Wells Fargo restores diversity guidelines after ‘fake interview’ fallout
Wells Fargo is reinstating the diverse hiring guidelines that it paused after accusations that some managers conducted “fake interviews” with nonwhite and female job applicants.
The San Francisco bank will continue to expect at least half of the candidates interviewed for some positions to be diverse, according to an announcement Monday.
But Wells is also making some tweaks to its hiring guidance, which reportedly helped lead to interviews of “diverse” candidates for jobs that had already been reserved for someone else.
Bloomberg
For example, the bank is changing the guidelines to specify the types of jobs that fall under its standards, defining those jobs by the level of a position rather than by whether a job pays at least $100,000.
The change is a “more consistent way to apply the guidelines across the company,” the $1.9 trillion-asset bank said in a press release.
Wells Fargo announced plans to reinstate the guidelines after conducting a review that lasted six weeks. The review identified several clarifications and “opportunities where we can further improve how the guidelines are implemented,” Bei Ling, the bank’s chief human resources officer, said in the press release.
The internal review included interviewing Wells Fargo’s recruiters and hiring managers about “what’s working and what’s not,” the bank said. Wells also said that it has held listening sessions with employees since mid-May, when the New York Times published its first report about fake interviews.
The newspaper’s findings sparked criticism of Wells Fargo by congressional Democrats and prompted a federal criminal probe by the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan.
Wells Fargo is “recommitting to our diverse candidate slate guidelines” after making certain changes, Ling said Monday. Those changes include revising an existing process for exception approvals, as well as providing updated training for recruiters and managers.
“We began this exercise knowing that diverse candidate slates work, and that they are a common, good practice across multiple industries,” Ling said. She added that the guidelines have helped Wells Fargo see “measurable increases in diverse representation.”
Last year, Wells reported a 27% jump in external hires of people from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, outpacing its overall external hiring volume increase of 17%.
The updated hiring guidelines will take effect on Aug. 19. Wells Fargo alluded to a potential future change of the 50% target, saying it expects the figure “will evolve as our diverse representation continues to improve.”
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