The Corporate Courage to Hire Differently: Inclusive Recruitment for Refugee Women

London is a city built on stories of reinvention, from tech hubs in Shoreditch to the financial heart of the city. Our businesses thrive because we attract global talent, fresh ideas, and relentless innovation.

And yet many skilled and motivated women are finding themselves locked out of this ecosystem. Women from refugee and asylum-seeking backgrounds have made London their home, bringing with them professional backgrounds in project management, engineering, education, and entrepreneurship. They are ready to contribute, but their entry is often blocked by how we design our hiring processes.

This past Refugee Week, the theme was courage. Every single day, refugee women show determination as they rebuild their lives in our capital. For business leaders, HR professionals, and hiring managers, it invites a simple reflection — Do our businesses have the corporate courage to meet them, and change the way we recruit?

During a recent Lunch & Learn Routes hosted at Islington's social enterprise hub Better Space, local business owners and change-makers brainstormed practical ways to address the employment challenges facing women from refugee backgrounds. It boiled down to a question of inclusive hiring, renegotiating the processes that decide who gets seen, shortlisted and welcomed in, and where specific changes in practice can have an effect.

This is the work we do through our Routes to Employment project, activating employers, placing women from our community into professional roles, and learning what’s useful and what’s not. This is a practical, grounded blueprint drawn from these experiences, the sector and the businesses working to get this right, in order to make your hiring processes more accessible.

Shifting the Mindset

Before changing your processes, there’s a need to rethink how your company defines talent.

Hire for ‘Culture Add’

Organisations can hire for a "culture fit,” which may lead to a filter for the familiar, hiring people who look, talk, and think like the team that already exists. Inclusion means changing the way we hire by looking for what is different. "Adding" is intentionally seeking out perspectives, skills, and life experiences that your organisation will benefit from. Refugee women bring an international worldview and adaptability. By welcoming them into our businesses, we are inviting different perspectives that can challenge habitual processes, shake up thinking, and help organisations grow.

Recognise Resilience

Resilience is a defining leadership trait. What’s less examined is whether hiring processes are built to spot it. Forced displacement requires individuals to navigate unfamiliar legal, linguistic, and social structures while rebuilding their lives, calling on the agility, problem-solving, and emotional intelligence that businesses would like in their leaders. But our own research into refugee women's employment journeys in London tells us otherwise. 13.2% of the women we surveyed said a lack of UK work experience when changing career path was holding them back, and a further 7.36% pointed specifically to having no UK work references, regardless of the experience they already had. London's job market lacks mechanisms for recognising skills and qualifications gained abroad (Routes to Employment, 2025). It’s clear that resilience rarely gets picked up where employers may be looking for it.

In our flagship mentoring programme, one of our alumni mentors, a senior Managing Director at a global financial services firm, recently reflected that watching her mentee show up consistently for their sessions, despite ongoing challenges, made her realise the resilience her mentee carried was a quality she wanted to emulate in her own leadership. If that shift in thinking can happen across a four-month mentoring relationship, what would a hiring process need to look like to recognise that same resilience at first meeting?

Rewriting Recruitment

Where the filtering happens, and how to take it apart.

Look Beyond the CV

A chronological CV assumes a steady, linear, and uninterrupted life, but for most refugee women, that's not the life they've experienced, and it's not a reflection of their capability. UK Government research on recruitment bias has found that AI screening tools learn from historical hiring patterns and can automatically score down CVs with employment gaps. This doesn't just lock out displaced talent, it also affects other groups, such as parents returning to the workforce, carers, and people managing long-term health conditions or disabilities.

We should focus on what people can do, using blind CV reviews where names, graduation years, and specific locations are redacted to minimise unconscious bias. Better yet, invite candidates to complete a simple, practical task that demonstrates their current skill set, instead of relying on a written history of where they have been. Sector initiatives, such as Aon’s Displaced Workforce Impact Programme in partnership with charity Refugee Employment Network (REN), have facilitated insight and corporate navigation sessions focusing on identifying transferable capabilities in helping displaced professionals understand the complexities of the UK job market. 

Stop Requiring UK Experience

Another persistent hurdle is the demand for local work experience or British references. Without that initial opportunity, people are often caught in a loop. They’re told they need UK experience to get the job, but are unable to get that experience because no one will take the first chance on them. The Tent Partnership for Refugees Employers' Guide to hiring refugees points to that pattern. Research from the CIPD Trust shows 39% of refugees surveyed had to drop down to an entry-level position compared to the role they held before arriving in the UK, and one in three said they never get to use the skills from their qualifications. Someone who has experience managing a budget, navigating a supply chain, or coordinating a team has already demonstrated what most employers are hiring for, regardless of the geography in which that experience was built. What's often missing isn't the skill, but the opportunity to show it.

