Breaking down the gender and colour bars to job recruitment

WHEN Cynthia Davis secured her first job in recruitment, there were 120 other consultants at her executive search firm. “Only five of them were women, and I was the only person of colour,” the entrepreneur explains.

- Lucy Tobin

“My early career was marred by racist jokes disguised as banter, which I felt I had to endure.”

Fast forward a few decades, and Davis set up her own, diversity-focused recruitment agency, which is set to hit £2.5 million turnover this year. “All those misogynistic comments and racist jokes strengthened my resolve to change the world of work for the better. I didn’t want to recruit people into the culture I had been working in. I wanted it to change.”

Initially Davis, now 45, embraced a traditional corporate career path, working in recruitment at Carphone Warehouse, BT and for Formula 1. Working on projects including hiring people for the BT Sport channel: “I kept hearing recruitment agencies making statements that I knew just weren’t true — like ‘there’s no woman at that level that can do the role’ or ‘there is no one racially diverse who is sufficiently qualified’.

“Things were being done just because ‘that’s the way we’ve always done it’. I became fed up enough to be the change I wanted to see.” It was when she gave birth to her daughter in 2015 that she decided to set up Diversifying Group: “I realised that if I didn’t try to change things, she would meet the same career challenges I had experienced as a woman of colour.”