The value of an anonymous application process and its impact on diversifying recruitment has been made evident in a new programme by Coventry City Council.
The programme has seen a 117% increase in the number of Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic candidates thanks in part to an Anonymous Applications feature in software company Tribepad’s Talent Acquisition Platform. The feature has been designed to reduce unconscious bias in the recruitment process.
By ensuring the applications would be anonymous and making this clear when promoting job vacancies, the council aims to increase trust and confidence from BAME applicants, and this has already worked.
As a result of these changes, the rise of candidates selecting BAME in Coventry City Council’s equal opportunities monitoring form has more than doubled from 18% to 39%, equating to a 117% increase.
The council also applied other measures to their new recruitment process, including different sourcing techniques, line management training, and diverse interview panels.
Tribepad is working to help redress the lack of diversity in the recruitment process; in fact, their Anonymous Applications feature redacts an applicant’s name, gender, date of birth, location, nationality, or educational institution before they are invited for an interview.
Coventry City Council’s collaboration comes following research from Nuffield College’s Centre for Social Investigation (CSI), suggesting job seekers from ethnic minority backgrounds have to send, on average, 60% more job applications to get a positive response from employers compared to white applicants.
Sam Griffin, Recruitment Manager at Coventry City Council, said: “It’s critical for public sector organisations that their teams reflect the communities they serve. We’re very proud of the strides we’ve made in improving the diversity of our recruitment process. We believe that anonymising the application process is a good tool to help deliver on our Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (ED&I) commitments, and many organisations across industries could see these benefits.”
Neil Armstrong, Chief Commercial Officer at Tribepad, said, “The 117% uplift in BAME applicants following the introduction of anonymous applications is very promising. The increase in confidence from minority applicants in applying for roles and sharing their ethnic origin information indicates a reduction in fear of prejudice.”
In this article, you learned that:
- An anonymous application process at Coventry City Council has seen a 117% increase in the number of Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic candidates.
- Tribepad’s Anonymous Applications feature enables applications to be anonymous without names, gender, date of birth, location, nationality, or education institutions visible before the interview stage.
- UK job applicants from ethnic minority backgrounds have to send, on average, 60% more job applications to get a positive response from employers compared to white applicants.
