The Key Learning Points:

 1. The importance of diverse recruitment in the workplace

 2. The most effective to implement inclusive hiring methods

3. The extent to which the Black Lives Matter movement has put the United States ahead in conversations about race and diversity in the workplace

Today on the remote Risky Mix Podcast we’re joined by the wonderful Christina Brooks, co-founder of Ruebik, a boutique executive search firm specialising in sourcing and placing diverse candidates. Christina has a stellar career history in HR with experience in research, delivery, leadership and learning, and global executive talent acquisition at firms such as the BBC, Frazer Jones, Kinsey Allen and Rolls-Royce. She’s now taken this impressive experience to Ruebik. She’s also a trustee of the Footsteps Trust, a charitable organisation offering students with emotional behavioural difficulties alternative pathways for education, career progression and the ability to reach their maximum potential.

Born in Gloucestershire, Christina moved to Tottenham in London at the age of 14 when her mother identified that London offered far more opportunities for black individuals than their hometown did. “It was a real eye-opener to me because I was just introduced to this explosion of colour and different people and different ethnicities. I really got to see and live with other cultures, which was very fundamental in shaping my business and what I stand for today.” Christina decided not to go to university and instead started work at the BBC, where she “cut her teeth” in the corporate world, working in the HR department. 

From the BBC, Christina moved into the financial services executive search industry and says that “it was actually really hard” to transition from a creative industry into financial services: “I didn’t notice the colour of my skin or the gender that I happened to be in that environment. It was somewhere that I felt I belonged.” The new world of finance was not as diverse or inclusive and Christina says “I felt like I’d left colour behind”. She shares a particularly shocking story of a time when she met a finance candidate face-to-face:  “What I didn’t realise at the time was that my colour wasn’t an issue because they assumed that they were speaking with a white individual, they didn’t actually realise I was black on the other end of the phone.” 

Christina left exec search behind and moved into more corporate function roles. “Yes diversity did increase, but the conversation was still not there around racial diversity. What we were talking about was gender diversity and making that more of a level playing field.” She also spent some time with a diversity recruitment agency: “What I was fortunate enough to do was to champion underrepresented communities all day every day. And that’s really where my passion came from in terms of specialising in the underserved.” 

The conversion naturally moves onto diverse recruitment and Christina explains that she doesn’t believe in positive discrimination because she feels that it dilutes professionalism and skillsets. For her, inclusive methods of hiring are key, and they have to come from the top. 

Christina does some work internationally and she adds that the US is much further ahead in terms of the conversation around inclusion because it’s been so polarised there for such a long time as we’ve seen with the Black Life Matter movement, so conversations have happened sooner than they have here in the UK. “There’s an electricity of opportunity right now! Firstly, the conversation around race. And secondly, COVID-19, which has completely revolutionized the way in which we work.”