Consumer and Employment Brand Working Together w/Tiffany Bliley

[00:00:04] . Welcome to The Recruitment Flex with Serge and Shelley. I'm Serge. And I'm Shelley. And we talk all things recruitment starting right now. Bonjour and welcome to The Recruitment Flex. I'm sans Shelley today, but I've got a really

[00:00:23] special guest that I met probably a month ago at a dinner and I was really impressed in what she's doing at EQ Bank. So I want to introduce Tiffany Blyley, who is the director of talent acquisition at EQ Banks. Tiffany, thanks for joining me.

[00:00:41] Hello Serge. Thank you so much for the invite as an avid listener. How excited am I to be the guest today? First of all, thank you for listening. I wasn't sure if anyone was listening, so it's good to know that you are. I am the one.

[00:00:55] You're the one that I see in Toronto show up. Yeah. Well, Tiffany, obviously we talked a lot about talent acquisition at the dinner and I'm always interested to see what the leaders in our industry are doing because we talk

[00:01:11] to a lot of vendors. We talk to practitioners and we get our own insights, but I think we're missing a perspective. So Tiffany, give me a little bit of a Twitter bio or

[00:01:21] I guess we can say ex bio. And then I'm really curious of your journey and how did you get into talent acquisition where you are at today? Okay, I'm happy to tell you about it. But as everybody I'm sure you talked to doesn't

[00:01:35] say I got up and went to school to be a TA leader or recruiter or what? No, it just doesn't happen. I did my degree and I did a sciences degree, but it was in psych. It became evident early on that I love the intersection of people

[00:01:48] and information. So that's what I always knew. So I got my degree and I was told by my career counselor, go network, talk to two people. And when you get out of that

[00:01:58] discussion and have two more names said, who do you want me to talk to? They said, I don't care. Talk to two people. One of those discussions led me to my first job

[00:02:07] at Humber College where I was an assistant in a job search program. And it wasn't long after that I started teaching the program and helping them expand that program to have some other locations. And then I moved to a partnership program in the Toronto board of

[00:02:23] Ed to do the same. So worked with newcomers and people on EI and it was great fun. I was teaching all different kinds of people to find jobs. I used to say from Coopers to Cosmonauts

[00:02:35] because I literally had a whiskey barrel maker and a cosmonaut in my class. And I was doing all this work and my dad came by for lunch one day, saw my classroom that I had it all

[00:02:46] furnished. He said, you do know you're doing the exact job of somebody in executive search. I said, what? So that's what my dad had been doing. But you know, he's my dad's. Oh, okay.

[00:02:56] I didn't know. So I had seen an ad for a job that it wasn't the company, it wasn't what they did, but the way they talked about people was me and I applied. But you know what

[00:03:08] people do when you apply in the business world with a social services background? They laugh. They laugh pretty hard. That didn't do it. I went back to the networking, met all kinds of people, got one name, another name, interviewed with the company,

[00:03:25] got to the end. They didn't take me on. The person who was interviewing me in this executive search firm said, what are you going to do? Because it was a firm I ran into

[00:03:36] on my way to the other firm. And I said, Chris, I'm going right back to the company I was shooting for. She said, really? Because I'm going to make a call for you. And that was

[00:03:47] it. She made the call. They interviewed me. They had marked me a C out of an A, B and a C. I was a C. The person who interviewed me and hired me became my mentor and one of my

[00:03:58] best friends. And that was it for search. I was in, that was the best company. That was Find the Purple Squirrel. I didn't know you could make a career of it. And it lasted

[00:04:07] till the economy went not so good in 2008. Yeah. And BMO called a couple of times. And the second time I paid more attention as things were going down. And I stayed at the Banque Montreal for a period of time, recruiting, helping them start an in-house

[00:04:24] search practice, leading recruitment in Canada and North America for different sectors, primarily focused on technology and operations in corporate areas when I left and joined EQ Bank to be their leader of talent. Very interesting career path. And it

[00:04:39] tells you how important connections and networking is when we're looking at the job market. So any job seekers listening, keep those connections or make those connections. It's where the jobs really happen. It made the difference. It so made the difference. I want to know a little bit

[00:04:56] more about EQ Bank because EQ Bank made some pretty big news here in Canada because of their Super Bowl commercial with Eugene Levy and Dan Levy from their very famous Canadian show, Schitt's Creek. And I don't need to bleep that out. I think that's good, right?

