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Engagement and recruitment

Our research highlights the need for greater awareness of the range of opportunities available in the sector, as well as a perception among underrepresented groups that working in the sector requires very specific skill sets, experience and qualifications. This section will help you to recruit more diverse employees, extend opportunities to underrepresented groups, and engage them from an early stage.

Ensure all interns and staff are paid at least the London Living Wage (LLW)

The London Living Wage (LLW) is calculated independently from the National Living Wage (NLW) due to the higher cost of living within London. Paying below this puts workers and their families at risk of falling into poverty. Paying the LLW, or paying above the LLW, allows London workers to afford necessities and potentially save for the future. As a result of better wages, it is more likely that your organisation will be able to retain staff, especially when the LLW is combined with clear progression opportunities.

Build a plan or strategy to attract and recruit diverse talent, such as using minority-focused recruiters

Creating a more diverse workforce aids how organisations serve their local community.  There are many ways to recruit locally, such as advertising with the local job centre or researching local community organisations, centres and events to advertise job vacancies. Our research highlights, however, that one of the key issues for employers is their ability to find and reach out to diverse applicants.

One great way to boost engagement with a diverse range of candidates is to consider barriers underrepresented groups might face in applying for a career in the digital and tech sector, such as their perceptions of the sector, and then to build actions into your attraction and recruitment strategy to reduce these barriers.

Many specialist recruiters help organisations find talent from underrepresented groups and communities. They can work to fulfil any EDI targets your organisation may have and find talented people who may previously have struggled to get ahead in the industry due to systemic barriers.

''You're looking for a candidate that sometimes might not exist the way that the hiring manager would want them to be. Unfortunately, sometimes you do come across […] managers that are very rigid in terms of their perspective or what they want.''
Employer in the digital and tech sector, Ipsos interview

  • Cisco joined the Black Young Professional (BYP) Network, whose job board focuses on Black talent, advertising roles to more diverse candidate lists.
  • Black in Data connects their partner companies with Black talent through their job board and professional meet-and-greets.
  • Disability Jobsite works with employers to remove barriers for people with a disability to opportunities to work. They offer job listing/posting packages.
  • Inclusive Boards are an EDI-focused executive search organisation specialising in helping to diversify senior leadership teams and boards.
  • Coding Black Females offers job packages to post jobs.

Ethnic Job Site also provides tools for measuring diversity in an evidence-based capacity.

Deloitte has worked with the Institute of Coding to issue a survey for 16-24 year olds, with a view to understanding how digital careers are perceived. These insights will be used to help shape future attraction and recruitment efforts.

A lot of recruitment is left to agencies. This means an organisation loses some control of the process, and can lead to bias creeping into your recruitment processes.

Normally, agencies are paid to fill vacancies and are not incentivised to search for promising talent from underrepresented groups, particularly where the agency does not have an EDI focus. It is also worth remembering that the new talent may not be on job boards or LinkedIn - they may be more likely to present themselves and their work through social media channels. This is particularly the case for Gen Z talent. It is therefore worth making social media campaigns part of your accessible and inclusive recruitment methods.

“It’s getting in as a whole and you know, it’s probably one of those things again, where if you don’t know anybody who can drag you in, then you’ve probably got no chance unless you’re the luckiest person to get in.”

   Black man working in the sector, Ipsos interview

Depending on your talent requirements, another way to diversify the ways in which you attract talent is to get in touch with specific organisations and advertise through them, or ask if they are able to help you find the right person for your organisation in other ways. For example, if applicable to you, reach out to Code First Girls or One Tech.

AND Digital works alongside a range of charity partners and social enterprises to provide opportunities to underrepresented groups. As part of this, they offer roles, training, and coaching to refugees to help them to become developers.

Work with diverse intern, apprenticeship or access partners

Internships, apprenticeships, industrial placements and returner programmes are all examples of schemes that widen access to roles within the sector. Running your own version of these programmes or getting involved in existing schemes can help you find talented individuals, both at the start of their career journey and beyond.

Employers should ensure that any advertisements and communications regarding any schemes and open job roles are clear as to who is eligible to apply. For example, whether graduate level schemes are open to those who may not be recent graduates, and which types of programmes may support individuals looking to transition into digital/tech roles from other sectors. Our engagement with individuals from the underrepresented groups reveals uncertainty around the opportunities that may be open to them within the digital and tech sector, based upon their current skills, experience, and qualifications.

