To Think that Grad & Apprenticeships are now only for Diversity Candidates

Have you not heard of DEI? I am not coming back to this thread, unbelievable gaslighting.

I looked up the Cheshire example you stated and the man was able to successfully prove he was the best candidate because his father already worked there. In other cases how could someone ever get the data to prove this?

“
It ruled that while positive action can be used to boost diversity, it should only be applied to distinguish between candidates who were all equally well qualified for a role.
The force's claim it had seen 127 candidates who were equally suitable for the role of police constable was a "fallacy", the tribunal ruled, and imposing such an artificially low threshold - assigning candidates a pass or fail rather than any kind of score - was not a proportionate response to addressing the force's lack of diversity.
Cheshire Police was among a number of forces criticised in 2015 for having no black officers, but has since taken steps to improve opportunities for those of different ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and disability.
”

I agree this is a lie.

you’re clearly not someone exposed to the whole hiring process either

It is absolute nonsense to suggest that there is a different hiring process for white candidates vs non-white candidates. Years ago, Cheshire Police tried to hire a non-white candidate when the white candidate had done better at interview and were sued by the white candidate. What you are suggesting is complete and utter nonsense.

We certainly were told any ‘non-diverse’ candidate hires had to have the right ratio of ‘diverse’ interviews held for the same role, and then the justification for the hire had to go up through a two layers of MDs.

How do you think senior management strive to meet their diversity targets and what do you think they do if not meeting them?

As it stood we only usually got Indian CVs anyway as all hires were done through one of the big Indian IT consultancies.

I think it’s much harder for young graduates now and young people generally than it’s been for many years.
I’m more sympathetic for these kids who have worked their butts off through Covid, continue to work at uni possibly also working nights to support themselves, no nights out or fun, having to get top grades in everything even in 1st year, having to get internships etc from day 1 to have any hope of a job at end.. then, instead of one or two interviews where you actually get to interact with human beings, days of online tests, essay questions and AI interviews before they even make it to an assessment centre..,,

It’s really tough. Most fully fledged adults struggle with repeated rejections. What a mess we’ve made of our economy. .

No it is not. For starters, it's highly illegal.

This is 100% true.

Liar.

Thought you were complaining about your PFBS not being good enough to get himself an apprenticeship or internship?

This with bells on. You're doing your son no favours by encouraging him to blame his lack of success on diversity hiring. That's a bitter choice and not based in reality.

He needs to be more resilient and learn to handle disappointments and setbacks more healthily.

I don't know what the 'doh!' is for unless it's directed at yourself for not being clear. You specifically suggested targeting poor WHITE boys. So naturally I assumed you meant targeting poor boys who are white.
Schemes targeting 'poor' people of all ethnicities already exist. They go off postcode to identify deprived areas and parental income. What do you think they mean by 'socio economic status' if not 'poor' as you call it?

There is no way on earth Admissions Law will be changed to enable discriminating towards children on the basis of ethnicity. You cannot ask the question prior to offer and acceptance for bloody good reason and even the names are removed from applications when rankings are finalised by the admissions authority, so there is absolutely no way of knowing an application is in respect of a white child, a black child, a Polish child, a child with one Han Chinese parent and one Korean or whether the child's family have been agricultural workers in Lincolnshire for the last 400 years.

White males were not allowed to be hired in my last job without going through a lengthy senior exceptions process (large banking IT department).

I think US firms had to stop DEI legally, so perhaps worth looking at US multinationals?

Why would the poor boys have to be white to qualify? Their disadvantage is their poverty, not their race. So surely the target should be boys from families disadvantaged by poverty? I'm sure such schemes exist in fact. And that people complain about those too because they feel it disadvantages their own sons.

You think that schools ask the ethnicity of the child as part of the application process and make decisions to offer places on that basis?

I work in some places where I am sure I am the diversity hire. 😂

Its not my experience. When a company focuses on diversity, it means they've had too many white wealthy men through the door and they need balance. Women make up 50% of the world, and yet still dont make up 50% on a company board. I work in a global company, and we have some great representation of different nationalities, but still not enough to be representative of the company's global reach. As things get more fair, people like your son will feel like they are missing out, when really the plauing field has been levelled. No bank is going to hire someone just because they are a Black disabled woman. But, if that Black, disabled woman is as good as your son, she will get the job over him because too often in the past she will have lost out because she was Black, disabled and a woman.

My last job was in a global bank that had an apprenticeship program for school leavers with high grades in the right A-Level subjects from a state school which is very near to the London office, and which is sponsored by that bank. In the borough where the school is based, only 44% of the population are white British. So the starting point would be an expectation that white boys are about one in five of the intake (22%).
HOWEVER... 47% of children in the borough live in low-income households, and white boys on free school meals are consistently the poorest-performing group at GCSEs - which means they're even less likely than their peers to even go on to A-Levels. So I would therefore adjust the expectation down and assume that significantly fewer than one in five of the intake to that particular scheme would be white British boys, just because of the local demographics, and nothing to do with any bizarre social-engineering project by HR.
The bank has all the usual grad schemes, and apprenticeships open to everyone, but the scheme for local kids is the one that gets the most publicity because it's good optics for any business to invest in the local community.

I fully agree. I also work in an organisation OP describes and don’t worry we are very much full of white men of all ages.

I think some of the targeted opportunities you’ve described are for short summer internships, not jobs. And where they exist there is also a main stream to apply to. The targeted schemes exist for a reason, clearly, given the actual statistics. I did think we’d gotten over the diversity hire myth…

It would be interesting to see the organisation you mention that excludes white men entirely, can you post it OP?