[00:05:15] Yeah, that's good. But the commercial, everyone saw it and everyone was like, what is EQ Bank? So tell me a little bit what EQ Bank does. So for those of us on the inside, it makes

[00:05:24] us laugh because we are the seventh largest Sketch One bank in Canada. I did not know that. That's right. When they recruited me over, I had joined them about six months before and learned

[00:05:35] how to make some real money so they didn't have too much trouble selling me. It's a Challenger Bank. We're small. We never had bricks and mortar, just a digital presence. And what an amazing

[00:05:46] opportunity for people in financial services if you want to be with a challenger who wants to do it different, who's not sitting on 200 years of hierarchy and history that has to be worked through to get the problem solved. That's what we're doing because we're really

[00:06:00] working on driving change in Canadian banking to enrich people's lives. And if you're going to do that, you can't act like the big five. You just can't. So we've got this small but mighty team of a couple thousand challengers who every day look at problems and say,

[00:06:17] how can I fix this fast and differently? And it's fun. So products are being released all the time. A product was released a couple of weeks ago called the Notice Account, for instance. That account's paying 5%. So how is an account paying 5%? You just have to give 30 days notice

[00:06:35] before you take your money out. It's a notice account. So you hear funny things like that at EQ, different ways of doing things. And because there's no bricks and mortar, our productivity number is the best in the business. So that's a fun environment to work

[00:06:51] in because we are not cash strapped. We're just not. And the organization itself, to get that challenger mentality, sometimes I think that's very challenging, Tiffany, if you lead talent, because my team has to look for it all the time. They have to align people's values and they

[00:07:08] have to look for people who are willing to speak up, willing to be heard, willing to fail fast, willing to try. And so it's just a very different kind of bank. And it's a different type of talent acquisition department, right? If you look at the resource

[00:07:24] of a company like Bank of Montreal that's been around forever and looking at a challenger bank, what was the biggest change or the thing you noticed when you went from Bank of Montreal to EQ Bank as far as running a talent acquisition department or team?

[00:07:41] My C.H.R.O., who hired me, said Tiffany would do things really fast. And I was like, I do things really fast. What are you talking about? I do fast things all day long.

[00:07:50] She meant fast, meaningful things. She meant really big decisions really quickly and you will have the autonomy to make them. So in running the team, I can pivot, change, do things very quickly to make a difference. And I don't have a ton of layers to dig

[00:08:08] through. I don't have that kind of stakeholder interaction with multiple layers. I can find them. I sit with the C level and if I need them, I just go ask them a question. So it makes it

[00:08:18] a lot easier to run. And if you hire a bunch of challengers, that's going to be challenging because they never stop. They bring their ideas in and they don't sit with the status quo.

[00:08:30] So they help me make the changes. I think it's really my role to help them feel confident that they'll be heard and that their ideas will be actioned. And that's a very different

[00:08:40] environment than I was in before. It was big and slow and there was a lot to get through. This is small and fast and we're willing to fall. We'll get right back up again, thanks very much with some learning and we'll go. So it's just very different.

[00:08:55] Looking back, was there something that you were like, ah, I should have done this differently? And it was just based on your past experience of working at a larger bank or company with more layers as you described.