''[...] maybe my age and because I haven’t had, you know, much experience in this sector as well, so that would be a barrier, yes definitely, and I think they would be looking for graduates which i’m not.''
Bangladeshi woman not currently working in the digital and tech sector, Ipsos interview

Returner programmes may also be an effective way to engage, particularly with those in underrepresented groups with caring responsibilities. These are formal schemes offered by employers to provide training and support to people who have taken time out of the workplace. They provide people who have taken career breaks the opportunity to refresh their skills and build professional networks. According to research by PwC, addressing the career break penalty could provide a £1.7 billion boost to our yearly economic output.

''The value of returners programmes cannot be understated. They offer access to a largely untapped pool of talent that conventional recruitment methods often miss. We all benefit when we offer alternative routes and pathways for people who are looking to get back into the workforce, and break down the barriers to returning to fulfilling tech careers.''
Antony Walker, Deputy CEO, techUK

  • Vodafone has a ReConnect programme involving training, coaching and an induction to help returners refresh and enhance professional skills that they need to return to work and progress their careers. Joiners are also offered options for flexible working and a phased return to work.
  • Capgemini has a Relaunch programme for anyone who has taken a career break of 18 months to 10 years for any reason. It involves an initial six-month fixed-term contract with a view to becoming a permanent employee, four returners coaching sessions, a tailored learning and development plan and a support network of existing returners.
  • Salesforce Supermums is a talent development solution, helping to retrain mums in Salesforce, advancing their digital skills. The programme also supports participants to find flexible roles that fit around family life, having helped over 200 companies to recruit Salesforce talent.
  • Coding Black Females runs a Return to Tech Bootcamp course to refresh skills in development and software architecture to move directly into a mid-level or senior position.
  • Women Returners offers a free Returner Employer Network that employers can sign up to. They also have a Women Returners Professional Network which provides advice, information and support to returners.
  • STEM Returners run programmes that employers can support. They won an award at the Women in Tech Employer Awards 2022 for Best Returnship Programme.

Guidance on returner programmes has also been provided by the Government Equalities Office and the Women’s Business Council.

techUK also has a Returners Hub which spotlights returner programmes by its member companies.

Apprenticeship schemes allow individuals to carry out training and study related to their role whilst earning and learning skills. These programmes can also place your employees on a path to management positions, helping to create a sense of commitment and longevity in the sector. Often when thinking of apprenticeships, career starter apprenticeships, which are undertaken following school, come to mind. However, research carried out by Hackney Digital Tech D&I Commission highlights that a much wider variety of residents want access to apprenticeships, including people wanting to switch careers, disabled people, and older residents. Employers may therefore wish to explore a variety of different options for apprenticeship schemes.

In addition to schemes targeted at recruitment, employers may also find value in running placement and work experience schemes to engage with underrepresented groups in a way that gives them an insight into the digital and tech sector. Such schemes may be run to encourage participants to enter into future roles with the employer or, more generally, to encourage participants to consider a role in the sector in the future.

LexisNexis Risk Solutions are highlighted in the TTC Open Playbook. They introduced a 12-month industrial placement scheme and focused on the personal development and progression of newly-hired junior engineers. Since these interventions were introduced in 2019, LexisNexis has seen greater levels of diversity in the organisation, and in particular, increased representation of women in their technology team. See this case study detailing the actions taken.

For five years starting in FY21, EY, a member of techUK, is offering at least 30% of their work experience places on their Smart Futures and Our Futures programmes to Black young people. They also set a target to offer entry into EY school leaver pathways to at least 30% of Black young alumni of the Smart Futures and Our Futures programmes.

Other helpful resources:

Fund or sponsor digital skills courses for underrepresented groups, with a clear path into employment

Our research highlights that a major obstacle to improving diversity and inclusion in high-skilled digital and tech careers is a lack of access to opportunities to acquire relevant digital skills.

You can make progress towards diversifying your organisation and the industry by funding places on digital skills courses for underrepresented groups. If you are a large organisation, this could involve running your own in-house academy or it could be delivered by funding places on existing programmes. There are a range of government programmes available that organisations can participate in. However, you should take care to fully audit external programmes you are considering engaging with to ensure that the training is both high-quality and aligned with your business needs.

