What are your tips for banks to be competitive to stand out in today’s market? One thing we must be right now is more open-minded. You can hire a winner, or you can hire a potential winner. Winners are those who come into the job ready to go; they are fully trained and need very little coaching or training. Look at potential winners — people with transferable skills who maybe you had not considered before and hidden workers who haven’t reentered the job market.
We need to be building our talent pipeline every day by applying the very same skill set used for meeting prospective bank clients. Meet with prospects to tell them about the bank and its services to see if they have the competencies that are similar to the job and also align with the bank’s culture. You may not have a position open at the moment, but you’ve already started identifying people and keeping them engaged before you actually need them as a candidate.
What do banks need to know about their potential hires and applicants? First and foremost, you have to think differently about candidates. Revisit job descriptions and the competencies required for a position. It goes back to hiring a winner versus a potential winner. Rather than hiring someone who has all of the training and maybe certifications or credentials, prioritize the core competencies that are a must have.
For example, those competencies may be building trust and customer focus. Tose are non-negotiable, but for some of the other competencies, we may train them. Maybe they don’t have a whole lot of experience related to certain skills, so it may change our thought process about providing the technical training for the position, and we may even fill in some of the gaps related to education. Look at a candidate who is really great with communication. Maybe it’s a candidate where you go to lunch every week and they are just fantastic at engaging with you as a customer, and you can envision them in your
bank lobby working as a personal banker or universal teller. It’s seeing some of those core skill sets and helping them gain the other skill sets that’s going to really allow them to excel in your bank.
I also think for interviews we’ve got to focus on past experiences and stay away from hypothetical or future-oriented questions. Past behavior predicts future behavior, and I know that I can predict better how they’re going to be successful or not based on their examples that they provide in the interview process around their past experiences. It can be a core competency around communication or engaging with others that will help me see them transfer into the position at the bank.
Another technique that I like to use for hiring people for my team is for them to have an interview with their potential co-workers. I want them to understand what it is like to work on our team and what’s it like to work with me as a manager. Tere’s no question off the table, and they find out what it would be like to work for our organization. A standard old-fashioned interview is not going to accomplish that.
Find your secret sauce that makes you unique. What is it that really makes you stand out?
How can banks best compete with other industries for talent? I think it’s finding what is your secret sauce that makes you unique and defining both the tangible and intangible things around your culture. What is it that really makes you stand out? Tere’s all sorts of things that you can really tout and share that really differentiates you.
THE MISSOURI BANKER 15
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