Through Routes to Employment, we’ve been working with London employers to create paid placements to bridge the gap between refugee talent and the roles they’re qualified for. We supported a candidate into a three-month software developer role with web development agency Octophin Digital. She brought transferable skills from work experiences overseas, but had none in the UK. By introducing her to Octophin, and providing check-in support throughout the placement, we helped her translate that experience into a UK role. She’s now contributing to their digital work. 

Remove Jargon From Your Job Specs

Corporate British English is packed with acronyms, idioms, and industry slang that can feel intimidating to someone unfamiliar with UK workplace culture, even if they’re fluent in English. The Refugee Council ran two pilot projects reviewing their own recruitment processes, and those of two smaller partner organisations. One of their key findings coincides with the need to keep job descriptions short and clear. If a sector this close to the issue is reviewing its own language, one would assume that most job specs require similar scrutiny.

Inclusive Interviewing & Onboarding

The process that gets them through the door, and determines whether they stay.

Interview the Person

Treating every candidate identically isn't the same as treating them fairly. A person balancing childcare, temporary housing, or unreliable internet access doesn't start from the same place as someone who isn't dealing with any of that. A single interview format won't help you see who is better suited for the role. Embed flexibility as a standard. Offer asynchronous video interviews. Give a clear, step-by-step agenda of what the interview will cover. At Routes, we share interview questions with candidates a week ahead of time, because it removes some anxiety that has less to do with someone's ability, and more to do with how unfamiliar the process feels. If in-person interviews are required, offer to cover travel and childcare costs.

Local business owners we’ve spoken to worked through this question themselves, and landed on changes that could go further than most employers expect. Paid trial shifts let someone show you what they can do. Collaborative interviews, where a candidate works through a scenario alongside the team, can surface more than a list of interview questions. And whatever format is chosen, be explicit and consistent about what happens next. Specialist organisations like Breaking Barriers already build bespoke pathways with employer partners across retail, healthcare, and engineering, moving candidates through workshops and assessment days before a paid placement, rather than relying on an interview to decide. The employers they work with gain a more accurate read on candidates, and their teams pick up new skills and support in the process too.

Build Psychological Safety into Onboarding

True inclusion begins when the contract is signed. For someone with experience of displacement, entering a new working environment can feel overwhelming. Create a compassionate, trauma-informed onboarding pace. Never expect or pressure her to share her personal background or migration journey. Let her be known for her professional expertise, sharing her story only if she chooses.  Consider pairing her with a peer buddy outside her direct line management so that she can ask the questions a manager relationship might not make room for.

In our sector, organisations developed to support people with lived experience treat safety as something that requires structure. The Refugee Council's toolkit for managers, designed to help staff with lived experience of displacement build trust and progress in their careers, is worth referring to for any employer wanting to build supportive relationships, and adopt a strengths-based approach to bringing out skills.

Start With Your Organisation

The barriers worth looking at are the ones inside your own walls.

Question Day-to-day Norms

It’s easy for any business to sit inside its own echo chamber, assuming its recruitment and workplace culture are already open to everyone. Real change usually starts when leaders step outside that comfort zone and ask harder questions about who is being left out. At a recent networking breakfast with Vauxhall One, we asked business leaders to do exactly this, think about their own workplaces and question whether their processes are as inclusive as they think. It takes courage to admit where your systems are falling short, but that self-reflection is the moment inclusivity can be put potentially into action.

Invest in Proximity

You cannot shift a barrier you don’t fully understand. An effective, meaningful way to burst an organisation’s bubble is to bring your team into proximity with the realities of people you might not otherwise meet. Partnering with Routes to involve your senior leaders and managers in our bi-annual mentoring programme puts them in a four-month-long one-to-one relationship with someone navigating the distinct systemic barriers we’ve been mentioning so far.

Inspired by our mentoring partnership, UBS took it a step further, piloting a reverse mentoring scheme with us where refugee women who have previously worked towards their goals in our mentoring programme, mentored executives on cross-cultural understanding, leadership and resilience. It challenged these leaders on their assumptions, not as a tick-box exercise, but as a shift in how they think about ‘welcome’ and who belongs in their teams.

Taking the First Step

Rethinking everyday hiring practices takes effort. It means looking at habits and finding the courage to say, "This isn’t working for everyone, so let's try something different." When you open your doors to other individuals whose paths here haven't been straightforward, you can welcome colleagues with unique perspectives, approaches to problem-solving, and dedication.

