"My ethnicity means I can't get senior banking jobs"

I am an Indian national living in the UK. I have considerable experience in the finance sector, and many recruiters and HR managers have informed me that my CV is very strong. However, hiring managers reject me again and again and again.

I believe this is because of my ethnicity. When you are Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) you have to try ten times harder to get a new role in finance. In my experience this is particularly the case at European banks. American banks often appear to be more open-minded, but European banks seem to prefer to recruit people with less experience and education than me, as long as they are Caucasian. 

I know that people will disagree with this. There is a lot of noise about banks hiring more BAME candidates, but noise is all it is. I have many talented and experienced BAME friends who are unable to find jobs like me and who are suppressed by ethnic British hiring managers in London. Most of them are unwilling to say anything about it. 

The discrimination against people of my ethnicity worsens as you climb the ladder. People in banking have a huge superiority complex; they don't like to be managed or trained by someone of a different ethnicity. When I became a senior manager at a former employer, members of the team started moving on because they didn't want to take orders from a BAME manager. 

There is therefore a glass ceiling. BAME people are ok in junior and mid-level roles in the middle and back office of banks in London, but it's very difficult to progress beyond that. As a result, a lot of BAME people end up shut out of the market and desperately seeking work in other sectors instead. This needs to change.

Kamala Saraf is a pseudonym 

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