You should be clear about the possible pathway into employment which any course will provide for leaners. This will ensure the benefits of the course are clear to participants, encouraging their participation, and maximise the impact of funded courses on diversity and equality in the sector.  This might take the form of ringfencing certain vacancies or traineeships for course graduates or, more loosely, it could involve automatic eligibility of graduates for interview or assessment. Whatever form it takes, this link should be made clear in promoting these opportunities.

Employers should take a tailored and creative approach to promotion of these courses to digitally excluded groups, such as career-changers, older workers, or prison-leavers. These groups are less likely to hear about opportunities via online ads and email newsletters.

Besides skills for specific tech occupations, organisations could also improve diversity in the talent pipeline by helping to improve basic digital skills among underrepresented groups more widely, such as in relation to internet safety and privacy. For example, you could engage with the FutureDotNow coalition, which works with organisations to tackle the gap in digital literacy in the UK workforce, particularly to equip workers with Essential Digital Skills. 

  • The Mayor of London funds the Skills Boot Camps for Londoners programme. These short courses are designed to address the needs of London’s employers, helping them to both recruit and train their existing workforce employees to tackle skills shortages and grow their businesses. A range of in-demand digital skills are covered by this programme. Contact [email protected] to learn more about the Mayor’s skills boot camps and how to get involved.
  • Sky runs a Get into Tech and a Get into DevOps training programme for women, which aim to provide beginner level training for entry level jobs. These are 15-week evening courses for those who would like to learn flexibly in their own time.
  • Coding Black Females is a community of Black women in tech who run events and a free online programme aimed at gaining the skills for an entry-level cloud role (AWS re/Start Bootcamp), a course to refresh skills in development and software architecture to move directly into a mid-level or senior position (Return to Tech Bootcamp), and a course to become a Software Engineer (Entry to Tech Bootcamp). Employers can get involved by sponsoring them, supporting and hosting their events.
  • Deloitte is a founding partner of Ada, the National College for Digital Skills - aiming to address issues of access and opportunity, the college strives for for half of its students to be from low-income backgrounds and for half of its students to be women.
  • The LIFT Internship programme is specifically designed to connect and empower diverse talent from Camden, Hackney, Islington, and Tower Hamlets with paid opportunities, including in technology.
  • Code First Girls is a social enterprise aiming to close the gender gap in tech by providing employment through free education. Code First Girls offer a range of learning options, has partnered with various organisations and has taught more than 120,000 women to code.
    • BT has partnered with Code First Girls for three years in a row. In their 2022 report they highlight having sponsored a Nanodegree (13-week bootcamp) for women looking to pursue careers in data, software, or as a full-stack developer, with all participating having the opportunity to join BT Group in paid roles after this.
  • Institute of Coding is a collaborative national consortium of industry, educators and outreach providers that deliver employer-led digital skills education. They have engaged at least 900,000 diverse learners. The IoC also runs a TechUPWomen programme, which has re-trained women with digital skills, as well as various government-funded skills bootcamps. 

Follow inclusive recruitment best practices

One of the main ways your organisation can attract a broader range of talented people is to follow inclusive recruitment best practices. Research by BCS and Coding Black Females has shown that ‘long, prescriptive interview processes, the language of job adverts and poor promotion of flexible options impact the diversity of applicants for IT roles’. Our research also highlights the problems of bias in job descriptions, this particularly came out in our employer engagement sessions. De-biasing your job advertisements will help you build your inclusive culture, as people within your organisation will see that your hiring practices are designed to find the best people with the right skills for the job.

Research by Wiley Edge suggests that 61% of businesses do not use deliberately neutral job descriptions.