The barrier most employers raise is capacity, that some of this is possible if there was more time or resources to spare. Yet, if a room of business owners can work through several ideas taking into consideration their limits under ten minutes, imagine what your team could do within an hour. Routes runs Lunch & Learns for businesses ready to take a closer look at their own hiring practices on where to start. If that's useful to you, get in touch.

My Journey with Routes: From Service User to Project Manager

Roula Kheder Alsheikh, the Routes to Employment Project Manager, shares the story of her time with Routes - from mentee to Project Manager.

As I prepare to leave my role at Routes and step into a new chapter in sustainability -  the career path I dreamed of when I first joined the Routes Mentoring Programme - I’ve been reflecting on the journey that brought me here. What began as a search for support during one of the most uncertain moments of my life became a transformative experience that shaped my confidence, my career, and my sense of belonging in the UK.

Finding Hope in a Difficult Time: My Mentoring Experience

In 2020, just after the first COVID‑19 lockdown was announced, I received a call from Daisy, the co‑founder of Routes. They told me, “Congratulations, we’ve found a mentor for you, and you have a place on our programme.” At a time when the job market was collapsing, organisations were reducing services, and uncertainty was everywhere, that call felt like a light at the end of the tunnel.

Being matched with a mentor who shared a similar background and who would support me for four months was more than I expected. It was exactly what I needed. I was actively searching for employment support, building a network, and applying for roles in Environmental Impact and Sustainability. Through the mentoring programme, I explored what it would take to reach that goal. I also realised that the journey would be longer and more complex than I had imagined.

During that period, Routes became more than a programme. It became a support system, a community that made London feel less overwhelming and less isolating for someone rebuilding their life as a refugee.

Routes as My Support Network

Through Routes, I was introduced to organisations committed to employing people with lived experience of displacement. This network helped me secure my first job in the UK as a Volunteer Manager at a social impact organisation.

Even after starting that role, I stayed connected to Routes. I was still holding onto my long‑term ambition of working in sustainability, and being part of the Routes community kept that goal alive. It reminded me of what I wanted to achieve and gave me the encouragement to keep moving toward it.

Routes team left to right: Programme Managers Tamana and Shunn. RtE Project Managers  Jocelyn and Roula. Fundraising Manager Ni, Head of programmes Wieke and Co-CEO Yeri

Exploring Refugee Employment Barriers

In 2023, I joined Routes as Project Development Manager. The opportunity to lead a research project on the systemic barriers facing refugee women in employment felt deeply personal. I had lived those challenges myself, but conducting the Routes to Employment research allowed me to understand them on a much deeper level. I spoke with refugee women, employers, sector organisations, and community groups. I uncovered hidden barriers, listened to stories that mirrored my own, and saw how policies, even small ones, can profoundly affect people’s lives. This work turned me into an advocate for refugee employment and strengthened my commitment to creating fairer pathways for women from my background, which is why I’m especially proud to have spoken about these issues on the Expert by Experience podcast, Community as a Superpower, a collaboration between Routes and Refugee Action for Refugee Week 2025.

Roula presenting the Routes to Employment research findings to a group of employers at the pilot project launching event

What I Learned Working at Routes

I have always admired the way Routes works, the kindness, the thoughtfulness, and the genuine care shown in every interaction. When I joined the team, I began to embody the organisation’s values: Joy, Welcome, and Autonomy.

I learned how small details can make people feel valued, acknowledged, and seen. I also learned what it means to create a space where people feel safe speaking, sharing, and growing. And throughout my time at Routes, I felt heard, supported, and trusted.

Closing This Chapter and Beginning the Next

Leaving Routes is bittersweet. This organisation has shaped my journey in ways I never expected, first as a mentee, then as a community member, and finally as a project manager. It helped me build the confidence, experience, and clarity I needed to return to my original goal: a career in sustainability.

As I move into this next chapter, I carry with me everything Routes has given me: the skills, the values, the community, and the belief that change is possible when people are supported with dignity and compassion.

Routes will always be part of my story, and I hope my journey inspires other refugee women to pursue their ambitions, no matter how distant they may seem.

Routes team left to right: Programme Manager Tamana, Head of programmes Wieke, RtE Project Manager Roula. Former Business and Partnership Lead and Co-founders Leyla and Daisy

Give to Gain

The theme of this year’s International Women’s Day is Give to Gain. Their website describes it as emphasising ‘the power of reciprocity and support. When people, organizations, and communities give generously, opportunities and support for women increase.’

