‘The headhunting community is a crucial catalyst to introduce more capable women in the boardroom’

Peter Crush

How comfortable do headhunters feel about positive discrimination on their shortlists in order to meet clients’ diversity targets? Peter Crush finds out

Over recent years few recruiters would deny the issue of workplace diversity – particularly of improving ethnicity and the number of women in high office – has been one of the key discussions.

And, few would disagree also, that since Lord Davis’s pivotal review really put this subject onto the political map in 2011, there have been significant improvements. Back then, the percentage of female FTSE 100 board directors had remained unchanged for a third year running – standing at just 135 out of 1,076 people, or 12.5%.

Fast-forward to 2014, and while there is still a long way to go, vast improvements have been made, with the latest figures from Cranfield School of Management showing the percentage of female-held directorships on FTSE 100 boards had reached 20.7% – up from 17.3% at the same point last year.

But some argue these improvements are still not fast enough, and rather than leave diversity to be solved by in-house recruiters alone, agencies and headhunters should themselves do their bit by presenting more women and diverse groups to clients in the first place. This is the view of The 30% Club (which campaigns for 30% female representation), while business secretary Vince Cable earlier this year pledged his support to a report for by Charlotte Sweeney, a former head of diversity at Nomura, which concluded search firms have a role to play. Cable said: “The headhunting community is a crucial catalyst to introduce more capable women in the boardroom.”

Saying this is all well and good. Because a serious question remains: how can agency and headhunters suddenly populate their long-lists and short-lists with more diverse groups – can they really be expected to magic more women from thin air? And, is there something unethical about expecting agencies to positively discriminate at source to improve client diversity targets?

“Asking agencies to be diversity gatekeepers certainly doesn’t fit well with me,” argues Carolyn Stewart, regional business development manager, North America, at NES Global Talent – which sources skilled individuals in traditionally male-dominated areas including technical engineering, oil and gas, chemical, rail and life sciences. She adds: “We have a mantra of putting up only those which are ‘the best and most qualified’, and if we allowed a concession for one client, it would set a precedent that we wouldn’t want to have existed in the first place.”

Stewart says: “Maintaining our integrity is much more important; it would be a tough conversation to have with clients, but ultimately, if we were specifically asked to pack our long- and shortlists with more women or other groups just for the sake of it, then we’d rather walk away. To us, it would be no different from being asked to only have people under 50, or to make sure we supplied clients with only people 30-50 years age. It’s not something we’d want to do. It’s a form of discrimination.”

Despite this, the REC has recently backed plans for search firms to get more involved, by suggesting agencies publish data on the proportion of women on long- and short-lists presented to companies, with comparison data on the eventual people hired.

Others say they would also feel uncomfortable if they were asked to artificially populate shortlists with more females.

“I’m as big an advocate of diversity as anyone else,” says Kerra Conroy, founder of Fusion Recruitment Solutions, which searches for people in the male-dominated IT space. “But a root cause of lack of women in our space is actually down to a long-held culture of schools not promoting it, and much deeper social trends taking women away from science. I’m not sure agencies have the power to impact this, and a true recruiter wouldn’t think about someone purely in terms of their gender. A good agency will always pick the best for the job, irrespective of their sex.”

Beatrice Bartley, founder of 2B Interface operates in the manufacturing sector. She says: “When it comes to finding women in particular sectors, it can definitely cause difficulty. In our sector, we see instances where a position comes available, but it doesn’t get a lot of interest from women compared to other vacancies where the ratio of applications received is much more balanced.” But, she argues, “I don’t believe agencies are best placed to impact diversity – we source candidates and compile shortlists regardless of gender.”

Bartley argues women are gradually looking at traditionally male-dominated roles – but this is a natural development she doesn’t want to interfere with. That said though, Conroy at least does offer a caveat.

She thinks agencies could be doing much more than lazily waiting for under-represented groups to contact them. “There’s talent out there that agencies and headhunters simply overlook,” she says. “We’re specifically targeting students while they’re still at university, as well as mining Facebook, and using social media. There are ways of finding talent for clients that haven’t yet emerged onto the mainstream, and if there are issues around diversity, this is what agencies should be involved with. We’re finding women we’re in dialogue with, and that is where we can at least help.”

She argues: “If agencies say they can’t find more women, or other groups not present in companies, in large numbers, then to my mind they’re not looking hard enough. To find them isn’t necessarily about solving diversity issues, but simply about finding more, good-quality people. This is what all agencies depend on. If you source more women, great. If they’re chosen, then all the better, but only if they’re chosen for the right reasons.”