Canadians considering internships, co-ops and graduate positions at Scotiabank no longer have to tweak their resumes.
The Toronto Bank removed the requirement as part of its on-campus hiring program and began using assessments from Waterloo, Ontario. technology company Plum to help find untapped talent and alleviate barriers to employment among certain population groups.
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“We remove any prejudices, as to where did someone go to school, what jobs did they have before and what opportunities did they or didn’t have depending on their education or situation? Said James Spearing, vice president of talent acquisition at Scotiabank.
“(We) remove as much as possible and give a level playing field.”
Scotiabank decided to ditch resumes in August as new waves of the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, further disrupting a tight labor market.
The move has already boosted the bank’s hires of people of color and increased its retention rates.
Many companies have spent the last decades experimenting with innovative recruiting methods such as personality tests and applications. by dropping resumes.
However, few have been bold enough to give up resumes altogether.
“A lot of companies talk about it, few actually do it,” said Caitlin MacGregor, CEO of Plum. “Scotiabank is leading the way.
Plum, for example, is used when consulting giant Deloitte, automaker Hyundai, and even Canada’s Department of National Defense, but none have completely abandoned the resume requirement, MacGregor said.
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Spearing still sees the value of resumes and will not penalize applicants for including one, as resume writing can teach people to sell themselves and review their skills, but he believes that failing to do so Need expands Scotiabank’s talent pool, creating a better chance that good candidates are not overlooked.
The bank started its CV-free experiment with around 1,000 student intern positions and 250 places in co-op programs that it recruits for some 300 to 400 events per year, including coffee talks, presentation sessions. business, hackathons and sponsorships.
Its new recruiting processes have expanded to include the bank’s recruiting team using Plum’s platform to determine the most important requirements for the positions they are looking to fill.
Requirements range from the ability to come up with innovative solutions to how a person sets goals, monitors progress and executes projects.
Candidates then complete a Plum assessment with problem-solving, personality, and situation questions targeting those requirements.
Candidates receive information about their talents, work style and preferences, while recruiters see a “match score” indicating each candidate’s potential fit with the position they’re hiring for and other openings.
The information is used to determine who to interview or hire.
The approach helps companies find talent in places outside of their traditional networks and removes many misconceptions from recruiters, MacGregor said.
“We as humans are imperfect and misinterpret this data all the time,” she said.
“We think, ‘Oh, they took five years to study this, so it must be because they’re not very smart,’ but maybe there’s some financial reason for that or maybe they had to juggle part-time jobs as a way to pay for it all and so it took them longer.
Mitchell Hoffman, associate professor at the Rotman School of Management, said such assessments often help companies compare candidates more fairly.
“It could potentially reduce the importance of some sort of bias triggers like ‘I love sports team X and this person has a connection to sports team X on their CV,’ he said.
But assessments can also be long – Plum’s takes around 25 minutes – and sometimes the software can have difficulty understanding how transferable certain skills are, he said.
Scotiabank has been using the software for about a year, but has already seen benefits.
In its first year, the platform helped the bank recruit from 30 colleges and universities nationwide, and nearly 50% of hires now have STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and math) degrees.
Minorities now make up nearly 60 percent of recruits in the campus program, and women make up about 50 percent of hires.
The program-wide retention rate climbed to 46% from 26% before launch.
Spearing is proud of the results, but believes it will take longer to see the real benefits of the system and how hires brought through the platform are progressing.
“We still have work to do to show the longer term benefits. “
© 2021 The Canadian Press