[00:09:11] I wouldn't have listened so much. I would have barreled through and I would have found a way to do it. I think humans get put in a box very easily. And if it's comfortable in there

[00:09:22] because you're around nice people, you just hang out in your little box and do your stuff. Nothing changes though. I think I would take more risks earlier if I had it all to do again. Tell me a little bit how your team, your talent acquisition team, department

[00:09:38] is structured at EQ Bank. Do you have recruitment marketing separate? Do you have a technology? Is it by region? How have you structured your team? So we have operations in Toronto, Montreal, Saskatoon, a little bit of Regina because we

[00:09:54] acquired a bank called Concentra in Vancouver. So talent acquisition is sitting in Toronto and Montreal right now and serving all of Canada. We report directly to the CHRO. We have TA partners who have reached the lead level, the senior partners and partners, a coordinator

[00:10:13] that's running and we sit and work like this, like so deeply connected to HR operations because we're very experience driven. We don't just hand over a candidate that handing over to the onboarding experience, which is done by our ops team is taken very seriously and

[00:10:30] very carefully. So we work towards the handover of candidates. Recruitment marketing, it's so funny you asked. It was somebody on my team because we really believe in potential. Jess was showing her stripes. She was just really good at recruitment marketing.

[00:10:48] So we developed a job for her and now she's in recruit marketing, still working closely with us but reports up through communications. She's amazing and she's deeply tied into our social media strategy. That's a different department through social media in corporate marketing,

[00:11:03] but we'll all work together. We'll just grab each other for the different things that we need. I'm interested to know more of how you approach say your recruitment marketing and your corporate or consumer marketing. I guess that ties into a little bit about your brand.

[00:11:20] So obviously when you had the commercial, a lot of people start thinking EQ bank looks pretty cool. They hired two famous actors here in Canada, had a big impact. So what's your thoughts around employment brand and consumer or corporate

[00:11:36] brand? Are you trying to tie both in together? I think there must be a similarity between them because the company itself has to be authentic. So you have to speak the same way. We don't consult with our marketing team on their marketing campaigns. When they came out with

[00:11:51] make bank, which people would have seen before about making money and making bank was the statement. We know what's coming and we know it's going to hit the market at a certain time.

[00:12:02] So we may do more branding activities to align with it so that people see our name twice. And if their curiosity is peaked, they know how to deal with that curiosity. Being authentic and having people with a personally lived experience talk about you is far more important

[00:12:22] than ever going to recruitment marketing firm and having them develop your branding. If we were too slick, it wouldn't be us. We're real. So people need to see the real comments that our employees make. And yeah, we try to tie it to our branding. I was taking a

[00:12:38] peek at our branding today and we started that over two years ago with some of the information you might see on LinkedIn or Indeed. And it'll be part of my ask next year will be for

[00:12:49] branding refresh because we changed that much along the way. We do try to have people speak on our behalf, but you know what I hate, Serge? Influencers. I hate influencers. I'm like, well, the influencers like you hate me. No, I mean, the ones that corporations pay to go

[00:13:06] out or give a lot of swag to, to go talk about them. It's not real. If you're going to talk about me and my organizations because you feel good about it. Otherwise, I'm not going to

[00:13:16] pay you to do it. So if you don't feel it, don't do it. If you're a great customer and you're super happy with what we have to offer and you're curious about more, talk about it.

[00:13:27] So I think the authenticity of how we speak throughout any channel is really important. Sure, we can use Dan and Eugene to get you guys to have a little look. See shout out to Tangerine

[00:13:39] because as soon as we did it, they sent a truck around saying we don't need a celebrity. You told me about that and I forgot about it until now. That was brilliant. There was brilliant. I do admire a good piece of marketing, right? And that was

[00:13:52] brilliant. I'm glad that we instigated that little mini riot. So I just think we, we match corporate marketing. We have to do things that talk about enriching people's lives and basically making them richer with banking. Otherwise we're not going to build meaningful

[00:14:08] relationships. It goes back to that network thing. If people don't organically talk about us in a positive way, what do we got? Nothing. So Tiffany, that's, it's so important because what we're seeing now, and I feel bad for candidates is it's what I call

[00:14:28] a see a sameness. Every career page, every message, everything seems exactly the same. Candidates have lost trust or maybe not lost trust. There's no value to it anymore. They're just seeing it as everyone saying the same thing.

[00:14:42] It might be a starting point, but I think if a candidate's really doing their research, they're going to go out and dig up all the other pieces that are organically happening. And that's where their story is going to be told.

[00:14:54] And when you think about brand, brand is a candidate experience. They're so closely tied because you can have great marketing, but if they come in and have a really bad experience interviewing or getting ghosted or whatever the case is, your brand goes down the shit.