Inclusive recruitment best practice for job adverts includes:

  • Using inclusive language in your job advert;
  • Focusing on the skills and competencies needed for the job being advertised - avoid making your ‘essentials’ list too long;
  • Considering whether academic achievements are necessary for the role before making them a requirement;
  • Avoiding jargon;
  • Stating salary, or a salary range;
  • Directing candidates to a named contact should they need to discuss any access requirements or request the advert in a different format;
  • Consider if you can offer the job on a flexible basis, part-time, or as part of a job share – if you can, say so;
  • Avoiding asking for several years’ experience in the same role, or asking for continuous employment - this discourages those with CV gaps, and for people looking to change careers and use transferable skills;
  • Promoting your organisation’s EDI policies and commitments;
  • Keeping roles open for the full application period and not closing them early;
  • Ensuring all job adverts adhere to these best practice principles.
''We can only achieve the government’s ambition for the UK to be the ‘next Silicon Valley’ by closing the digital skills gap and making this vital profession attractive to a far broader range of people''
Rashik Parmar MBE, CEO BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT

What do we mean by use ‘inclusive language’ in a job advert

Gender-neutral language in job adverts can mitigate against bias towards a particular sex or social gender. Gender preferences can be conveyed subtly through words such as ‘competitive’, ‘leader’ and ‘dominate’ which tend to lead to fewer female applicants than using words such as ‘support’, ‘community’ and ‘interpersonal’.

BT carried out research into gender-neutral language in advertising (commissioned by Openreach in 2021) which led them to update job adverts and successfully attract 300% more women into engineering roles with their subsequent campaign.

Vodafone also piloted an approach aiming to reduce the potential for gender bias in their job adverts, finding in their 2018 Sustainable Business Report that a three-month trial adjusting the vocabulary used in their advertisements helped them to increase the number of women they recruited into specific roles by 7%. They continued using this technology to avoid gender bias in their job adverts. At the time, this was used on an average of 840 job adverts a month globally.

This Gender Decoder Tool and this Language and Tone Checklist can help you to ensure your job adverts are inclusive.

Free diverse stock images are also available from UKBlackTech and WOCinTech Chat.

Now your job adverts are inclusive, it’s time to think about the other stages of the recruitment process.

Ensure you have:

  • Diverse and equitable hiring panels;
  • Standardised competency-based interview questions with a focus on asking about skills;
  • Communicated procedures for offering and requesting reasonable adjustments;
  • Anonymous CV reviews, to avoid discrimination and make the hiring process more efficient. Remove irrelevant information (including names of educational institutions) from applications when reviewing candidates;
  • Run inclusive recruitment workshops or training for all hiring managers.

You may wish to consider using positive action in recruitment when a particular demographic is underrepresented in your organisation’s workforce. Positive action is about taking specific steps to improve equality in the workplace that either do, or may, advantage a particular underrepresented group. There are numerous different ways to take actions that would be ‘positive action’, but it is important to be able to show that those steps are applicable for your organisation in particular. This resource contains some useful information on positive action, including its purpose and when it can be applied, and examples of how to use it. Additionally, you must know the difference between positive action, which is legal, and positive discrimination, which is not legal - read more about this.

if I saw that position today advertised and I saw an Asian, Muslim female, wearing a hijab, doing that job, I would think, ‘Yes, of course, I’ve got a chance to go for it’
Pakistani woman not currently working in the digital and tech sector, Ipsos interview

The Disability Confident scheme is a free, voluntary, government programme that helps employers make the most of disabled people’s talents in the workplace. This article gives top tips for ensuring your recruitment practices are accessible. It is important to recognise how intersectional characteristics impact on barriers and gaps to employment within the digital and tech sector.

According to the report by NCSC and KPMG, Decrypting Diversity - Diversity and Inclusion in Cyber Security 2021, one in five cyber professionals feel they cannot be themselves in the workplace, including around a third of professionals that have disabilities or are neurodivergent.

This article entitled ‘Helping over 50s into tech jobs can support government’s ‘Silicon Valley’ ambitions’, authored by BCS (The Chartered Institute for IT), highlights that there were around 63,000 IT specialists with disabilities missing from the IT industry. Employers that take actions to demonstrate inclusion of disabled people (such as use of the Disability Confident scheme) are likely to attract a broader range of talent.

Fujitsu’s disability employee network created a Disability and Adjustment Passport scheme. This aims to reduce the impact of any line manager changes in relation to support that had been previously agreed for employees.

Diversity and Ability's Global Inclusion Kitemark offers organisations a step-by-step approach to embedding EDI, from foundational to change-making levels, together with a recognisable ‘stamp’ once each step is embedded.

