Finding any type of certainty in our current times is difficult. However, what is undeniably certain is that the COVID-19 pandemic has radically accelerated digital transformation in talent acquisition. Employers are relying on the capability of their tech stacks to maintain productivity, and many of them are looking at strategically expanding those capabilities to solve the new challenges they face.
My guests this week are Karl Porter and Charlie Hooper from the talent acquisition team at Metro Bank. In our conversation, we talk about how Metro Bank is adapting its talent acquisition strategy, the technology they are using and why candidate experience remains critically important.
In the interview, we discuss:
• How COVID-19 is accelerating digital transformation at Metro Bank
• Evolving recruiting challenges
• Using technology to enhance candidate contact strategy
• Remote onboarding
• Automation
• Leveraging employer brand to reduce marketing spend
• Providing an optimal candidate experience
• The long term focus for talent acquisition
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Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Support for this podcast comes from Avature ats, an applicant tracking system that redefines user experience for candidates, recruiters and hiring managers. Just listen to one of the many ways in which L’Oreal USA has improved their hiring process with Avature, as told by Edward Dias, Director of Recruitment, Intelligence and Innovation.
Edward Dias [00:00:25]:
Since we’ve been using Avature ATS globally, we have been able to massively improve our communication rate with candidates during and following their application. Before, over a million people worldwide would never get contacted, but with the smart optimization and flexible processes, we’ve been able to change that and that’s been a huge achievement.
Matt Alder [00:00:48]:
Visit avature.net that’s a V A T U R E.net to learn why global market leaders like L’Oreal choose Avature to extend the candidate experience. From shoulder taps to first day.
Matt Alder [00:01:22]:
Hi everyone, this is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 275 of the Recruiting Future podcast. Finding any type of certainty in our current times is difficult. However, what is undeniably certain is that the COVID 19 pandemic has radically accelerated the digital transformation of talent acquisition. Employers are relying on the capability of their tech stacks to maintain productivity, and many of them are looking at strategically expanding those capabilities to solve the new challenges they face. My guests this week are Karl Porter and Charlie Hooper from the talent acquisition team at Metro Bank. In our conversation, we talk about how Metro bank is adapting its talent acquisition strategy, the technology they’re using, and why candidate experience remains critically important. Hi Karl. Hi Charlie. Welcome to the podcast. Could we just start by you introducing yourselves and telling us what you do?
Karl Porter [00:02:32]:
Hi, I’m Karl Porter. I am Director of Talent Acquisition for Metro bank, which ultimately means I’m responsible for bringing in talent into the organization and ensuring that we are delivering against our workforce demand. I’m recently new to the bank. I joined in February 2020 and bring over 23 years of talent acquisition experience from both in house and out of house.
Charlie Hooper [00:02:59]:
Hi, I’m Charlie Hooper. So I’m a talent advisor here at Metro bank and I’m responsible for managing the hiring process for all of our frontline business development teams. Joined here in 2016, so been here longer than Karl. My background there is in agency recruiting, price coming in house. I’m also, as part of my role, quite heavily involved in the implementation of our frontline recruitment strategy for 2020.
Matt Alder [00:03:24]:
Fantastic stuff. So, just for people who may not Be aware of Metro Bank. Could you tell us a little bit about the organization?
Karl Porter [00:03:32]:
Yeah, certainly. So Metro bank was awarded the sort of first high street banking license for over 100 years in the UK and we’re just coming up to our 10th anniversary, so we’re still relatively new as a challenger bank. We’ve got in excess of 2 million customers at the moment and we really see ourselves as a community bank that prides ourselves on being a people people banking organization. Just to give some scale, we’ve got 76 stores throughout the UK at the moment and we’ve got a number of unique offerings that really aren’t seen in a number of other banks. So just by way of example, if you open an account, you can get your card there and then complete with your PIN number, we’ve got some drive through banking offerings and we’ve got some unique hours in terms of when we’re actually open. So it’s seven days a week organization, obviously outside of the COVID lockdown situation and we also have outside of standard working hours. So anything through to 8:00 in the evening.
Matt Alder [00:04:38]:
We’re recording this episode halfway through June in 2020. We’re still moving through the COVID 19 pandemic. Obviously that’s changing lots of things when it comes to business and it’s changing the way that businesses work. And I know that your sector in particular is one that has been going through a digital transformation. I mean, how is the COVID 19 situation accelerating the digital transformation of your business?