[00:15:09] It's just not the same. What's your thoughts around that? Because you're in a unique situation that you're trying to gain a whole lot of new customers and people applying for your jobs are potentially customers. How do you make sure they have a great experience?

[00:15:25] Yeah, it's very hard right now because in an employer's market, the volume of applicants is such that you simply could not talk to everybody. Wouldn't everybody love to get a call? Absolutely, but it is impossible because I'm assuming you're getting thousands of applicants for certain jobs.

[00:15:42] Thousands. So you can't talk to everybody. So you make sure that your communications are approachable communications that speak in regular language and tell people what's going to happen. For instance, when you get an offer from EQ Bank, it says, you're in!

[00:16:04] Yes, there's a lot of legalese in our contract, but we knew it was important to soften it up in the way that we communicate with people because we didn't hire them

[00:16:13] to be all uptight with us. That's not really who we are. So we try to make the communications match who we are. We do try to be very clear and transparent with people so they can know

[00:16:24] what to expect in the next steps. And if our recruiters do reach out to you, you should have an outcome or a next step either right away or within. I hate to say this, but for senior jobs,

[00:16:39] it could be up to two weeks. Should be a week. And we try to use any tool we possibly can to automate the admin so we can have real relationships with people.

[00:16:50] And so that's where we try to buy some time back. TA is seen as a strategic function by EQ Bank. So it's not all knock the cost out of it and up the volumes. That's not really how we work.

[00:17:02] And when we get to a dangerous position like that, we really look at re-strategizing around do we have enough people in to make sure we've got the right experience? The one thing that you were talking about that I find interesting and I'm seeing it quite a bit

[00:17:15] with TA departments is automation of a lot of the day-to-day tasks, things that are admin, which for some HR departments, they love admin work and a lot of talent acquisition departments, they just hate it. So tell me a little bit more of how you've automated

[00:17:32] some of the process, what technology you've been leveraging. I'll tell you about some of the technology and it's all integrated. So I would definitely be a fan of something that doesn't sit by itself, but would be integrated perhaps by a Chrome

[00:17:47] extension or something like that. So we get it all in one place. One thing that I'm pretty adamant about is we're financial services. We will be audited on our behaviors. And if I can create an automated audit trail to show we've done the right thing,

[00:18:04] then we never have to think about our audit. And we don't want to think about our audit. So we use lever and I think lever is pretty darn fantastic at catching all the stuff we

[00:18:14] need to catch. And it's also got some really easy integration. We're using day forces or HRS, which may or may not be everything that we need as we grow. We have a light integration

[00:18:26] to lever just enough to control us so we don't go AWOL. But it's not so much that the recruiter becomes an administrator. We're not at that level where you have to have all these data elements. We have enough that we're safe, but we don't have too much. We've

[00:18:42] got an integration with LinkedIn recruiter. Rectext has been amazing. Oh, shout out to Rectext. I know you guys advertise Rectext. Love them. In my case, I had found them through my own research. Then I heard you

[00:18:54] talking about them and that was the then it's got to be good. So we checked them out. So Rectext has made a huge difference in us being able to meet candidates where they are,

[00:19:05] especially for the high volume roles, the junior folks. And we do a lot of in office testing. So we have people coming in and going through this kind of stressful experience of testing. And our coordinator is literally walking around with her laptop, being able to text and

[00:19:20] chat with them and get them through it. So that's great. We use Criteria Corporation for cognitive testing and personality testing. It's also completely integrated, which is certain for background check caret for some engineering testing for our tech departments.

[00:19:39] Got a little secret weapon in there, which we use for sourcing. One of the other software providers and we're a Microsoft shop. So CTO really believes in leveraging the tech through Microsoft, which makes our life so easy because we all have Azure Virtual Desktop.

