Demystifying contextual recruitment and how it can benefit you

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What’s contextual recruitment?

Contextual recruitment is a process that considers a candidate’s personal background to put ‘eligibility criteria’ into context. Contextual recruitment systems use a research-backed algorithm to analyse any disadvantages you may have faced growing up (such as income barriers), which could’ve affected your grades in a way that doesn't reflect your true potential. They’re important tools created to help level the playing field for students from less-advantaged backgrounds when applying to top graduate jobs. They recognise that circumstances outside of a student’s control, such as the school they attended, can have a profound impact on the opportunities they are given.

For example, the social mobility charity upReach developed its own contextual recruitment tool, REALrating, which a high number of law firms have adopted into their recruitment process. Among other factors, contextual recruitment takes a look at a candidate’s A-level grades and compares these to the average A-level grades at their school. If the candidate has achieved higher than average grades, it can show that the candidate has achieved against the odds and create a higher contextualised grade. For example, if you got BBB at A-level, it could be contextualised to AAA because of the environment you grew up in.

Discover more about upReach and REALrating on LawCareers.Net.

Contextual recruitment is recommended by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) when removing barriers in recruitment, stating that it can help firms “select the most able candidates”. In the past year, the number of firms using REALrating has increased from seven to 22 law firms, including Eversheds Sutherland (International) LLP, Shoosmiths, Fox Williams LLP and Peters & Peters. Nevertheless, many candidates still feel apprehensive about completing contextual recruitment. The purpose of this article is to address some of those concerns and demystify the process.

Debunking myths about contextual recruitment

A common misconception about contextual recruitment is that it can negatively impact a candidate’s application performance by highlighting their background, reducing their grades or flagging disadvantage indicators to the employer. But this is not the case.

A contextual recruitment tool will never reduce a candidate’s A-level grades. If there is no evidence of disadvantage or defying the odds, the grades will remain the same. Employers also use contextual recruitment to increase the likelihood of candidates with disadvantage indicators being considered for a role who might otherwise be filtered out. Therefore, it wouldn’t be used against the candidate in their application.

A blog post published by the Bar Council highlighted this: “All chambers and employers recruit candidates based on objective criteria and are looking for those who have the potential to be excellent barristers. The contextual recruitment information provides an extra data point to support the identification of those with the potential to succeed at the Bar, and supports rather than replaces the qualification criteria chambers are interested in.”

Speaking to students and friends, there seems to be a difference in views between generations on how likely an employer is to use indicators of disadvantage to discriminate against a candidate. It’s true that parity in the sector, particularly when it comes to socioeconomic background, might not be achieved in the near future – still, only 18% of lawyers were from lower socioeconomic backgrounds in 2023 according to the SRA.

Nonetheless, it’s evident that attitudes have changed and employers are much more interested in closing this gap than before. From a total of 17 positions and 196 offers across seven firms using REALrating in the 2023/24 recruitment cycle, 44% of offers made were to candidates with at least the minimum indication of disadvantage. This shows that firms are considering and making offers to candidates from more disadvantaged backgrounds.

Candidates may also choose not to complete a contextual recruitment questionnaire due to the time it adds on to completing the application. This is understandable, as it’s very common for legal applications to be intensive and time consuming. When balancing this alongside university workload and other applications, any possible shortcuts might be attractive. However, in reality, these questionnaires only take two to three minutes to complete, require no research as they are questions about you and could significantly increase your chances of your application being successful.

For those reasons, they are potentially worth the time they take, as can also be seen in the Bar Council’s blog post: “In addition to academic success and work experience, we highly value skills and attributes that are less easily evidenced: resilience, enthusiasm and tenacity. These cannot be conveyed by grades or a chronology of mini-pupillages, which is why contextual recruitment is so vital in understanding the individual story behind each applicant.”

Another concern that understandably arises when submitting personal information online is the risk of your data being stolen for purposes it was not intended for. This is of course a valid fear and something we should all be wary of. However, providers of contextual recruitment systems are highly aware of these risks and mitigate them through additional data protection policies, such as annual tests to evaluate hackers’ ability to compromise security, and international standard certifications for information security and cyber essentials. Furthermore, if you fill in a contextual recruitment questionnaire and after receiving the result of your application, wish for your data to be deleted, you may have the right to erasure under data protection law.

The future of contextual recruitment

What’s important to consider is the constantly changing climate in recruitment as well as societal norms. Questionnaires used by contextual recruitment systems use multiple choice questions that can come across as rigid as they don’t offer the opportunity to explain further. However, this is necessary to offer a standard practice and ensure fairness across all users of the system. Also, the majority of questions are simple yes or no answers, where no nuance is required. Nevertheless, contextual recruitment providers need to ensure they’re reviewing their algorithm and analysis frequently to keep up with changes in society.

Contextual recruitment is always your choice and you’ll always have the option to opt out. It’s important to consider the benefits you could receive by participating in contextual recruitment  and how the system will ’ never put your application at a disadvantage. The more contextual recruitment is used by applicants, the more it can support changing the landscape of graduate recruitment, especially in the legal sector. 

Fara Asra is a law programme leader at upReach.