A workforce waiting to be tapped

Recruiting by word of mouth isn't fair to anyone - not least employers, says Paul Gosling

When it comes to job hunting, who you know is still more important than what you know. Although employers have been told for decades that word-of-mouth recruitment is discriminatory, it remains the most common method used, according to a survey conducted by NOP.

The Commission for Racial Equality has responded by condemning employers that still recruit through personal recommendation. Chris Myant, a CRE spokesman, says: "There's no excuse for this. It's not unlawful but it may result in employers breaking the law, and we have advised against this for nearly 20 years, as have government departments and management training manuals. Employers should realise that fair recruitment practices are more likely to give them the type of individuals they want."

The CRE's latest report, on the construction industry, bears out the results of the NOP survey, recommending that employers should take immediate action to stop word-of-mouth recruitment.

The reports coincide with the launch today of a national campaign designed to harness the potential of the UK's ethnic minority population. Race for Opportunity, which is organised by Business in the Community, is being led by a team of senior business people and chaired by Robert Ayling, the managing director of British Airways.

The campaign aims to encourage businesses to create equality of access for people from ethnic minorities at all levels of employment, to reflect the needs of ethnic minority customers in their marketing strategies, to create equal purchasing opportunities for ethnic minority firms to supply goods and services and to invest in ethnic minority communities as part of their education and community involvement programmes.

Mr Ayling says the campaign will set a framework for businesses wanting to reach out to ethnic minority communities, whether as potential employees, as customers, as business partners, or as community and education groups that seek support. It is a theme built on by Herman Ouseley, chairman of the CRE, who says the campaign deserves strong support: "Business is starting to recognise that if you invest in the community, the community will invest in you."

But for such ideals to be converted into practice, companies will have to do more to combat the findings of the NOP and CRE studies. As people seeking to change the composition of company boardrooms and the like have found, the key is to encourage a "widening of the pool".

Businesses signing up for the campaign would do well to note the NOP finding that, though advertising in the media is more frequently used than word of mouth in seeking to fill AB social class-type jobs, headhunting is common. This means that even in professional occupations, jobs are more often obtained through personal contacts than through open recruitment.

Chris Myant says "The higher up the labour market you go, the greater the percentage gap between black and white. At graduate levels, the rate of unemployment is lower but the gap is proportionately greater. Bad recruitment practices and discrimination are pushing that gap apart. Equal opportunities relies on open procedures."

In Northern Ireland, the stricter fair employment legislation is making headway, with word-of-mouth recruitment declining. The Fair Employment Commission's code of practice specifically advises employers not to use it, and employers that do could face problems if taken to tribunal.

Dennis Godfrey, spokesman for the FEC, says: "Our problem with this is that where there is already an imbalance in a workforce then clearly where word of mouth is practised it will perpetuate that. If you ask a Protestant to recommend someone, they are likely to recommend a Protestant, even if they don't intend to discriminate."

The Institute of Personnel and Development says that word-of-mouth recruitment is wrong, but commonplace. "It doesn't surprise me," says a spokeswoman. "This is in line with our statistics on the hidden employment market."

NOP's results were drawn from a survey of 1,000 people, selected as a representative cross-section of the population. Only the answers of those in full-time or part-time work - 60 per cent of the total - were used.

Some 35 per cent of those in work had been appointed through personal recommendation; 27 per cent through advertisements in the media; 13 per cent had been directly contacted by an employer; 7 per cent had gone through the jobcentre; 4 per cent had used recruitment agencies; and 14 per cent had used other, unspecified, means.

But to obtain an idea of what organisations might be missing out on it is perhaps worth examining another set of statistics. The proportion of the UK population accounted for by ethnic minorities is predicted to double from 5 to 10 per cent over the next 30 years; two-thirds of 16- to 19- year-olds from ethnic minorities remain in school or full-time education, compared with just under half of whites, yet they are twice as likely to be unemployed; 15 per cent of people from ethnic minority communities are self-employed, compared with 12.5 per cent of the white population.