is a cleaning internship. No I’m not making this up
http://www.reed.co.uk/jobs/facilities-management-cleaning-internship-with-job-opportunity/30708125#/jobs?keywords=management+internship
Here is how you get a top job:
Go to a grammar school from 11-18 (this is very important as the top stuffy companies want to look at your background as a whole)
Go to one of the big 5 (oxbridge, lse, imperial, warwick in that order)… with degree inflation this is more important than ever
Come from a family with money
Have contacts though your family and your summer internship at university (the best unis have the best internships… for example imperial grads have a strong record of going straight into top graduate programmes). Plenty of oxbridge grads appear to intern in hong kong (via linkedin)
Be in London if possible
Be attractive and confident
Be fluid in the art of “BS”