CV-blind recruiting hopes to put an end to the ‘poshness’ test

Jo Faragher

There was an outcry earlier this year when a report by the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission found that many ‘leading’ employers were judging applicants on their mannerisms, background and dress sense – at the time this was dubbed the “poshness test”.

What it proved was, as another report from the same commission had done a couple of years before, that the top professions are closed off to the large proportion of the population that didn’t attend public school, Oxbridge universities or happen to have a relative who’s able to give them a way in.

But we are seeing a number of companies shun this practice and become more objective in how they recruit. Law firm Clifford Chance, for example, has adopted a CV-blind policy so recruiters can’t see which school a candidate attended, or their university. Consulting firm PWC, meanwhile, said it would place as much emphasis on graduates’ A-level results, thus widening the pool of talent to those who never excelled at school, but are just as capable of performing in a role.

So it’s an important step in the right direction that many more employers have signed up to recruit graduates on a CV-blind basis, in a new initiative spearheaded by No.10.

The civil service has committed to introducing name-blind recruitment for all roles below senior civil servant level, while other graduate recruiters like KPMG, HSBC, Deloitte, Virgin Money, BBC, NHS, learndirect and local government will deliver name-blind applications for all graduate and apprentice roles.

The CIPD extolled the benefits of anonymous CVs in a recent report, with diversity lead Dianah Worman saying: “If people have the skills, the potential and the right attitude to work then they should be given every chance to succeed, regardless of their individual characteristics.”

There are so many unwitting indicators in a CV that includes name, age, schooling and university details: people make judgements about double-barrelled or unusual sounding names, for example, or make assumptions about whether someone of a certain age will be easier or more difficult to manage. Even if these assumptions aren’t voiced, they will be at the back of the hiring manager’s mind.

Working on their suitability for the role alone, rather than trying to recruit in our own image or that of the firm, is a positive step towards ridding our top professions of their elitist hiring policies – even if this doesn’t happen overnight.