Graduate Recruiter’s Disability Café 6 (GR’6)
Hosted by HSBC at their offices in Canary Wharf
The Context
10% of first class degrees were awarded to disabled graduates in 2010 yet these individuals continue to struggle to secure places on graduate programmes. To understand why, recruiters need to question all aspects of their recruitment processes to understand whether how you recruit is unintentionally excluding disabled applicants.
- How formulaic is your recruitment process?
- How do you take account of difference?
- Are you unknowingly excluding talent?
For ease and efficiency many graduate recruiters have one uniform recruitment process through which everyone is processed; all applicants are treated in the same way and assessed against the same competencies. However talent comes in many different forms and everyone demonstrates their talents in different ways. This is never truer than when it comes to disabled graduates; graduates who may not have what is considered to be the ‘standard’ types of experiences frequently expected by graduate recruiters.
These individuals may, therefore, be better suited to demonstrating their capabilities in ways other than how the majority of formulaic graduate recruitment processes allow. In continuing to implement one uniform process for all, you may be potentially excluding otherwise talented individuals from roles which they are more than competent of fulfilling.
The Café
During this Disability Café employers will have the opportunity to explore the unintentional barriers that exist in recruitment processes and to understand how these can be addressed. It will also look at how different interview techniques may be more suited to enabling disabled applicants to demonstrate their strengths. Our keynote speakers will provide expertise and insights into these issues and share practical solutions to the challenges faced by recruiters.
This Disability Cafe will help organisations understand how their recruitment processes could unintentionally be excluding talented individuals from working for them. In addition to considering the process as a whole it will also look at different interview techniques and how these impact on an individual’s ability to demonstrate their real potential.
For this Café we are a delighted to be joined by Bindi Dholakia, Director, Fairway Team Ltd. Bindi is an occupational psychologist and will share her expertise into inclusive recruitment; she will help you to understand the barriers that frequently exist in recruitment processes and the impact it has on disabled / diverse applicants.
We are also delighted to welcome Stephen Isherwood, Head of Graduate Recruitment, UK & Ireland, Ernst and Young. Stephen will share with you the work they have done around strengths-based interviewing and why this approach is potentially better suited to enabling applicants demonstrate their capabilities.
Helen Cooke, Director of My Plus Consulting and Founder of the Graduate Recruiter’s Disability Café Club, will draw upon her professional knowledge of disability and graduate recruitment, as well as her personal insights.
