An Interview with Shereen Daniels – How the recruitment industry can support the anti-racism movement

Shereen Daniels of HR Rewired is a one-woman fount of knowledge about the anti-racism movement and how it impacts on employers and employees. With her widely- watched YouTube videos, discussing everything from the difference between equality and equity in the workplace to the Black Lives Matter movement, she's become a vital voice in this ongoing conversation and how it affects us all. 

Leaving 2020 aside, for obvious reasons, the UK recruitment industry has been growing. Eight thousand, five hundred new businesses were registered in 2019 alone, and it’s estimated that there are currently 45,000 business actively operating. The industry is dominated by nimble, boutique firms who collectively have a huge impact on whether under-represented groups can access certain work opportunities. And yet it’s relatively unregulated: there is very little in the way of support from organisations like the Recruitment Employment Confederation - its underpowered Race at Work charter notwithstanding - on issues of anti-racism and racial equality, despite the fact that it’s precisely these businesses who have such an enormous responsibility to drive the agenda for change. This represents a potential blind spot, as the program of change that is so desperately required to remove systemic discrimination and barriers for black candidates is simply nowhere to be seen. 

So, what can recruitment businesses really do to help the anti-racism movement, and how should we frame our conversations with prospective black candidates? I spoke to Shereen over Zoom from the Kent home where she has delivered her fascinating missives to the world in the wake of George Floyd's horrifying death beneath the knee of a Minneapolis police officer in May last year, and discovered some intelligent practices to help businesses and agencies drive positive progress.  

We know that ethnic minority Britons face discrimination during the recruitment process. Studies by the Centre for Social Investigation at Nuffield College, University of Oxford found applicants from minority ethnic backgrounds had to send 80% more applications to get a positive response from an employer than a white person of British origin. Yet we don’t see many real examples of anything being done to address systemic inequalities in the recruitment lifecycle. As an industry, where do we need to go to next?

Remembering the experiences that I had, I think it got more discriminatory, the more senior I got. I remember my last in-house role, I applied directly, and I was hired. And yet it turned out that the search companies who had worked on the vacancy were surprised that I got the role. 

They already knew who I was, they already knew of me, but I didn’t make their list, because they felt like the business was not ready for a black person in that level of senior role, at that salary bracket. Despite the fact that it was pretty much on parity from my old job.

Now, we can talk about why, but, that for me, is almost the power and the privilege that you get to exercise as a search consultant because when the client is saying to you “Here’s the brief”, you’re thinking about who you’ve placed before; you’re thinking about keeping the client happy; you’re also thinking about mitigating the risk of them not selecting your client. In your mind, without even realising it, you would see anyone who doesn’t look like the homogenous group of people that you’re used to sending to all of your similar clients, as a wild card.

So how do you walk that tight rope? Well, there are a couple of options: You either suggest a percentage for businesses which are black-owned or black-led, that’s from an equity point of view, or you ask them: what are their inclusion stats? What is the make-up of their workforce, according to all the different intersectionalities? What’s their specific strategy around anti-racism?

If I’m the client, I’m looking for recruitment agencies or search firms to demonstrate to me how much they know about this issue. Because I’m relying on them as my strategic partner, to be able to help me navigate this. One: so, I’m not done for unfair discrimination of the equality act. Two: so, we don’t do something that means we end up in the press, because you’re representing us, and you said the wrong thing to a candidate who’s put something on social media. Three: how conversant are your consultants who are managing these assignments with issues such as the difference between equity and equality? Do they understand this issue of racism? Do they understand what structural racism is? And then fourthly: how are you attracting in-demand black candidates, when the whole world is now looking for them? 

The trend seems to be to pass the responsibility onto the external recruiter, to supply a diverse shortlist, or a diverse longlist. But how do recruitment agencies and search companies decide what diverse looks like? 

This is where education is so important, because anti-racism is different to diversity and inclusion (D&I). If recruitment agencies don’t have the knowledge of where we’re at in this point in time, and why equity is so important, they’re going to get themselves in a tizzy about how best to approach it with a client. They’re not going to know the right questions to ask. 

I was talking about this yesterday with two potential clients. They’re talking about the stuff they’re doing with “D&I”, and I’m like: “I’m not a ‘D&I’ person. If you’re doing this because of the death of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter, this is a racism issue.” 

If you’re using George Floyd’s death and Black Lives Matter as your impetus to do more stuff around “diversity and inclusion”, you’re undermining the issues that black people face. Are you aiming to diversify your whole business and practice equity so black people are treated equally? Or are you just using this opportunity to dust off what you were doing last year and get more budget?

