2017 saw a marked uptick in the political awareness and social activism of the Rare network. We cover the Rare alums who launched the Oxford Black Alumni Network and the ongoing success of Target Oxbridge in this newsletter.

Meanwhile, our Contextual Recruitment System has continued to grow, moving successfully through a series of technical improvements.

Only by fundamentally improving the process - both re-calibrating the assessment of a candidate’s achievements to factor in any challenging circumstances, and retraining recruiters to counteract unconscious bias – will businesses be able to recruit on merit. If you’re at a top firm that you don’t see listed in our CRS client list, and you have the ear of senior player on the recruitment side of the business, we’d love to hear about it.

 

 

Highlights at Rare:

• Our impressive client roster continues to grow, as management consultancy Bain & Co, international law firms DLA Piper, Cooley and Osborne Clarke signed on to use our CRS. The CRS now has 57 users in the UK, US and Australia, including 13 of the UK’s top 15 law firms;
  
• Six Rare alums, inspired by the example of African American students at Ivy League universities, set up the Oxford Black Alumni Network, part of the official Oxford University Alumni network;
  
• We kicked off our alumni spotlight series, celebrated the top ten Black UK students with our ninth year of Rare Rising Stars at the Palace of Westminster, held a networking event for our clients and top African Caribbean student societies, and prepped our school-leavers for higher education;
  
• We’ve been called upon repeatedly to add nuance and expert analysis to the debate raging around the demographics of the Oxbridge student body, brought to light by David Lammy MP’s ongoing campaign for faster progress;
  
• An incredible 40 Rare candidates were accepted onto the prestigious Civil Service Fast Stream intake for 2017;
  
• As our Target Oxbridge selection process continues for 2018’s prospective applicants, we bid a warm farewell to this year’s crop of high flyers as they began their undergraduate studies in October.

For all Rare news, you can always visit our website here.

We’ll look forward to sharing more of our updates with you in 2018.

Raphael Mokades
Managing Director