How to improve the effectiveness of a bank’s talent acquisition system
Leadership and expert roles
CASE
HIRING SYSTEM AUDIT
LEADERSHIP TRAINING
VALUES-BASED ASSESSMENT
Macro Level
Growing Talent Shortage
Companies lose up to 25% of potential net profit due to inefficiencies in management systems and people-related practices.
Competition for talent is intensifying. Traditional approaches to candidate search and assessment are becoming less effective.
Micro Level
Business Growth, New Requirements
The company was growing rapidly and faced the need to strengthen its approach to hiring leaders and experts.
Existing candidate assessment methods were not delivering the required quality or long-term results.
Why Did This Project Emerge?
01 CONTEXT
01 Dominance of Past Experience
Candidate assessment was largely reduced to evaluating what people had done before, without sufficient consideration of potential and values.
02 Compromise Hiring
The search for the “ideal” candidate led to prolonged decision-making and, ultimately, lowered hiring standards.
03 Weakness at the Second Level
A strong N-1 leadership team did not guarantee the quality of leadership at the N-2 level and below.
What Did the Client Come to Us With?
02 CLIENT CHALLENGE
“We see that our leaders assess candidates primarily based on their previous experience—and make hiring mistakes as a result. We need a system that delivers consistent, sustainable results.”
Three Steps Toward Systemic Change
03 OUR SOLUTION
Assessment of existing talent search, candidate evaluation, and decision-making practices. Identification of bottlenecks and development of recommendations for the HR function.
Talent Acquisition System Audit
01
Joint development of a corporate competency and values framework, along with tools for assessing potential in addition to competencies and experience.
Competency and Values Framework Development
02
A three-level program (N, N-1, N-2) focused on building a shared understanding of talent-centric leadership, combined with training in the assessment of values and competencies.
Leadership Development Program
03
What Is Not Obvious About This Topic
04 AUTHOR’S PERSPECTIVE
Most leaders consider themselves excellent judges of talent while simultaneously acknowledging that they make hiring mistakes. This contradiction is not accidental: assessing candidates primarily through past experience creates an illusion of accuracy.
Business owners are often willing to hire people who are stronger than themselves. Professional CEOs are significantly less likely to do so. This is a systemic issue that limits the growth of an organization’s leadership capital.
For professional CEOs, personal networks remain the dominant source of hiring for key roles. While this approach increases speed, it narrows the talent pool and reinforces familiar patterns rather than expanding the range of available options.