Some businesses - some client-side businesses - are very specific about saying: “as part of our anti-racism strategy, we are committed to X, Y and Z.” So, when they’re contracting in a recruitment agency or exec search firm, there’s a direct link to their anti-racism strategy. But if you, as the exec search firm or recruitment agency, don’t know this because you don’t ask the question, you’re going to misunderstand the brief, because you’re still going to apply old-world, pre-Covid-19 “diversity and inclusion” thinking. 

Clients have come to you thinking you understand this, and the onus is on you to make clear you understand the subtleties of it. But then what they also must understand is how much work they must do internally to avoid operating according to an “old-world” view. Otherwise you could be doing something that is very brand-damaging for the client by reaching out to candidates in that way - taking a very binary approach. 

That’s where I think these recruitment suppliers have got to think about ego and humility, because yes it’s now potentially harder to earn the same amount of money that they did previously. But if they don’t invest in making sure they understand this landscape, they’re going to lose money anyway. The second the candidate goes to an interview, if they mention that they were contacted by a recruiter looking for a “diverse shortlist”, that’s that partnership done with that agency. You can’t represent us in that way because that makes it look like that’s the way we operate. That’s how dangerous it is when there isn’t that level of education and sophistication.

I’m still doing board sessions with companies to help them understand this. They should be asking recruiters how they are sourcing these clients, how they are sourcing the candidates - i.e not going through Linkedin and looking at pictures. What are they doing to attract the good ones? How are they keeping them all? What are they doing to train their consultants to understand this? I’m giving my clients a list of questions to be asking, and I’m giving them barometers to work out if this is just another beauty parade. Because you can be shown up quite easily - we can all take screen shots, and one of your consultants who hasn’t “got it” could lose you thousands - if not multiples of thousands of pounds. This area is so sensitive. 

Do you feel like the industry needs some kind of charter? The Race at Work charter does not address what we’re talking about today.

Charters for me are an old-world approach. People always ask me: What’s my opinion of this charter? Will I endorse this one? My answer is ‘“no, no, no”. Because it’s not going deep enough. If I had a room full of 10 or 20 execs, and we were all sitting around, this is the sort of conversation we should be having. You don’t have those conversations with charters, even if they’re written by a black person. It’s about making sure that you understand racism as a system, not just as a behaviour. All of this old-world thinking has to be moved away, and a charter doesn’t help do that because the reality is it’s one HR person who gets the company signed up, but nothing happens off the back of it unless you’re having an audit. Nothing changes.

Would you like to see any changes or additions to law and legislation? For example, legally restricting the ability to ask for someone’s current salary information as it is in certain US states.

Yes, I agree with that. Yes.

In summary, if I’m a recruitment business owner or leader, the priorities are to ensure that both myself and my people are educated around anti-racism; that my people understand fully the concept of structural racism, structural privilege; that they deeply understand the difference between equity and equality, and that they can give examples of equity, not just describe the difference and state the description, but that they can say: “This is how we are giving equity”; that they are able to have a conversation with a client about racism and about their approach, and that they can confidently push back on conversations around diverse shortlists and why that’s not necessarily the right route. 

They should be investigating ways in which they can remove barriers to disadvantaged groups, and they should be able to demonstrate what those actions are. And that could be anything from, “we don’t ask for salary information”; “we have software that removes certain information from CVs” to: “we don’t look at any profile information on Linkedin”. 

Yes. I would add two more to your list. I would also say that they have to think about and be able to demonstrate how they are attracting candidates who do not look like the typical candidates that they’re normally putting through. So I’m not even going to say whether that’s black or whoever, but again if your client brief is, “we need black candidates” - I never refer to people as diverse people who are non-white, I talk about diversifying, and I just call it what it is - so if you’re looking for more black people, say you’re looking for more black people, and then be able to articulate to the client what you’re doing to attract them. And the other thing I think is also important is how these recruitment companies communicate proactively what they are doing. Because that will be the difference between those who wait for the RFP to come in, because you’ve already done some work to get to the RFP, you want to make sure you’re well in. So you want to be able to communicate it, because the communication of it also helps educate. 

Now you might lose some clients who then say: “Oh, I don’t like the fact they’re doing this. I don’t like the fact that potentially they might send me ten candidates who are all of a particular ethnicity, despite the fact that they all have diversifying factors. I don’t like that.” 

But for every one person who doesn’t like that, you will attract two more organisations who have actively committed to anti-racism. So that’s something that they also need to think about - how are they going to communicate that externally? What is the narrative around what they’re doing? 

And then it’s about how they’re supporting their clients, how seriously they’re taking it. Because I think that will ultimately be what marks them out and helps them prosper in this new environment.