Giving comes in many forms - money, time, knowledge, resources and support. Each has its place and importance, but the acts of giving that are genuinely reciprocal often leave the most lasting impact for everyone involved.

Reciprocity by design: Routes’ mentoring programme

Routes’ mentoring programme, which has been at the core of our work since 2018, is built on the understanding that relationships and networks are essential in rebuilding a life and career. It was designed as a programme of mutual impact - both on refugee and asylum-seeking women who join us as mentees, and professional women across sectors who join us as mentors. Mentees are supported to reach their goals and grow in confidence, whilst their mentors are supported to develop impactful and compassionate leadership skills. Along the way, both gain insights into experiences that are often very different to those in their usual networks or communities, broadening perspectives and fostering mutual understanding. A perfect encapsulation of Give to Gain.

‘This mentoring experience shaped my leadership skills in ways I never expected. It helped me recognize how essential soft skills—such as empathy, inclusivity, non-directive communication, collaboration, and support—are to being an effective and inclusive leader [...] Through this experience, I learned not only that these qualities are fundamental to good leadership, but also how to intentionally incorporate them into real leadership opportunities. This shift in perspective has been incredibly meaningful.’  - Mentor, 2026

Too often mentoring is positioned as an act of generosity, rather than a mutually beneficial relationship. Framing it this way reinforces an unequal dynamic, placing the mentor in a position of authority and the mentee as the passive recipient of goodwill. At Routes, we try to shift the balance of power towards something more equitable by designing our programme explicitly around the growth of both mentor and mentee, and by clearly recognising the value mentors gain from participating. A fundamental part of our mentor training focuses on inclusive practice, encouraging mentors to examine the assumptions they may carry (many rooted in cognitive bias that may go unnoticed) and to recognise how these shape the way they interpret other people’s experiences. This reflection is essential for building equity and allyship. It allows mentors to focus on listening to what their mentee is actually saying, rather than responding to assumptions about who they think that person is. In doing so, mentors gain valuable new perspectives, skills and experiences, all while giving their time and knowledge. 

"I developed a greater appreciation for the different journeys that people take to achieve their goals. It brought me a lot of joy to share a positive feeling, offer a listening ear, and work on practical exercises with my mentee so she could continue to make progress in her life's journey. She brought her whole self to each meeting, no matter the difficulties of the day. Something I wish to emulate as a leader." - Mentor, 2026

Giving money is essential

The idea behind Give to Gain raises an important point that giving isn’t just about money. While we wholeheartedly agree with this, it’s also important that we talk honestly about the ways in which non-profits are increasingly stretched for funding, and the impact this has on women and other communities that deserve more. Too many businesses want to support with time rather than money, without considering the broader investment needed to make those contributions truly valuable for the people they aim to support. 

We hear this all too often; organisations wanting to contribute only through volunteering opportunities for their employees, or offering work coaching but not paid work experience. We’ve also had many conversations with businesses asking to ‘access’ the women in our community because they have a product or service that could potentially benefit them. While the intention is often genuine, what’s frequently absent from these conversations is full consideration of the real barriers our community members face - whether that’s unequal access to technology, lack of childcare support, or the impact of unpredictable policy changes. Without that thinking built in from the start, we risk becoming another exercise in visibility and will fall short of translating these opportunities into meaningful outcomes for the women that we work with. 

While these opportunities can be valuable, they come with a hidden cost. Matching willing volunteers with meaningful opportunities to share their time and knowledge - and gain a valuable learning experience - requires significant organisational resource. This work is often expected to be absorbed by organisations like ours for free but instead, there needs to be more openness to discussing what a genuinely reciprocal partnership might look like. Without funding, it becomes hard to sustain our work or expand the reach and impact of our programmes. What we would like to see is a greater awareness of positionality when approaching these conversations, because without financial support, organisations like Routes - and the infrastructure that connects people with opportunities to give time and knowledge - will cease to exist. In 2024, over 900 small charities closed down in the UK, a sharp increase from previous years and a trend that we are seeing continue. 

Strategic giving that delivers for everyone

We have wonderful experiences of collaborating with businesses in dynamic ways that serve both of our interests, and we’d love to connect with more businesses interested in setting up reciprocal partnerships. Real impact (or real gain) requires strategic giving: combining time, knowledge and resources with financial investment in the infrastructure that makes these contributions sustainable and outcome-driven. Through partnerships that include financial support, we can explore:

• Inviting employees onto our mentoring programme. They’ll get 15 hours of training and the opportunity to hone their new skills while mentoring a woman from our community. 

