Automating Talent Acquisition For Better Candidate Experience

At the BW People HR Excellence Summit & Awards 2024, HSBC was honored with the ‘Excellence in Talent Acquisition’ award. Spearheading this success is Archana Chadha, Head of HR at HSBC, who has been at the forefront of the bank’s innovative recruitment strategies. In this interview, she shares insights into HSBC's approach to talent acquisition, emphasising the importance of prioritising skills, leveraging technology and creating a seamless candidate experience. 

Can you share some specific initiatives that companies can implement to attract top talent in a competitive market?

We strongly believe that innovation and talent are the key denominators to succeed in the current fiercely competitive market. At HSBC, it’s about hiring the right talent over the best, and we have been on a constant journey to re-define and re-discover our approach to meet this need. As we look forward, our focus is to open a world of opportunity powered by skills - attracting the brightest and best global minds, as well as future-proofing the skills we already have within. Now is the time for us to be nimble by prioritising people over process and identify as well as remediate existing skill gap demands to proactively identify diverse talent for supporting business growth.

While hiring talent we ensure that we are futuristically capacitated to fulfil developmental needs of the hired individual, also giving them a platform to explore opportunities outside of their comfort domain. Our recently launched ‘Accelerating Wealth Programme’ is a step in this direction which provides avenue to our internal talent from different domains with required skills to explore a career in frontline banking as Relationship Managers.

How can organisations ensure a seamless and positive candidate experience throughout the recruitment process?

HSBC's purpose of "opening up a world of opportunity” is deeply woven into all our processes and practices. We believe that candidate experience reflects HSBC’s culture and our employee value proposition. At the core of this experience, lies our strong ethos of ‘customer centricity’, which is brought to life via defined candidate touchpoints, real time updates at each stage of process, transparent and merit- based selection process and seamless employee integration into the organisation. Our newly launched ‘candy crush’ style game focusing on HSBC history and values is an example of one of the initiatives that ensures candidates are engaged before joining HSBC and helps them build association with the brand.

In what ways can companies leverage technology and data analytics to enhance its talent acquisition efforts?

At HSBC, we are at war against all manual processes, and it extends to talent acquisition as well. Technology has significantly helped us automate routine tasks, improve candidate experience and measure recruitment effectiveness – while at the same time giving our recruiters an hour back and helping them shift their focus on more strategic outcomes. Our platforms such as Talent Marketplace leverage technology to run a skill match with the candidate profile and help identify candidates fit for internal projects. We are also experimenting to use data to optimise job postings, forecast hiring needs and identify sourcing channels that yield the best results.

Looking ahead, what plans does your company have to further innovate and improve its talent acquisition process?

With our unwavering vision to adapt to the ever-evolving external landscape, at HSBC we are always upgrading to embrace the opportunities of the future. While investing in new technology and embracing AI remains key to our growth, we are also focused on enhancing the human element in the overall talent acquisition process. As we look ahead, our vision is to ensure a personalised and wow candidate experience to all applicants and break the script by doing things differently.