Fair Recruitment Specialist Scheme

About the Fair Recruitment Specialist scheme

The Fair Recruitment Specialist (FRS) Scheme launched in 2018. The Specialists are volunteers drawn from UCL staff who identify as Black, Asian, or Minority Ethnic (BAME). The Scheme is part of UCL’s work on the Race Equality Charter. It is considered best practice is to avoid all-White recruitment panels. However, since the current UCL staff profile cannot meet this need, the scheme was established to address the gap.

The aim of the scheme is to:

Enable racially diverse recruitment panels, particularly for UCL departments that cannot provide this from within their own staff cohort. Fair Recruitment Specialists are drawn from departments with diverse staff profiles to support less diverse departments.
Reduce the ‘stereotype’ threat that may be experienced by minority identity candidates when interviewed by majority identity panel members.
Provide a presence from outside the local management hierarchy, that will feel more able to question selection decisions and feel less pressure to submit to ‘group thinking’.

Requesting a Fair Recruitment Specialist

Qualifying Criteria

Requests should only be made for posts at Grade 7 and above as this is where Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic under-representation of our staff profile is an issue. (Race Equality Charter Submission, 2020).
Fair Recruitment Specialists should be involved at both the shortlisting and interview stage where they become a panel member. The Chair of the panel should ensure that their Fair Recruitment Specialist is fully involved in the selection process.
Please provide a minimum of 3 weeks’ notice. This acknowledges that our Fair Recruitment Specialists are volunteers and need to plan their participation. Requests that provide less than 3 weeks' notice will not be processed.

Required Information

TalentLink Job Number
Job title
Job grade
Department
Faculty
Specific shortlisting dates, times & location (not 'w/c' or 'tbc')*
Specific interview dates, times & location (not 'w/c' or 'tbc')*
Job description (as an attached document)
Minimum 3 weeks’ notice given: Yes/No

*Without specific dates, times & locations (online/campus), the specialists will not be able to determine their availability to assist you.

If you would like to request a Fair Recruitment Specialist and you can:

Satisfy the 3 qualifying criteria detailed above
Provide all the required information listed above

then please complete the form linked to below:

Fair Recruitment Specialist Request Form

Requests that fail to meet the qualifying criteria or to provide all the required information will not be processed or circulated.

About the Fair Recruitment Specialist role

Fair Recruitment Specialists can serve on any panel, regardless of their grade or home department. However, we do not support the informal attendance of a Fair Recruitment Specialist from within your own department, as this is a UCL-wide scheme and is monitored accordingly. Local involvement reduces the pool of volunteers available for departments that cannot supply diverse panel members and diminishes a key component of the scheme—providing panel members uninhibited by local management loyalties.
We encourage departments to ensure diverse panels and to use a Fair Recruitment Specialist who is not associated with their own department. This prevents the risk of overburdening Fair Recruitment Specialists with only local panels and ensures their participation in the UCL scheme for which they have been trained.
If Recruiting Managers cannot secure a Fair Recruitment Specialist from the central pool but can find a BAME staff member to sit on the panel, this does not count as participation in the FRS scheme.
Fair Recruitment Specialists provide a presence from outside the management hierarchy that will feel more able to question selection decisions and feel less pressure to submit to local ‘group think’ and culture.

tips_for_inclusive_recruitment.pptx

tips_for_inclusive_recruitment.pptx

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do we have the scheme?

The scheme has been initiated as part of UCL's race equity commitments through the Race Equality Charter. This national charter is aimed at improving the representation, progress and success of minority ethnic staff and students within higher education.

At UCL, there remains a striking disparity between the proportion of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic students and staff. In our most senior Professional Services roles, very few staff are from a Black, Asian, or Minority Ethnic background, despite London being one of the most diverse cities in the world. Therefore, our Race Equality Charter commitments aim to improve these figures, and work towards greater race equity.

What do Fair Recruitment Specialists get out of this scheme?

