Tapping into pre-university talent is the only way to encourage diversity in STEM firms, says Tony Sewell
With 1.28 million jobs expected to be created in Britain’s STEM sector by 2020 – and a likely slowdown in EU talent arriving in the UK – high-tech companies could soon find themselves with few suitable candidates to employ. The solution, says Tony Sewell, founder of charity Generating Genius, is to connect tech organisations with BAME students while they’re still at school. He tells People Management why well-intentioned diversity plans fail, and why businesses need to be more open to connecting with future employees at a younger age.
How does Generating Genius work?
We support boys and girls with disadvantaged backgrounds into STEM careers through two programmes: Junior Genius is for 13-16-year-olds who get to do high-level science with leading STEM companies. Uni Genius offers 17-18-year-olds academic support, with free tuition from students at Imperial College and University College London.
What patterns are you seeing in the career choices of former students?
Our first group of students are 22-23 years old, and all 50 of them got a job out of university. They promised us when they were 13 that they were going to find a cure for cancer, but the banking sector has been pursuing science graduates, so many of them opted for City jobs.
But things are changing. We now see them go for job satisfaction, not money. Millennials want human interaction – a sense of community at work. And if they’re not getting that, they’ll leave.
They’re also setting up start-ups. Some – particularly the brighter ones – have decided that getting together with their mates and starting a company is preferable. They can have fun at work, but they work extremely hard too; work becomes like a mission, a vocation for them.
What causes corporate diversity initiatives to fail?
Networking is a big problem; so much recruitment is driven by your circle of mates. And that circle will be limited – it will invariably be people who look like you. If you base hiring on that, you’ll never move on.
It’s not as if companies have a deliberate policy of discouraging diversity – it’s just how it works. Women and black people especially are outside those staid networks.
What’s the solution?
Businesses need to think about where the pipeline of talent is coming from, pre-university. It’s a big commitment, but in STEM that’s the only way that things will change.
It’s like football clubs’ academies for teenagers, which produced big stars like David Beckham. We’re already doing something similar with a tech recruitment company called SThree. It’s offering 50 lower sixth-form students a week’s work experience with their clients; that gives our kids the opportunity to experience work in a STEM organisation, and the company gets exposure to this young talent.
I don’t see why big firms shouldn’t be mining talent early on, and attaching talent to them. It solves lots of problems: you’re doing a social good, as those kids need distractions in the inner cities; it provides a pipeline of talent for later on; and you’re making sure that you understand where to go to find that talent.