The Bank has just begun to put in place a system for measuring the socio-economic background of its recruits. In future, that might help in sketching the contours of the Bank’s own experiential diversity map. Some organisations have taken more purposive action still to promote social mobility. For example, some have set themselves recruitment targets for employees drawn from lower socio-economic groupings. Others have put in place so-called “contextualised” recruitment, adjusting their entrance requirements to prevent filtering out of candidates based on their socio-economic background. The Bank has also made some initial steps in the direction of contextualised recruitment, as well as signing up as a member of the so-called Social Mobility Compact, which promotes social inclusion and mobility in the UK. 67  Heckman (2006) finds that very early intervention for disadvantaged children is crucial in order to affect outcomes. Intervening when a child is over the age of six has comparatively little effect. 68  Attanasio and Blundell (2014). 69  Feinstein (2003). 70  Commission on Child Poverty and Social Mobility (2014). BIS central bankers’ speeches  13  Across all organisations and institutions, there is plainly much further to go. This new dimension to the diversity debate could, if the evidence is even half-right, yield high organisational and societal returns from a modest investment in better measurement and in different approaches to recruitment and performance. (c)  Recruitment strategy  Recruitment is typically a singular pursuit. The successful candidate is typically the one deemed to best meet the job requirements.
Recruitment policy might usefully follow in the footsteps of regulatory policy if it, too, is to maximise the organisational and social externalities of diversity. To see how and why, consider a simple example. 71 There are two candidates for a position, A and B. They do a test based on the attributes useful for the hiring organisation. These tests might be state of the art, including all of the diverse attributes one would wish in an organisation – cognitive, interpersonal and experiential skills. In this test out of 10, candidate A scores 8 and candidate B scores 4. Which one should be hired? The answer is easy. The evidence points strongly to A as the candidate best meeting the requirements for the job. They have, quite literally, ticked the right boxes. But let’s add a twist. What if the answers A gets wrong are the ones B gets right? And what if the questions existing employees get wrong are also the ones B gets right? In other words, what if candidate B brings skills to the organisation which otherwise do not exist. The right recruitment decision for the organisation is then to choose B rather than A. Candidate B adds more to the collective ability of the organisation, even though they are weaker individually. The question is, how often would existing recruitment practices deliver such an outcome? In practice, I think rarely. Individuals are typically judged on the alignment between their skills and those of the existing organisation.