When Cynthia Davis secured her first job in recruitment, there were 120 other consultants at her executive search firm. “Only five of them were women, and I was the only person of colour,” the entrepreneur explains. “My early career was marred with racist jokes disguised as banter, which I felt I had to endure.”
Fast forward a few decades, and Davis set up her own, diversity-focused recruitment agency, which is set to hit £2.5 million turnover this year. “All those misogynistic comments and racist jokes strengthened my resolve to change the world of work for the better. I didn’t want to recruit people into the culture I had been working in. I wanted it to change.”
Initially Davis, now 45, embraced a traditional corporate career path, working in recruitment at Carphone Warehouse, BT, and for Formula 1. Working on projects including hiring people for the BT Sport channel, “I kept hearing recruitment agencies making statements that I knew just weren’t true - like ‘there’s no woman at that level that can do the role’ or ‘there is no-one racially diverse who is sufficiently qualified’.
“Things were being done just because ‘that’s the way we’ve always done it’. I became fed up enough to be the change I wanted to see.” It was when she gave birth to her daughter in 2015 that she decided to set up Diversifying Group: “I realised that if I didn’t try to change things, she would meet the same career challenges I had experienced as a woman of colour.”
It started very simply: Davis launched her agency, then called BAME Recruitment from her kitchen table, with £3000 of savings, and her newborn in a baby carrier: “I’d be walking her to sleep whilst making phone calls, or have her in her rocking chair next to me whilst I did emails. Having worked in recruitment for over 22 years, I saw what was missing and endeavoured to fill that gap.”
One of her first major clients was former Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow; “the House of Commons had previously always recruited from within Whitehall; Bercow wanted change, not the same old people, and one of his staff stumbled across us.” Invited to pitch for the recruitment role at Parliament, Davis admits: “I felt so nervous, all these recruiters turned up with huge teams of people, and I was just the underdog, on my own. But I got the job because they said I was the only person who told them the truth.”
Davis helped Bercow appoint the first woman of colour to the Speaker’s Counsel in the history of this post. That helped the company get noticed; other early clients included the Mayor of London: “Sadiq [Khan] was committed to making sure that the people responsible for the creative advertising around London - billboards etc - represented multicultural London.” Then came Comic Relief, for whom Diversifying recruited five trustees to its board.
Today, Diversifying works in a consultancy role as well as recruitment: “hiring the right candidates is only one aspect of being an inclusive employer. Many of our partners have great intentions but need help to create an environment where people of all characteristics can truly belong. Whether it’s inclusive events to rehabilitate their brand image, staff training, [or] recruitment services to broaden their talent pool, we are a “critical friend” to our clients.”
Clients now include Amazon Prime, TikTok, eBay, Virgin Atlantic, BAFTA, and the BBC, the National Theatre, Lloyds Banking Group and the Royal Household, which advertises roles including recently the Princess of Wales’ PA job, on Diversifying.io, a diversity-focused online jobs board.
Turnover hit £1.5 million last year, and is expected to exceed £2.5 million this financial year. Davis has never taken on funding, steadfastly reinvesting profits. Recession, and squeezed corporate budgets, are a worry. “Sadly Diversity and Inclusion policies are often among the first to drop off the agenda. The long-term effects of this could be catastrophic, reversing workplace equality efforts and disproportionately affect[ing] the most vulnerable in our society, who are already underrepresented and underprivileged in the workplace - women, people of colour, disabled, poor and LGBTQ+ employees.”
Macroeconomics isn’t the only thing to trigger ebbs and flows in Diversifying’s business: the news does too. “The murder of George Floyd had a very big impact on the world and the phone didn’t stop ringing for many months after that as CEO’s woke up to the tragic inequalities that existed in their companies. Now, we work on to bring about change.”
Staff: 32
HQ: Aldgate
Founded: 2015
Turnover: £1.5m
