There's no room for public school connections in the modern workplace. Executives who recruit and engage only with people like them are missing out on new talent
About 12 years ago when I was struggling to raise money to set up The Cinnamon Club, my father apologised to me for not being sufficiently wealthy to help me in the manner that friends had been supported by their parents. I told him that even if he had the money I wouldn't have taken it – I would rather fail than be artificially propped up. At least I hoped that's what I would have done.
Do we really live in an economy and society where entrepreneurship blossoms in all sections of our communities in an equal and fair manner or are some of us more equal than others? Do we properly apply principles of meritocracy within our own companies? I was made to wonder all this while having lunch with two friends who had been to top public schools and have used their address books to great commercial and social advantage over the years in the same way one assumes that Freemasons operate.
I pointed out to them that their career journeys would probably not have been so flourishing if they had gone to my south London comprehensive. The only old-boy network I have ever managed to grasp was, when sitting in the A&E ward of the local hospital, the captain of our school football team spotted me and I was moved up the waiting list – he wasn't a doctor, but an ambulance driver.
Getting the cream of the jobs for those when graduating, I found out later on, is invariably pre-ordained, hence the term "milk-round" for everyone else. Having been editor of the LSE newspaper and having also written regularly for magazines while a student, I safely presumed that one of the national newspapers would give me a trainee reporter position. But as I couldn't do a Nick Clegg and get a member of my family to make a call to someone suitably influential, it took me nearly three miserable years to land a job on The Independent.
Access into large companies is one thing; climbing up them is another and this is where latent biases enter the fold. An African journalist friend of mine had warned me about this – he had gone to a newspaper office and said he would like to talk to someone about a job and was sent to the basement where people were moving furniture. Joel had three university degrees and was then political editor of The Voice.
At first I struggled on the paper, not because the workload was so high but because it was so low. Then I worked out that the news editor would hand out the prime stories to those with whom he was socially familiar. Once I realised that work hours were more than the time spent on stories but also included a couple of hours in the pub with him and my colleagues, I began to make headway.
None of this suggests we live in the meritocratic world we may think we do. I was staggered to read a report which showed that banks charged higher interest rates to businesses led by women than those headed by men. There are reports of young black men who don't go into business because banks often won't give them an account, let alone a loan. This is appalling.
With my government work I have visited council estates where not a single person has a job. In many companies when you apply for a job, the first question you're asked is: Where do you currently work? If you're jobless, many managers won't even bother giving you an interview.
So let's embrace the unacceptable – that we live in an unfair world.
But is it really good for businesses to let old-boy networks and unchecked biases run through our organisations? If managers and directors recruit and engage only with people like them – those who won't rock the cosy corporate boat – not only are they not serving
society well, they are more than probably missing out on fresh
talent that would help take their businesses in new directions. As we are business folk more than social campaigners, perhaps this should be our focal point.
There's the updated version of the old saying "it's not what you know, it's who you know", which has now morphed into "it's not what or who you know, it's who knows you". Perhaps we can upgrade it again and ask: "Who is it that you don't know and what's that costing you?"
