JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Wells Fargo is responding after a New York Times report alleged that management level employees at the bank held "fake interviews" with people of color and women in order to falsify diversity efforts.
Emily Flitter reports that former executive Joe Bruno, who she says worked his way up to market leader for Wells Fargo Advisors in Jacksonville, claimed that diverse candidates would regularly be interviewed for sham jobs that were already filled or promised to somebody else.
Wells Fargo says it can't corroborate those claims as factual.
The Times reports that Wells Fargo adopted a formal policy that requires management to bring in and interview a profile of candidates that were diverse for available jobs paying more than $100,000 annually.
Bruno reportedly complained about the practice to his superiors, but tells The Times he was later fired in retaliation.
Wells Fargo says Bruno was terminated on Aug. 16, 2021, following an internal investigation which found that he retaliated against another employee who had filed an internal complaint against him.
They also offered this statement in regard to the report from The Times:
"Yesterday, The New York Times published a story alleging that a handful of Wells Fargo managers decided to hire a job candidate and then — after making this decision — interviewed diverse candidates, knowing that the seat had already been filled. We researched all specific claims the reporter shared with us in advance of the story’s publication and could not corroborate the claims as factual."
Wells Fargo says that since company guidelines were implemented requiring diverse candidate slates for the majority of jobs that pay more than $100,000 a year, it has seen "significant improvements in diverse representation at the company."
In 2021, the company says overall U.S. external hiring volume went up by 17% compared to 2020. It claims over the same time period in the U.S., external hiring of individuals from racially or ethnically diverse populations increased by 27%.
"This means that the pace of external diverse hiring was 10 percentage points higher than the pace of hiring overall from 2020-2021," the company said.
"These numbers tell the story of our progress in a fact-based, quantitative way. They demonstrate clear, measurable outcomes. We believe in diverse slates, and the results show they are working."
The company says it takes the nature of the allegations in The Times story seriously and that it's working to continue an internal review into the claims.