UK businesses are missing out on highly qualified candidates because of hidden bias (SPA,
2015).
• 2/3 of elite jobs are filled by candidates with a private or grammar school education (11pc of
UK population).
• Children born to high professional parents are 20x more likely to get high status jobs
(Guardian, 2012).
• 80pc elite firms recruit graduates from just 19 universities (New Economics Foundation,
2014).
This bias creates economic inefficiencies by artificially restricting the pool of candidates,
leaving vacancies unfilled and preventing diversity and social mobility.
Rare Recruitment has identified an opportunity to help companies source young talent
identifying potential rather than polish, drawing on experience from contextualisation systems
used by UK universities since 2004. Rare's Contextual Recruitment System enables
companies to identify candidates that have outperformed their environment and have
outstanding potential for growth, widening the pool of talent available to fill positions, and
help employers understand and address the implicit bias that guides their recruitment
decisions.
We have proven the concept of this technology with a basic prototype that requires manual
candidate selection, and we have secured pilots with Baker&McKenzie and Hogan Lovells.
We now seek funding from Innovate UK to automate remaining processes, enabling the
technology to become fully scalable and widening access for SMEs.
Since inception in 2005, Rare has grown to become a multi-award winning diversity firm with
corporate clients including the Civil Service Fast Stream, Goldman Sachs, L'Oreal and 6 of
the top 7 UK law firms. Successful development and commercialisation of this technology
will help Rare disrupt innovation in the recruitment industry by enabling better recruitment
decisions, achieving systemic improvement of social mobility, workplace diversity,
recruitment efficiency and economic growth.