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Wells Fargo Revives Policy That Led to Fake Job Interviews, With Tweaks

The bank will reinstate a requirement to assemble a “diverse slate” of job candidates while adding flexibility, according to an internal memo.

Beginning Aug. 19, the bank's diverse hiring practice will be reinstated with new features to prevent abuse, according to a memo seen by The Times.Credit...Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Wells Fargo is reactivating a hiring practice that it paused this year after a former employee revealed that it was leading managers to interview nonwhite candidates for jobs that had already been filled, according to a memo seen by The New York Times.

The bank’s practice, known as its “diverse slate” policy, requires that half the candidates interviewed for certain jobs be female or nonwhite. It also calls for the panel of people interviewing candidates for certain jobs to be “diverse.” Beginning Aug. 19, the practice will again be put in place for certain jobs, with new features added to prevent abuse, according to the memo, which was sent to managers at the bank on Monday.

The bank acknowledged in the memo that its guidelines could be improved. One problem executives found, according to the memo: “Our guidelines and processes can be overly prescriptive.”

The biggest changes will be increased training for managers and an easier approval process for exemptions to the diverse slate requirement.

There will also be a change in which open jobs must meet the requirement. The earlier version of the policy required that every job with a salary of $100,000 or more be filled only after interviews were conducted with a diverse slate of candidates.

“Instead of the previous compensation-based criteria, roles that are in-scope will now be based on job level, not compensation,” the memo said. It did not specify which job levels would fall within the requirement.

Wells Fargo suspended the policy on June 6 after The Times reported that a former employee in the bank’s wealth management business had complained that he was being forced by his bosses to interview people for jobs that had already been promised to others, just to meet the diverse hiring requirement. Overall, 12 current and former employees told The Times that they either had participated in fake interviews or were aware of the practice.

On June 9, The Times reported that federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York were investigating whether Wells Fargo had violated job candidates’ civil rights.

When they suspended the policy, the bank’s leaders vowed to spend the following weeks talking to employees to find out how to improve the program.

“Overwhelmingly, we heard the need to improve the candidate and manager experience and the need for a stronger and longer-term commitment and investment to help employees develop their skills and grow their careers,” the memo said.

In a statement emailed to news outlets on Monday announcing the revival of the policy, Bei Ling, Wells Fargo’s head of human resources, said the bank had compared its policies to those of other banks and large companies and decided that, as a concept, requiring “diverse slates” of job candidates was a “common, good practice.”

A correction was made on 
Aug. 1, 2022

An earlier version of this article misstated the day a Wells Fargo statement was sent to reporters announcing the revival of its diverse slate hiring policy. It was Monday, not Wednesday.

How we handle corrections

Emily Flitter covers banking and Wall Street. She is the author of “The White Wall: How Big Finance Bankrupts Black America.” More about Emily Flitter

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section B, Page 3 of the New York edition with the headline: Wells Fargo Tweaks Policy That Led to Fake Job Interviews. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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