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bank has also made some initial steps in the direction of contextualised recruitment, as well as signing up as a member of the so - called social mobility compact, which promotes social inclusion and mobility in the uk. heckman ( 2006 ) finds that very early intervention for disadvantaged children is crucial in order to affect outcomes. intervening when a child is over the age of six has comparatively little effect. attanasio and blundell ( 2014 ). feinstein ( 2003 ). commission on child poverty and social mobility ( 2014 ). bis central bankers ’ speeches across all organisations and institutions, there is plainly much further to go. this new dimension to the diversity debate could, if the evidence is even half - right, yield high organisational and societal returns from a modest investment in better measurement and in different approaches to recruitment and performance. ( c ) recruitment strategy recruitment is typically a singular pursuit. the successful candidate is typically the one deemed to best meet the job requirements. in this way, recruitment is meritocratic, a darwinian survival of the fittest. yet most organisations are not singular. they are team sports. what matters most to organisations is collective performance, not individual brilliance. most successful ones are not a darwinian dog - fight. diversity is important precisely because it improves collective functioning, over and above individual ability – recall the “ page equation ”. diversity is, by definition, a collective concept. that lays bare a potential tension between recruitment practices, which typically focus on the characteristics of the individual, and organisational success, which typically relies on the characteristics of the collective. this disconnect is, interestingly enough, the self - same one exposed by the global financial crisis. pre - crisis regulation was also individually - focussed. regulators looked at banks one by one. each of them individually had good cvs, strong social skills, were smartly dressed. yet the collective consequence was a financial system in which everyone looked the same, thought the same and placed the same bets. that lack of diversity left the whole system vulnerable to collapse which, of course, it duly did. since the crisis, regulators have learned their lesson. regulation has taken on a systemic orientation, with regulatory measures calibrated to risk across the financial system as a whole. that means regulators taking measures which promote system - wide diversity, such as encouraging new entrants into the field with new business models. in short, financial regulation these days seeks to take explicit account of the social externalities of