All applicants for data analytics internships recently offered by UK auto-enrolment pension scheme NEST were women, with the defined contribution provider having advertised the roles using gender-neutral and outcome-focussed language.
NEST ended up appointing five from what it said was a strong field of 19 candidates that it received. It worked on the recruitment initiative with a programme called Q-Step, launched in 2013/14 as a response to the shortage of quantitatively-skilled social science graduates in the UK.
Q-Step partners with universities around the country with NEST working with it through the University of Manchester. Individuals applying for internships as part of the Q-Step programme can apply to a range of organisations.
IPE understands that the Q-Step programme is not only for women; the proportion of successfully-placed applicants who have been women is 65%.
At NEST, the internship recruitment is connected with efforts to build a data community to make the most of a wealth of data that it, as the largest pension scheme by membership in the UK, holds about savings and employment patterns in the country.
The aim is to maximise this resource to deliver the next generation of pension scheme, “focussing on a revolutionary programme of customer service design that puts data at the heart of the customer experience”.
As part of its drive to recruit interns in this area, NEST said its ambition was to help open the data analytics field, traditionally dominated by men, to more women.
It said job descriptions for data analytics roles, when run through a gender bias tool, “reveal language where 95% of the words used are masculine”.
The interns that NEST has appointed will work for eight weeks, earning a living wage, and focus on analysing and visualising the scheme’s data as well as data from internal staff surveys.
Christina Finlay, director of data and analytics at NEST, said: “Changing the demographic of an industry takes action from all sides – encouraging women to apply for our data analytics internships is just one step, but we believe it’s the first step on a journey to move data analytics from a very masculine world, to one which more accurately reflects the world we live in.
”I hope this encourages more women to consider a career in data analytics and I am looking forward to working with the five women from University of Manchester this summer to help not only build their skills and experience, but to develop the data community at NEST.”
NEST has more than 10 million members and is projected to have close to £100bn (€116bn) in assets under managment by the end of the next decade.
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