The Government has published a guide on how to become a Disability Confident employer, including information on organisational and community benefits.

''I think that those with disabilities are very much overlooked within this sector [...] you'll find that most employers will just look at that base minimum, so they're showing including diversity and equal opportunity and then that's it.''
Mixed-ethnicity man working in the sector, Ipsos interview

Engage with training and education providers to improve opportunities for underrepresented groups

Pathways into the digital and tech sector are often somewhat unclear for underrepresented groups throughout their education, particularly given the perceived limited routes of entry into the sector. According to the 2022 Wiley Edge Diversity in Tech Report, just 26% of 18-24 year olds not currently working in technology believe tech offers excellent career opportunities, whilst 14% of 18-24 year olds not currently working in tech said they know nothing about the careers available in the sector. It is therefore imperative that employers engage with young people, particularly young women and girls, to foster understanding and affinity with work in the digital and tech sector.

There are multiple ways to create diverse and impactful recruitment pipelines, particularly through engagement with training and education providers. There are a number of ways to do this, including:

 

  1. Engage in outreach events at local schools or universities, with a focus on talking to underrepresented groups, such as:

 

  • Workshops for primary and secondary schools exploring the digital and tech sector and the kinds of roles available;
  • Join the ‘devices for all’ campaign from UK Interactive Entertainment (Ukie) to donate old laptops and computers to schools;
  • Work with organisations like Tech She Can to inspire and educate girls and women to study technology subjects and pursue careers in tech.

 

  1. Host a stand at university/school career fairs. This is a great way for new employees to gain more confidence in their role and the organisation as a whole, as well as inspiring young people to consider pursuing a career in an industry they may not have otherwise considered.

 

  1. Host workshops which help students improve the skills they need to land the job they want, for example CV and cover letter writing, or interviewing skills.

 

  1. Participate in and sponsor apprenticeship or other access schemes targeted at underrepresented groups - ensure that these are adequately paid, and in line with London Living Wage (LLW).

 

  1. Mentor young people or encourage your staff to mentor young people, providing them with time off to do so - representation is hugely important, particularly at a young age.
''I think as well maybe, you know, from the grassroots level of going out to universities, talking about a company and all that. Helping people that are starting off their careers to help them understand who we are at these job fairs and that sort of thing and how this could, you know, take their skills and this could be a good career choice for them to make. Planting seeds in their mind to make them want to be a part of this sector.''
Employer at a large sized company, Ipsos interview

  • Fujitsu worked with over 2000 students from 176 schools across the UK for a virtual International Girls in ICT Day, through a partnership with SpringPod.
  • IBM launched a programme called Pathways in Technology (P-Tech), offering education to help students into tech roles. The programme launched in the UK in 2019 to two schools and one college, but has been expanded across a number of countries and to young people around the world.
  • Cisco are highlighted in the 2020 techUK Delivering Diversity best practice report for actions they had taken in relation to recruitment for their Degree Apprenticeship scheme. The work undertaken involved selecting schools with a higher proportion of Black students, then working with their careers service to build events and offer mentoring focused on succeeding in the recruitment process.
  • AND Digital have ongoing programmes to work alongside schools, delivering workshops, career coaching and work experience to students. These programmes aim to inspire students to consider careers in the digital and tech sector.

One of the prominent perceived barriers to entry into the digital and tech sector is the specialist skills and experience needed to succeed. Leaders from our employer engagement sessions note difficulties in sourcing specialist skills when recruiting externally for entry-level roles, particularly in relation to women, where they may not have studied related subjects.

When curating specialist training days, it may be helpful to consider which specific skills have been absent from unsuccessful applicants to tailor your training around the most common skills gaps. Where possible, try to involve senior leaders and role models from the underrepresented groups.

Use a contextual recruitment system to broaden access by taking into account your job candidate’s background

The Rare Contextual Recruitment System (CRS) has been designed to allow recruiters to understand the context in which a candidate has gained experience. It can help employers consider the skills of a broader and more diverse pool of applicants, including some that may otherwise be overlooked. The CRS was thoroughly researched and designed over a period of more than two years in collaboration with top universities and global employers. It uses big data and candidates’ application responses to produce real-time contextual information on all candidates, so that candidates with the most potential are not screened out.