Wells Fargo & Co., the San Francisco-based bank that’s been dealing with a series of scandals and regulatory issues, has temporarily halted the use of diversity guidelines for hiring after a report that staff held fake interviews with minority candidates to satisfy in-house rules.
The firm will “pause the use of diverse slate guidelines for several weeks” as it reviews the matter, Chief Executive Officer Charlie Scharf said in a memo.
“We will continue to actively seek diversity in hiring, even during this pause,” Scharf wrote. “The pause is a chance for us to review our guidelines and processes and to make improvements — it does not mean that anyone at Wells Fargo should stop hiring or stop actively recruiting diverse candidates.”
The New York Times reported last month on the issue, citing current and former employees who said supervisors in the wealth-management division had instructed them to interview Black and female candidates for positions that had already been promised to someone else.
The Times story on May 19 said a former employee in the bank’s wealth management business had complained he was being forced by his bosses to interview people for jobs that had already been promised to others, just to meet the “diverse slate” requirement.
The man, Joe Bruno, was one of a dozen current and former Wells Fargo employees who said they had witnessed or participated in fake interviews, the NYT story said. The purpose was to record the fact that “diverse” candidates had been interviewed in case bank regulators checked whether Wells Fargo was giving minorities a fair shot at getting jobs, they said.
Bloomberg’s Dan Reichl and The New York Times contributed to this report.
