Racial inequalities in access to professional careers – what matters?

This project will explore barriers to entry-level professional careers for young people from ethnic minority backgrounds. 

Why this project is important

Previous Nuffield-funded research, using employer recruitment data, revealed large inequalities by ethnicity in access to professional careers, predominantly occurring at the initial screening and online testing stage of the recruitment process. This suggests that racial inequalities in entry level recruitment are related to highly formalised recruitment systems mirroring patterns of prior education and skills inequality seen for some ethnic minority groups. Additionally, it reveals a potential conflict between outreach activities of employers to widen the diversity of applicants and the initial screening and testing processes which disproportionally reject ethnic minority applicants. 

What it will involve

The research team aim to examine these inequalities more closely to answer the following research questions: 

1. Which ethnic minority groups are over/under-represented in the applicant pools for professional careers compared to national ‘talent pool’ benchmarks? 

2. At which stage in the recruitment process do barriers arise for different ethnicity minority job applicants? 

3. Which specific academic screening practices and online tests create the largest barriers for ethnicity minority job applicants? Which specific elements of prior educational attainment cause these barriers? 

4. What is the role of intersectionality? Do barriers vary by gender and social background within each ethnic group? 

5. Do barriers by ethnicity vary by the type of job applied for? Specifically, are inequalities by ethnicity greater in client facing or non-client facing roles? 

A data hub created during the previous project, which contains detailed anonymised human resources data on over 2 million job applicants, will be expanded to include additional employers. Ethnicity will be recorded at a more granular level, along with parental occupation, school type, first in family at university, free school meal eligibility, gender, prior education/attainment, and professional/personal networks. The focus will be on applicants for entry level roles in the UK and the region will be recorded to support identification of geographic barriers.  

How it will make a difference

Potential interventions to improve recruitment processes for highly skilled applicants from ethnic minority backgrounds will be co-developed with employers. The dataset will also open up future evaluation opportunities for the research team to track changes in employer processes. Audiences for the findings include employers, university careers offices, third sector bodies, policymakers, and academics.