[00:19:54] Our computers work anywhere we go. We use Copilot extensively, Team Scheduler. We use Forms, all kinds of different things. And yeah, every day we see if we can knock some more

[00:20:04] at Minnow. So you have a lot of tools that you're leveraging. Sounds like a great tech stack that you have. I love rec text, but I'm always curious on the texting side of it because the data shows

[00:20:17] that you get way more response. First of all, what's your thoughts around the response rates with text compared to emails? Have you seen them pretty big difference? Yeah, it's huge. People respond right away. I mean, there's an informality to texting, whereas somebody with

[00:20:32] an email, with a picture, with content they have to look at, might have, oh, think about it when I go home. I'm going to read it again. I'm going to whatever. People look at a text, they answer you. It's text etiquette. Textiquette is to very quickly

[00:20:45] respond. So we do get a lot of quick responses. That said, the recruiter or the TA partner has to find a way to integrate it into their approach without freaking themselves out. It doesn't suit every single recruiter depending how they work on us. So we bought

[00:20:59] it where we thought it would get used. And it's a panel that works alongside lever. And it's things like just click to dial on the soft phone. It is making their life so much easier.

[00:21:09] Yeah, the Chrome extension is amazing. I have leveraged it myself and it works so well. And to your point, because I've always used texting in my approach, but obviously I did it wrong for many years because they use my personal phone. That's what was happening on

[00:21:25] my team. And that is very risky. That is extremely risky. I've seen things. I'm old. I have to have seen things. We do not do that kind of stuff. Let's jump into metrics. One of the things that we have a lot of discussions in talent

[00:21:40] acquisition is what are the key metrics that we should be measuring? We've had the discussions of time to fill, cost per hire. And I've really changed my focus of what do the executives care about? What do they care about?

[00:21:54] At EQ Bank, what talent acquisition metrics do your executives care about? That's an interesting question because I figured I could just say time to fill in that. But honestly, that's not what people ask me about. So an executive asked me two working

[00:22:08] days ago, I gave him some stats on the movement of females in leadership. And he said, you give an engineer a stat, they're going to ask you another question. So I'd like to know where's the perceived pipeline bottleneck for the growth of this talent?

[00:22:25] Instead of being asked, what's your time to fill? I'll be asked, is there a bottleneck in the hiring manager team or the interviewing process? So somebody on my team did a huge project on

[00:22:36] quality of hire. He did a work back from the results of the person's overall screening, moving forward to were they promotable? What was their tenure here? Was there any other direct relationship with some of the things that we saw on the front end?

[00:22:53] I do a candidate and hiring manager satisfaction survey. And that needs to be 80% or higher all the time. And if it's not, I lose my mind. So it's about did the candidate feel they were

[00:23:05] well taken care of? And I will share those with my team to say, someone said this, it's anonymous. So they don't go and find out, but they understand if there's a theme about their behavior or something needs to change, they're going to hear about that.

[00:23:20] We're testing for culture fit and values, which again, that's a difficult metric to test as a numerical, but we're actually asking questions about company values in our initial screening. Offer acceptance is a big one because that's the indicator of what's happening

[00:23:36] in the market. And I'll split it by teams and see if there's a particular area where just not getting what we would think is standard enterprise offer acceptance. What's your expectations there? Where do you want to be when it comes to offer acceptance?

[00:23:49] I'd love to be at 95 and I'm not there all the time. And sometimes it's in those niche hard to fill areas where there's high competition for the talent. So it hovers around 90. And in some teams, it's much higher. And a couple of teams, it's a little lower.

[00:24:06] And one thing that we'll do when we find that out and share that stat is work with a comp partner to understand have we banded the comp right for that particular role.

[00:24:14] The other thing that we'll be able to do from a metric standpoint is look back to what was the candidate motivator and the reasoning for what they said to us. When I first started at

[00:24:25] EQ, there was a very evident comp story. It came to me in a week or two. Took it to the CHRO and three weeks, the band was changed and all the top performers were paid more. We went to market with more and we were done. It was great.

[00:24:39] How long would that have taken you before? Nine months, if not a year. With a lot of arguments. And that may be due to size of organization and looking at leveling across the enterprise and having so many things to consider. But what we consider is we're

[00:24:59] losing good talent today and we need to make a change today before we waste more money trying to get the right people and not able to land them. Well, look at all the other stuff. So

[00:25:10] we look at time to fill. We look at all the typical stats, but a lot of what we're looking at is experience-based and how people are feeling about going through the process because our silver medalists come back to us. We use them as a talent pool. And

[00:25:26] I can't believe how many boomerangs this company has. I was just going to ask about that. Yes, so many boomerangs and people still feel good about us when they go out. So they come back in.

