1/11 We recently ran a process @clarecapital to find two new people to join our investment banking firm. We are working hard to improve diversity within the team. We learnt a lot through this recruitment process, so I thought I’d share our experience.

2/ 11 We advertised for an entry and mid-level position. 200+ people applied for the two positions. A third were women. 28 nationalities applied. Other companies in our industry have had less than 10% women apply for similar roles - one company had no women apply.

3/11 Investment banking, like many industries, has a diversity problem. Before writing ads, we considered industry perceptions. We spoke to people, esp women, about barriers to improving diversity. Heard it’s “competitive, full of aggressive deal guys and all about the money.”

4/11 We thought about @clarecapital culture and how we create an environment that supports diversity and encourages different perspectives. We’ve made, and we continue to make, conscious decisions to do things differently from the traditional investment banking approach.

5/11 The job ads were broad and non-prescriptive. We stripped the roles back to essential skills and were open-minded about where skills may come from. E.g. analytical thinkers don’t have to come from finance, they could come from another field and apply it to finance.

6/11 Research shows women don’t tend to apply for jobs unless they’re 100% qualified, whereas men are happy to apply when they only meet 60% of the qualifications. So, there were no bullet points in the ads or lists of essential requirements.

7/11 Unconscious bias in ads isn’t always easy to spot so we learnt about feminine coded words (e.g. collaborative instead of competitive) and how to make ads gender neutral. Tools such as @textio are helpful. We also tested the ads with young women prior to posting them.

8/11 Decided to front foot the diversity issue in ads to encourage different people to apply. We said “our industry has a problem. We want to see that change. @clarecapital, we believe we will be better if we bring different perspectives to our approach and relationships.”

9/11 Multiple channels were used to promote the ads – Seek, LinkedIn, Twitter, INFINZ job board (industry association), our own network including the Tech Insights reports and word of mouth, via senior women who are friends of the firm.

10/11 We interviewed a large and diverse range of candidates. Asked open ended questions and tried to be conscious of our own biases – not hiring mini me’s! We thought about creating a team of complementary personalities and experiences who will work well together.

11/11 Taken a long-term perspective to finding good people. Hired based on personality and what can’t be taught. We’re delighted to announce we have two fabulous people starting @clarecapital in the New Year – a man and a woman. Would love to hear about others’ experiences.