::Recruiting from non-traditional source

The poaching of private bankers and a drying pool of good relationship managers have prompted at least one bank to start recruiting older Singaporeans with no experience in banking.

In what is believed to be an industry first, HSBC is now eyeing professionals aged between 38 and 50 years old for its premier banking arm. The Hong Kong-based bank is wooing them on the premise that they know enough people — and have enough life experience — to bring in the money - todayonline.com

I guess this was exactly what the hiring managers at one of the leading investment bank were trying to impress upon us when we were invited to attend a presentation on a new talent management solutions which the bank was implementing.

Recruiting from non-traditional source using non-conventional methods are increasingly becoming more of a reality rather than a fad. This practice however could increasingly find relevance in many industries wherever there is a scarcity of talents.

Take for instance, as most investment banks prepares to move their development and application support to APAC and India the economy of demand-supply will come to play at some point in time. To counter this imbalance hiring managers will be increasingly compel to scout for resources outside of the common pool.

The key here is to “Hire for Attitude and Train for Skills” – this cliché generally does not go wrong.

Some examples which may be applicable within the investment bank are –

• Level1 support engineers: Instead of looking for 5-6 years banking IT project experience hire 2-3 years if not fresher with good attitude and communication skills and provide an in-house training on the business domain.Reasoning: Since L1 involves mainly phone and email support one does not require a seasoned software programmer to man the desk.
• C/C++ systems programmers: There is a huge shortage of good C/C++ programmers and that’s true even for India. The solution here is to recruit fresh graduates and provide them training for a year or two before putting them onto projects. Reasoning: Instead of relying on a market pool which is drying up it is rather sensible to proactively train fresh minds and incubate them for any eventuality.
• Business Analyst(BA): BA’s are breeds apart. Not everyone can be a successful BA. And not many BA’s are available in the market. To excel in this role one must have a combination of good business knowledge and understands full SDLC and at the same time communicate with stake holders and translates business requirements into technical specs, etc. Reasoning: Instead of wasting months trying to find the perfect BA which does not exist, hire someone with good BA experience from industry/domain that is relatively closer and train her on the required business domain.

These are just few examples off the cuff, I am sure options are aplenty if only we, meaning hiring managers are prepared to think outside of their comfort zone and explore the available talent pools around them.

As for us recruiters, we need to progressively partner our clients and manage their expectations at every single stage of the recruitment process and constantly provide our clients with realistic market feedbacks.

This will in turn give them the required time to make necessary changes in their talent management strategies and streamline their effort to the options that are viable and prudent and most of all in line with the current market condition thus allowing them to stay ahead of competition.

*** Happy Hunting folks***