• Setting up work placements for refugee women in your workplace. We prepare and match suitable candidates for your position and provide wraparound support through the placement.

• We can deliver high quality training or consultation on inclusive leadership with your teams. 

• We can provide data that will help you deliver your ESG or impact goals. 

• We can connect you with trusted socially impactful ITAD (IT Asset Disposal) partners for donating much-needed tech equipment (e.g. laptops), who can manage secure redistribution and provide relevant impact reporting. 

• We’re open to other ideas if you are looking for something different but related to our scope of work. 

‘I couldn't recommend the mentoring programme more. For anyone interested in leading in a way that challenges what we've come to know as our common experience - top down, hierarchical etc. Routes provide the most refreshing counter point. I've learnt so much about the ways in which we can empower others while being a leader and I think the working world would be a much better place if everyone took part in this experience.’ - Mentor, 2025

15 moments from Routes’ 15th Mentoring Cohort

Routes 15th Mentoring cohort mentees and mentors with Routes Mentoring Programme Managers Shunn and Tamana at the end of programme celebration event.

In the first week of February 2026, we came together at St Margaret’s House The Gallery Cafe to celebrate the journeys of our 15th mentoring cohort, who began their mentoring experience with Routes in October 2025. Over four months, mentors and mentees shared time, stories, challenges, and growth. As the programme came to a close after 4 months, Mentoring Programme Manager Tamana Safi reflect on what unfolded, not just in outcomes, but in the many small, meaningful moments that shaped this journey for women from different backgrounds.

As we come to the end of our 15th mentoring programme, we are ending this programme with 15 mentors and mentees, we’re pausing, as we always try to,  to notice what really happened, reflect, what we have learned and what are our key take-aways from the programme.

Not outcomes alone, there is a lot that happened and we all have a lot of moments.

Because mentoring doesn’t move in straight lines. It moves in conversations, in pauses, in small shifts that are easy to miss unless you’re paying close attention.

Regeena (alumni mentee) and fellow Mentoring Programme participants at the end of programme celebration event.

Below are fifteen moments from our 15th programme. None of them belong to just one person. They belong, in different ways, to everyone who took part in our 15th cohort.

1. It begins, as it often does, with a two line introduction and three words on personality, held without needing to be fixed or to be changed.
2. A first meeting started with excitement plus nervousness, with names spoken carefully and loudly, with expectations laid down, like a table we agree to share.
3. A story of studying by candlelight, shared slowly, with care and passion.
4. A confidence shaken at a job centre, and slowly rebuilt somewhere safer.
5. A CV is opened, closed, and opened again - revisited and rewritten, until it finally feels like it belongs to the person whose name is at the top.
6. A mock interview turns into laughter. Not because it is easy, but because it is safe.
7. A session where the goal steps back, and listening takes its place.
8. An unexpected email that quietly opens a door of opportunities
9. A first TikTok video was posted, and pride allowed it to land without apology.
10. A strength exercise that changes how someone speaks about themselves and tells their story with pride and autonomy.
11. An in-person meeting that makes everything feel more real.
12. A boundary named, around work, family, time, or energy, and respected.
13. A qualification passed amid childcare, pain, exhaustion, and persistence.
14. A mentor learning alongside, not ahead.
15. A closing moment where someone says, simply: 

““I feel closer now.”
“I feel connected now.”
“We’ll stay in touch.”
And someone reads aloud a “Letter to Your Future Self.””

— Mentee, 2026

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Closer to confidence.
Closer to clarity.
Closer to themselves.

In the words of Tamana this is what Routes 15 Mentoring Programme have taught us: change doesn’t always announce itself loudly. Often, it arrives quietly, through trust, consistency, and being met where you are.

We’re grateful to every mentor and mentee who brought their full selves into these spaces, and to the many moments,  seen and unseen,  that shaped this journey.

As we close our 15th programme, we carry this with us: progress can be gentle, and still be real.

As we close this chapter, we’re already looking ahead. Each cohort teaches us something new, and we carry those learnings into the next group of mentoring relationships. This is not the final closure, we look forward to welcoming all our 15th graduate pairs in our alumni community and we look forward to the moments that will unfold there, in their own time and in their own way.

Routes 16th Mentoring Programme starts in March 2026. We can't wait to welcome a new cohort onto our Programme and we're hoping to almost double the size of the next cohort. Stay tuned for stories from current and future participants!

Please do reach out to tamana@routescollective.com if you are interested in supporting our Mentoring Programme.

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