The brief
In summer 2017 Step won a House of Commons tender to deliver a 12-month BAME (Black and Minority Ethnic) internship programme that aimed to provide work experience, employability support and guidance to recent graduates from communities that are currently under-represented in the House of Commons’ graduate level workforce.
How we delivered the programme
The first step was to make use of our contacts and colleagues among our extensive university network, built up over the last 30 years. Because of the time of the year, actually getting in contact with the students was more problematic than it would have been during term time. Students can go ‘off-radar’ during the summer break and are less in touch with their university careers department and therefore harder to reach.
In order to combat this we constructed an extensive Social Media campaign, approaching societies and departments on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
This work elicited a huge level of response, across many different universities and courses. As part of the programme we offered support to all candidates in the application process and this attentiveness and attention to detail ensured a fair and equal recruitment process.
Step then ran an extensive screening process which involved an initial telephone interview with over 100 applicants. This then progressed to an assessment centre, designed and hosted by Step, in London, for 26 relevant applicants that helped to produce an appropriate shortlist for face-to-face interviews at the House of Commons.
Those that attended the assessment day and that were invited to face-to-face interviews represented a wide variety of universities, not just top the 10, and courses and this was one of the important goals of the recruitment process.
The outcome
Three graduates were appointed and the positions are scheduled to start in November 2017. The three graduates came from the following universities: University of Portsmouth, University College London and University of Cambridge. For more on the facts and figures from the House of Commons programme please click here