Pictured: Host Andrew Ryan (left); Raph Mokades, Rare; Anna Ward, Legal Week

Raph Mokades, managing director of graduate recruitment agency Rare, won the Outstanding Innovator award for creating a new recruitment tool which helps businesses identify the UK’s most talented graduates from different backgrounds.

Mokades set up Rare on his own over a decade ago after working in a diversity role for media company Pearson for three years.

More recently, Mokades has focused on setting up Rare’s Contextual Recruitment System (CRS), which has been live for the past eighteen months.

To put candidates’ achievements in context, this tool provides details of the circumstances they grew up in with the ultimate aim of boosting social mobility in privileged professions such as law. For example, it allows companies to rate potential recruits against the average performance of their school.

Those using CRS are able to see an applicant’s GCSE and A-level results in the context of the performance of their whole school – meaning it is immediately obvious when their results may be lower than a rival candidate’s but their achievement may have been greater.

Since its launch, the system has processed more than 100,000 applications in order to help firms increase the amount of candidates they recruit from disadvantaged backgrounds.

So far, more than 20 law firms have signed up, including the entire magic circle.

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© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.

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© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.