Karl Porter [00:05:09]:
So I think it’s probably from a couple of points from the actual organizational, from the bank’s perspective. I talked about some unique opening hours that we have. I think obviously to protect colleagues and customers, we’ve had to reduce those store hours that were actually available. What that’s obviously done is encourage our customers and fans to become more digital in terms of their transactions. So we’ve seen a significant uptake in the utilization of our mobile app or our award winning mobile app, but also the online banking as well. We’ve also had to accelerate the implementation of new technology solutions to make sure that the experience for fans isn’t diluted throughout this lockdown situation. So some of the products that have been launched we’ve had to bring in, let’s say like the queuing platforms through the website for people that are applying for bounce back loans. And based on the time frames, it’s been unprecedented. Word used a lot, but it’s been unprecedented how quickly we’ve had to look at this and start to implement so There’s a banking side to it. And then I think from the talent acquisition team, we’ve had to move really from the face to face methodology to a sort of digital recruitment methodology. So we’re now holding our assessment online and we utilise teams. We’ve also had to adapt our onboarding experience for people that start with the organization because they were starting in a remote fashion. And within the backdrop to that there’s ensuring that we’re in line with regulation. So we’ve had to move to. To digital ID checking, for example.
Matt Alder [00:06:58]:
What are the sort of main recruiting challenges you have at Metro bank and how are these evolving as the pandemic’s evolved?
Karl Porter [00:07:05]:
Yeah, there’s probably a number of challenges. So I think culturally coming away from that face to face strategy has been quite a leap of faith for both the hiring community as well as the candidates. So we’ve had to adjust how we actually prepare them as individuals. So the guidance and training that we’ve had to give to our managers, we’ve had to build quickly and roll that out very quickly, but also change how we’re advising our future colleagues to present themselves within these digital assessments. So that’s been a fundamental change. But obviously what we’ve endeavor to do throughout that period is to make sure that the experience for candidates has not changed. And we’ve also continued to utilise our capability or our digital capability. So we’re working with our candidate management system, with our partners at Avature, to make sure that the contact strategy we have with candidates is actually enhanced during this period of time. I think from a Metro perspective, we’ve got a pretty amazing cultural program as well, which ultimately has changed at its core. And whilst we work in an ever changing environment, the COVID situation has obviously accelerated that. And what we have demonstrated is some real agility to be able to move from an older methodology to a newer methodology. And we’re actually quite proud of that. So that’s some of the challenges. I think the other challenge, at the very beginning of this, we sat down and thought, what would this drive out from a job seeker perspective? And one of the key challenges is around the security for job seekers. Would they actually want to move during such a challenging time with so many changes in the environment, in the workplace and the financial situations? So we looked at that and we thought, yes, actually they would, because we have a very strong employment proposition. We understand what our colleagues want from us as an employer and we’ve done some pulsate base at the moment and it’s around work, life balance and the dynamic working practices, such as allowing people to work from home and providing them with the right equipment to do that. So we’ve continued throughout lockdown, we’ve continued to onboard colleagues remotely. We are providing them with the tools and providing them with the training to make sure that they are set up for success. We have a recognised induction training program and we’ve moved that again onto a digital online platform and just to kind of bring some of that to life. We’ve had two new members of the function and before they start, we’ve involved them in our social quizzes and some of the through the keyholes that we’ve done as a team collectively outside of the work framework, to introduce them to the team, to break the ice and make sure that they have a level of comfort and contact before they come in. And actually start with this as well.
Matt Alder [00:10:21]:
Tell us more about how you’ve been responding to those kind of challenges. As a talent acquisition team, I would.
Charlie Hooper [00:10:27]:
Say quickly, we are completely people focused, so we had to think about what do our team need right now. So to start with, we implemented remote working pre lockdown because we really listened to our colleagues concerns and we wanted everyone to feel comfortable with the situation. We’ve also reviewed and implemented new processes to make sure there’s no impact to the quality of the candidate experience. We’ve also revitalised our focus on mental health awareness as a team. As part of this, we know that staying connected is essential. So we plan in active downtime to take part in virtual coffee mornings. We do team quizzes and we’ve even done a series of virtual workout classes delivered by our colleague’s husband, who happens to be a PE teacher. Our consistent approach to communication has also meant that we need to keep the team up to date with any developments. We make time to share ideas. We’ve been providing constant training and to show a sign of unity for the wider bank and our colleagues. We also still take part in our Magic Fridays. Everyone in the whole business wears red on a Friday, so we’re still doing that. We’re also really aware now that life outside of work is beginning to blend with our life inside of work. So we’re taking time to talk to each other about the pressures of childcare. We’re also showing understanding every time the doorbell rings with the delivery or the food shop. And we’re also showing off our pets on our conference calls. But from a wider bank perspective, the communication from our senior leadership team has also been exceptional. So we’ve got constant access to our exec team, we’re supporting our frontline workers. They will be getting an additional bonus this year. We’ve not needed to utilise the government furlough scheme and we’ve also been given additional access to services that support our mental health, like the Headspace app. And all of that combined enables us to function at an optimum level as a recruitment team, but also as a wider business.
