So, Litquidity and Rich Handler (apparently his daughter came up with the idea) decided to ask their followers what financial services should do to improve diversity in FS.

They received more than 600 responses, his daughter picked top 100, and then they all together picked 25.

The results are: https://www.jefferies.com/special/pages/1668

Summarising points raised vs Submissions counted

Educate people from underrepresented communities via things such as high school presentations or mentoring - 10 out of 24 (3,7,9,11,12,13,14,16,17,21)

Misc [showing them their skills are valued to retain them (1), retaining senior bankers who will retain and mentor junior talent (4), increase referral fee if the referred candidate is diverse from the referrer (1), female leaders speaking on-campus (1), new analyst hires mentoring undergrads from their university (1), exactly what Mr. Handler is doing, which is being present on social media and offering advice (1)] - 9 out of 24

Recruit from non-targets - 6 out of 24 (1,2,4,5,16,17)

CV Blind processes - 4 out of 24 (5,6,8,16)

Submission number 20 was ignored because it doesnt make sense.

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Please do not take this as a reason NOT to read the responses from the link. If you don't have a lot of time, at least read reply n7.

My thoughts (Disclaimer: I'm a non-target who didn't get any impressive internships despite having a strong profile)

Out of those 600 responses, I bet a much larger chunk was "stop recruiting from Ivy League schools". Now when I summarised it, I agree that because of the fast recruiting processes high schools should be targeted and ideally alumni of those underprivileged high schools should speak to their kids. After all, they will come from the same background and only have a few years age difference (e.g. GS SA going back to his high school to tell kids his story).

However, I believe this is all fake PR BS. Investment bankers sell expertise/knowledge. MBB is even worse - you can't expect a 50 year old CEO to take seriously a recent grad from a low-ranking university. In asset management, most portfolio managers come from a good background just because it sounds impressive when you say "He went to Oxford". It implies that you are smart, and people take you more seriously.

While this was a good exercise, I doubt it will change anything.

What do you guys think?