However, we have been disappointed with our success and impact in bringing disabled people into our recruitment processes for our internal vacancies, as well as our clients. According to our latest statistics (correct at August 2022), only 4% of our candidates who applied for a role shared a disability and this converted to 6% of placed candidates who shared a disability – which is well below our stated minimum ambition of 10%. Equally, we are well represented at Board level with 29% of our Board members shared a disability but only 7% of our wider team.
We have been making a focused effort to be more intentional about improving our impact in this area. One way we have made an investment to achieve this is by leveraging our Disability Confident credentials in how candidates apply for roles through Prospectus. Using this new process, we have been able to increase the number of applicants who shared a disability by 50%.
We wanted to share what we are doing differently so other organisations could consider any ways they might change their recruitment processes – or let us know how we can continue to improve!
Traditionally when a candidate applied for a role we would ask them to inform us via their CV or Supporting Statement if they had a disability and required any support in making their application.
We were asking candidates to take extra steps, outside of the normal application process, that could be subject to human error. Equally, we had no central way to track if an organisation was a Disability Confident Employer beyond an individual consultant.
We didn’t think this was good enough, it wasn’t delivering the impact we wanted and was a key part of our process that we felt could be improved.
From 1st June 2022 any time we take a role from a client we are actively asking them if they are a Disability Confident Employer – if they are, then we are coding this on our database.
This then triggers a pop-up statement, whenever a candidate applies for a job on our website, that candidate will know the employer of this role is a Disability Confident Employer. If that candidate wishes to share a disability, and they meet the minimum criteria for this role, then we and the client are committed to offering them an interview.
This is a completely separate form to our standard equal opportunity data questionnaire – we made this decision to reduce the number of steps a candidate needs to take to share a disability.
This is then flagged to the consultant working on that vacancy through a bespoke report and is never stored or visible on the candidate record. This ensures consultants are unable to pick out any applications where a candidate has asked to be considered under the Disability Confident scheme and assess them under this criteria.
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In 2 months, we have taken 257 roles from 128 organisations, 27 of which are Disability Confident.
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The percentage of candidates who applied and shared a disability with an employer who was not Disability Confident, and therefore followed our old process, was 4%.
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For candidates who went through our new bespoke process, leveraging Disability Confident credentials, the percentage increased to 6%.
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That is a 50% difference and a significant increase in building the pipeline of talent that will feed into shortlisting and longlisting.
We know we are not disability experts and we are still embedding this new process in our team and systems, but we are already encouraged by the difference this change is having in our process and we will continue to track its success. We will continue to reflect on our survey findings also, whenever we are considering any change.
Being Disability Confident is a unique opportunity to lead the way in your community, and you might just discover someone your business cannot do without. You can learn more and sign up for the Disability Confident scheme here.
If you would like to know more or have a conversation with us about supporting diverse recruitment in your teams, please do contact andy.tonner@prospect-us.co.uk.
