The Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR), which represents many big, blue-chip graduate employers, has been awarded government funding for a project that aims to ensure applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds have fair access to internships and jobs.
The AGR will seek to persuade employers to review their selection criteria so that candidates from less well-off socioeconomic backgrounds are not excluded. Carl Gilleard, chief executive of the AGR, commented, ‘We will continue to call for understanding of the way in which outdated selection criteria can discriminate against those from disadvantaged backgrounds and stifle social mobility.’
The summer 2012 edition of the AGR’s biannual survey of its members revealed that just one in ten employers planned to monitor the socioeconomic backgrounds of graduates recruited to their organisations. Over half (54.6%) did not collect socioeconomic data and did not plan to do, while just over a fifth did not gather this data at the time of the survey, but had plans to do so in future.
The issue of whether the best-paid graduate jobs are equally available to all regardless of background is likely to become increasingly contentious following the introduction of higher tuition fees, against a backdrop of concerns about whether social mobility in the UK has stalled.
A survey carried out by TARGETjobs IT earlier this year found that IT companies that include UCAS points as cut-offs among their criteria for graduate scheme applicants could unwittingly be hampering social mobility.
AGR to promote the Higher Education Achievement Report
The AGR also received funding from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) for another project that will encourage employers to make use of the Higher Education Achievement Report (HEAR) when recruiting graduates.
The HEAR is a new report card for graduates which all universities can now adopt if they wish, though it is not obligatory. It aims to give employers a detailed picture of graduates’ course marks as well as information about extracurricular achievements such as volunteering or involvement in societies. It is intended to supplement traditional degree classifications.
We reported earlier this month that Mr Gilleard hoped the introduction of the HEAR would help employers move away from using a 2.1 degree result as a cut-off when filtering applications. The HEAR has already been taken up by more than 80 institutions.
However, a report in the Telegraph last week said that according to Times Higher Education magazine, up to 10 of the Russell Group universities had as yet shown no interest in introducing the new system. Oxford and Cambridge were said to be among the institutions that were not planning to use the HEAR.
Jane Clark, Barclays’ head of corporate and investment banking campus recruitment in Europe and Asia, has been seconded to the AGR on a part-time basis to lead its projects on fair recruitment criteria and the HEAR. Both projects will be carried out in partnership with the Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services (AGCAS).
Source: 18th October 2012, Posted by Alison_TARGETjobs
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