Matt Alder [00:12:38]:
You mentioned recruiting technology briefly. Tell us a bit more about that. How are you using your tech stack to support your strategy at the moment?
Karl Porter [00:12:47]:
The tech stack we’ve got is probably twofold, so the technology we’ve got with the AI, it allows us to continue operating whilst we’re away from the office at the moment. And we have seen no drop in our productivity or our capacity to actually work, which is a testament to the stability of the technology platform that we’ve got and particularly the speed that we’ve had to move to that. We’ve also used that time to kind of strengthen our digital presence out in the marketplace to attract candidates, because we still need to bring in top talent. And as previously mentioned, we’ve moved on to that virtual assessment process and maintain communication utilizing the Avature platform that we’ve got that we weren’t historically doing. But I think again, during this period of time, we’ve continued to integrate the text at the. That we’ve got. Despite being a new organization, we do have some standalone platforms and we are continuing the integration work because there’s a genuine belief that if we can automate as much as we possibly can, it actually allows our recruiter the time to spend with both our hiring community as well as our future fans, which is one of the most important things for us.
Matt Alder [00:14:08]:
So I suppose the question that I’m asking everyone who’s coming on the. Coming on the show in these, in these weeks is what’s your current approach to employer branding and talent acquisitions during this strange, unusual and very difficult time?
Charlie Hooper [00:14:23]:
Well, we genuinely live and breathe our values and that’s what creates a unique environment for our colleagues to work within. And we’ve always believed that our employment brand is already exceptional. And we’ve got to this point by creating an incredible culture which has been shared by our fans without the need for those large marketing campaigns. So to take our employment brand to the next level, what we’re going to do is be enhancing our digital presence. So we need to be sharing more and more of the experiences that our colleagues go through through our digital platforms and that really gives the market a good insight into what it’s truly like to work here at Metro bank and especially during these strange and unusual times. By sharing more information around innovations as well through our digital proposition, we’re also attracting more specialist candidates and we’re also working collaboratively with other businesses to support their out placement services.
Matt Alder [00:15:22]:
You’ve both mentioned the word fans quite a lot. So I’m guessing that’s, you know, part of the strategy that you, you view your customers and the experience that you give them. How important is candidate experience to your business and how has that changed in the last few months?
Karl Porter [00:15:38]:
To be honest, Matt, I don’t think it has changed for us. Candidate experience is always one of the most important parts of the work that we do as a talent acquisition team. Our culture is reliant upon the creation of fans and that’s what our organization is predicated on. However, we’ve had to adapt the way that we deliver and maintain this amazing experience. We’ve talked about a few of them already. I think, you know, another great example is our group assessment sessions. Historically it was a face to face. Obviously these have transformed to become virtual again, virtual events. We’re utilizing teams again to bring interviewers and candidates together regardless of where they are. And what we can have is up to 12 participants at one time, which really gives candidates a great opportunity to meet influencers from across the business, but also get a 360 assessment experience so they can actually see how they would adapt and work with our culture and a new working environment for them.
Matt Alder [00:16:43]:
Final question, it’s impossible to predict the future accurately at the moment, but what’s your sort of long term focus for talent acquisition in Metro Bank?
Karl Porter [00:16:53]:
So I think we maintain, as we were, so to speak, as an organisation, we hire for attitude and then train for skill. That as an underlying value hasn’t changed. We continue to promote colleague mobility and that as a successful measure is absolutely fundamental. We want to work with our Metro Bank University partners as well to make sure that we are delivering colleagues with the opportunity and the training and the support to fulfill their potential and their career goals. So that part is critical to us. We’re also working closely with the business themselves on their workforce planning to make sure that we can deliver a service to them as an organization to be successful and to make sure that we’re not just hiring for today, but we’re also identifying the future talent needs. And this is looking at how the workforce is going to change. What are the skill sets for jobs that we potentially don’t even know exist today?
Matt Alder [00:17:57]:
Karl and Charlie thank you very much for joining me.
Karl Porter [00:18:00]:
Thank you.
Charlie Hooper [00:18:00]:
Thanks for having us.
Matt Alder [00:18:02]:
My thanks to Karl and Charlie. You can subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts or via your podcasting app of choice. Please also follow us on Instagram. You can find the show by searching for Recruiting Future. You can also listen and subscribe to the show on Spotify. You can find and search all the past episodes@www.recruitingfuture.com. on that site, you can subscribe to the mailing list and find out more about working with me. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next time and I hope you’ll join me. Foreign.