In return for giving their time and commitment, Fair Recruitment Specialists benefit by:

Playing an important role in decision-making at the University
Receiving high-level specialist training, which is transferable
Building new relationships in other parts of UCL (increased networking)
Demonstrating citizenship through volunteering that can be referenced in promotion applications
Boosting their CV and profile at UCL
Helping UCL meet its aspirations on equality, diversity and inclusion
Career development - being an active Fair Recruitment Specialist enables you to demonstrate UCL's Ways of Working across every grade

Will the Fair Recruitment Specialist provide administrative support to the recruitment process?

The Fair Recruitment Specialists have been trained in selection and assessment skills. They are there to add value to the process, not to relieve others of their administrative responsibilities.

Is it tokenism to involve Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic staff in recruitment panels in areas outside of their experience?

The intention is to bring more visible diversity to UCL's recruitment panels. We hope that this will help to reduce the 'stereotype threat' that Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic candidates may experience when faced with an all-White panel. It will also demonstrate UCL's commitment to inclusion for all interview candidates.

Fair Recruitment Specialists are there to be far more than a face on a panel. They have been trained in UCL recruitment policy, assessment skills and unconscious bias. They will bring all these skills along to the selection process and contribute to a consistent approach across varied departments.

Can only Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic staff who are from a visible minority become Fair Recruitment Specialists?

We understand and acknowledge that people with identities from White backgrounds also face forms of discrimination (xenophobia), for example White Eastern European people. However, for this initiative, we are focussing our efforts on the identities that experience the most material disadvantage according to our staff data, which indicates significant under-representation for Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic staff from a visible minority.

UCL’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) work is made up of various workstreams. Some focus on EDI in a generic/comprehensive way, and others focus on particular identities, depending on context and circumstance. At this stage, the scheme is therefore only open to Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic staff who do not identify as White as we believe this where a targeted scheme will have the most impact. We will, however, keep this under review.

What value will using a Fair Recruitment Specialist bring to the recruitment and selection process?

UCL's recruitment policy seeks to select the best candidates for our positions based solely on merit. However, there is considerable research that shows that aspects of a candidate's identity, such as their gender or ethnicity, may differentially, but subtly, shape the expectations and behaviours of a recruitment panel, and consequently the selection outcome. This is not necessarily the result of overt prejudice, and can instead be caused by the implicit biases that everyone brings into the process of evaluating candidates, particularly in the relatively informal process of the interview, where subjective judgements are often made.

For these reasons, diverse recruitment panels are regarded as a significant element in fair and effective recruitment. They add a variety of perspectives to decision-making, help mitigate against 'cloning' and the perpetuation of current profiles, reduce the possibility of stereotyping, can improve candidate performance by reducing 'stereotype threat', and are a visible demonstration of UCL's commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion.

Fair Recruitment Specialists can facilitate best practice by helping recruiting managers to hire the best candidate. Their use will support the increase of consistency in UCL recruitment practice, as they will work across UCL within different departments.

How can someone with limited, or no, knowledge of the job be an asset to the recruitment panel?

Fair Recruitment Specialists will act as 'cross-functional interviewers'. Organisations such as Google have led the way in their use. As they have no connection with the job, or the department, they can remain objective and contribute to keeping the quality of hiring high.

How can I volunteer to be a Fair Recruitment Specialist?

If you can meet the eligibility criteria below please complete an Expression of Interest Form and you will be contacted when training has been scheduled.
Please note that there is no training scheduled at present.

Thank you in advance for your interest in supporting this important initiative.

Eligibility Criteria

You self-identify as Black, Asian, or Minority Ethnic (and not as White).

You can commit to participating in 3 recruitment activities per calendar year (a minimum of 1 process per term), appointed through the central scheme.

You are in a role that potentially has wide-ranging relevance across the institution. For example:

programme administrator
administrative manager
admissions tutor
departmental tutor
pastoral staff
lab manager
central professional services roles that involve a lot of variety and cross-departmental working

Contact

fair-recruitment-specialists@ucl.ac.uk

Fair Recruitment Specialist Scheme

Contents

Eligibility Criteria