EY has become the latest big firm to eschew academic qualifications as an initial filter for graduate roles in a bid to increase applicant diversity.
In a statement this week, EY said that the move was being done to “further improve the potential for social mobility”. Maggie Stilwell, EY’s recently promoted managing partner for talent, explained to AccountingWEB that the change was spurred by the “heavy social influences” in the UK on “the results that you get at A-level and degree”.
“We think when we’re looking for the best talent for EY and looking for the best people who are going to do really well for our clients,” said Stilwell, “we need a different approach that allows people who have the same potential – but who haven’t necessarily had the same chances – to be assessed in a more neutral way”.
But Stilwell was very careful to lay any notion that academic qualifications were now moot to rest, however. “Academic achievements will still be considered as part of the process,” said Stilwell. “What’s changed is that it will be right at the end, at the point where we have a lot more data about a candidate.”
EY’s recruitment process will start with an online test, followed by a first interview, and then, all things going well, an invite to an assessment centre. “The series of tests are validated for our own firm as being a predictor of whether you’re going to do well with us or not,” said Stilwell.
EY’s new process has a strong precedent among some influential companies. PwC announced similar changes in May. In a recent interview with The New York Times, Google’s head of people operations Laszlo Bock closely matched Stilwell’s words. “For every job, though, the number one thing we look for is general cognitive ability, and it’s not IQ, it’s learning ability. It’s the ability to process on the fly,” Bock told the newspaper. “We assess that using structured behavioural interviews that we validate to make sure they’re predictive.”
After all the assessments, the penultimate step before getting a graduate position at EY is a final interview. It’s at this point, Said Stilwell, where the interviewer will be given academic background. The idea, explains Stilwell, is then “at that point, they’ll also have a lot of other data about how you’ve performed in our selection”.
For Stilwell, it’s not a numbers game. “By any measure one would say we don’t have a problem attracting people,” she Said. “We have something like 25,000 people applying each year for nearly 2000 roles”.
She also contends that it’s not a knee jerk reaction to controversies like ‘the poshness test’, “This isn’t a decision we took swiftly, we’re talking about one of the most important assets of our organisation,” said Stilwell. “It has been the culmination of 18 months of work and 18 months of research and a very collaborative approach across all parts of our business”.
