Streamlining Your Hiring Process: How to Attract and Retain Top Talent

Why you might not be winning your top candidates over, and what to do to fix it:

Like banking, the environment for recruiting moves in cycles, and much of what makes up those cycles comes down to motivation — motivation to hire and motivation to be hired. Motivations are constantly changing, but if you look closely enough, there are patterns you can follow over the years to help navigate this current environment.

In many ways, this hiring environment looks a lot like it did a decade ago. Coming out of the Recession, few banks were posting for new positions, but nearly all banks were keeping an eye open for when the right candidate came along. Banks still had succession planning needs, like they do now, and that next great candidate could potentially help fill in the gaps.

But here’s where it gets tricky, and why many banks in this environment end up losing their top prospects…

When banks aren’t in the middle of a hiring frenzy, they tend to have less of a formal process. Over time, this process becomes more and more relaxed to the point that the process is built from scratch every time a great candidate comes along. When the hiring managers aren’t sure exactly who needs to be involved in the hiring process, they often end up just having the candidate meet with every senior and executive level person in the bank, one by one, over the course of weeks or months.

If you think that sounds exhausting, you’re right. And, for a passively interested top candidate, it can be a complete turn off. Many candidates across the US tell us that one of the main reasons they backed out of a process was due to the amount of time that process took.

So, what can you do about it? Here are three easy steps you can take to make sure you can win your next top candidate:

📌 Have a condensed process. There is no need to have one meeting per week if you can fit two or more meetings in the same week. This allows you to still do a high level of due diligence, but keeps the process from dragging on for what candidates think feels like forever.

📌 Know exactly who needs to be involved for any given hire. Hiring a commercial lender? Your commercial lending leadership should know exactly who needs to be involved in the process without having to ask around. Hiring a new executive? Your board and your C-suite should know exactly who needs to be involved without any guess work.

📌 As soon as you start a hiring process, know the schedules of everyone involved. Too often, it comes as a surprise that one or two executives will out of the country for two weeks smack dab in the middle of a recruiting process. There’s often no way around the vacation, so it’s important to either start the interview process after vacation, or have your candidate engaged in local conversations until everyone is back in town.

Remember, candidates will lose motivation when there is a perceived lack of momentum. Communicating with your candidate is critical, but even more critical is a process that shows behaviors that suggest a high level of interest. Actions speak louder than words. Good luck, and let us know where we can be helpful for your team in the next couple of quarters!