Cadwalader Corner Q&A: Rare Recruitment’s Raphael Mokades – Financial Services

Raphael Mokades is the Founder and Managing Director of
Rare, an award-winning leader in diversity graduate recruitment.
Rare works with over 80 of the world’s most prestigious
employers, with a particular emphasis on the financial services
industry in the UK, has some 10,000 candidates on its books, and
builds cutting-edge software that is making a real difference for
companies and the people they hire.

What should companies/organizations know today about
recruiting and retention?

Data compilation and analysis are critical to effective
recruitment and retention and can provide an important early
warning system about issues that could potentially bubble up to the
surface.

For instance: our applicant-tracking system, Candid, provides
real-time grade-adjusted adverse impact reporting. In plain
English, this tells companies how effectively they are reaching a
pool of qualified diverse candidates.

All industries today, including financial services, are
emphasizing active diversity hiring programs. What advice are you
giving your clients?

We regularly advise our clients to do targeted outreach to
under-represented groups. As mentioned previously, we stress how
important it is to use data when recruiting but also to continue
using data-driven analysis even when not actively hiring in order
to find trends on what high-potential candidates look like. To
accomplish this, companies need to invest in applicant-tracking and
HR information systems that are fit for this purpose.

In our view, an organization that says it can’t afford the
software it needs to do proper data analysis should halt its hiring
and put its money in a piggy bank until it can. This process is
really that critical. We also help our clients develop an
understanding that hires from under-represented groups will
experience their work cultures differently, and that, in turn,
creates important opportunities to have conversations about work
culture, fairness and other workplace imperatives.

What advice would you give to companies and
organizations that have not fully embraced this organizational
imperative?

Align yourself with the industry leaders, who have concluded
that investment here produces important results and avoids a number
of potential negative outcomes. These leaders are using targeted
outreach and data-driven assessment to make real progress in this
area.

As a company, we’ve thought long and hard about these
critical issues and share our philosophy at www.racefairnesscommitment.com.

What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever
received?

When I started my business in 2005, I met a man called Martin
who advised me on the initial stages of getting the thing off the
ground. “If you haven’t put on ten pounds in weight by
Christmas,” he told me, “you’ll have been doing it
wrong.” He told me to take everyone I could for lunch –
potential clients, suppliers, employees, etc. Relationships are
different and stronger when you break bread together and people
tend to be more open and more inclined to collaborate. He was
right, and “food” has actually become one of Rare’s
six values (the others are fun, flexibility, friendliness,
fairness, and focus).

What are you most proud of?

The honest answer is the family I’ve created. When I think
about how my wife and my parents grew up, and the leap between
their childhoods and the one we’ve created for our kids, I feel
deeply proud. Professionally, for sure, it feels good to have
created a business that has done meaningful good for the clients we
serve the best part of two decades. The facts that we have a smart,
diverse, happy team, and that the business is commercially
successful are definite bonuses!

The content of this article is intended to provide a general
guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought
about your specific circumstances.