About Us 

The Fair Hiring Project helps businesses attract, hire and retain strong, diverse workforces — by removing superficial barriers to attainment in recruitment and promotion processes. We sell a number of products and services in this vein. We are currently working with employers across legal, public, consulting, finance, fmcg and engineering sectors. 

• Become A Partner: we tackle broad challenges that exist across many industries and geographies, so we like to build commercial partnerships with recruiters, ATS vendors, diversity consultants, talent advisors and even social-policy experts.
  

• Join Us: we are currently looking for a non-executive advisor, an intern and a part-time marketing manager. We welcome expressions of interest.
  

• Invest: we are 'not just for profit' — commercial with clear social goals. We plan an EIS investment round to scale-up and build exclusive technology. If you are interested in HRTech or ethical investing, please let us know.
  

How the heck?

This is my story...

After studying politics at university and doing obscure Olympic sports — I became an executive recruiter. I liked it, but got frustrated.  My inner marxist groaned.  The whole game of selecting 'talent' clearly favoured alpha, self-confident types who knew the rules and played well. I'd seen the same in sport.

Concurrently, an industry emerged tackling decision-maker biases — ignoring the awkward truth that most managers just want great colleagues. And alas, the best performers in recruitment processes were often insiders:  those who would fit in quickest, had access to support, bravado, nothing to hide and spoke English as their first language, etc. I saw a biased system and thought it mattered more than individual biases. So, I conceived a learning product: aimed at candidates, sold to employers that would 'level the playing the field' and democratise access to knowledge (politics again).

In 2015, I approached experts on the barriers faced by outsiders, including disabled, BAME, LGBT and female professionals. They helped me to create resources that balance prescribing behaviour, with recognition of the fact that certain skills and rules do disproportionately influence outcomes.

In 2016, I got waylaid by investment ideas, approached would-be clients, did contract work and talked at events. Some people *hated* the idea, which was worrying... "If someone's any good – we always see it" they said, or "aww, helping is sweet, but what's in it for us?"  

Undeterred, by 2017 the product had evolved. Industry leaders encouraged me to champion how a Fair Hiring approach could enhance social mobility, leadership talent pipelines, candidate-experiences and even boring metrics like cost of hire  — I found the ROI. In summer 2017, the business became a partner to Alexander Mann Solutions, who provide RPO services to the likes of Deloitte, HSBC and Rolls-Royce.  I hadn't 'arrived' exactly, but I had a cheerleader with clout, giving me the much needed reassurance that I hadn't lost the plot after all... 

Olivier"