[00:25:38] Do you have a little bit of maybe an alumni network? How are you keeping track of the people that left and that were good employees for that potential boomerang? Well, everybody who leaves gets an exit interview and that's on file for every

[00:25:53] single person. So we can look back to that. In terms of keeping up with an alumni network, I'm going to write that down because we're not doing anything. So that we need to do right away

[00:26:04] because there's no reason why we can't have an alumni EQB group. Consulting firms do it. They all have alumni groups. So we have the boomerangs. We just haven't done the group, but it's a great idea. It works well from past experience. It works extremely well.

[00:26:19] Perfect. So some great insights. I really love what you're doing, Tiffany. Your career in talent acquisition has been... I hate saying it's been a long one because that just gives the wrong impression, but you have experience that's brought you to this place. But looking back,

[00:26:36] what is your proudest moment in talent acquisition? That you did something, your team did something and you're like, that was a coup de grace. Yes. It's funny because I've had a few different lives in talent acquisition,

[00:26:49] right? So I think of the side I lived on helping people. And so there's a theme instead of a moment. And one of the themes is when you help people realize their potential and you see them grow in ways they didn't even think was possible, whether they're

[00:27:05] the job seeker or the employee, it's too exciting. I've said to a colleague of mine, that guy's going to surpass me. He's going to surpass you. It'll be fun to watch his career

[00:27:17] and he will. He'll be amazing. I'm not threatened by any of that stuff. I just think it's fun. It's just a scream to watch it happen. So there's been some real growth in people

[00:27:27] that I've mentored or worked with along the way. And when I first went over to private sector, I'd be in the busy underground in Toronto and hear people scream my name all

[00:27:36] the time. And it was because somebody had gotten a job and they were like, who is that? That's a great feeling, right? Oh, it was amazing. I had somebody re-approach me weeks ago and I haven't seen this guy in like

[00:27:48] 10 years. So we're going to interview him because he was great. And then there's the time where your business sees you as a strategic partner and they come to you first and they don't see you as getting in the way. They're like, how should we do this?

[00:28:01] Those are the best moments. Love it. Absolutely love it. Well, this was an extremely fun conversation, Tiffany. I'm glad we followed up from our conversation in Toronto. But if anyone listening and be like, hey, she really knows her stuff.

[00:28:17] I'd love to talk to you more. What's the easiest way to get a hold of you, Tiffany? Ping me on LinkedIn is probably the easiest because I can see it all in aggregate there.

[00:28:27] I'm so afraid if I go by email that I won't recognize the name and I won't recognize it's an initial reach out. But in the LinkedIn, I'll find you for sure. Just give me a few days because I do get a lot in there.

[00:28:40] So I recommend everyone to check out EQBank.ca. Go to their career page, check out what they're seeing. Love the marketing, love the approach. Tiffany, let's stay in touch. I want to bring you on again because the insights were fabulous. Thanks for coming on.

[00:28:55] Thanks so much. I enjoyed the chance to talk with everybody and I love the podcast. So have a good one, Serge. Thank you. Shelley, let's face it, texting candidates is the easiest way to hire quicker today.

[00:29:17] But your cell phone doesn't connect to your ATS. You're sharing your personal number with strangers. That's pretty scary, right, Shelley? And it's not even legally compliant. This is where our friends at Rectex come in. They've created simple yet powerful text

[00:29:32] recruiting software that works with your ATS. Plus, it's designed by recruiters for recruiters so you know it works. To learn more and book a demo, visit www.rectxt.com, mention the recruitment flex and get 10% off annual plans.

[00:29:51] Do you love news about LinkedIn, Indeed, Google and just about every other recruitment tech company out there? Hell yeah. I'm Chad. I'm Cheese. We're the Chad and Cheese Podcast. All the latest recruiting news and insights are on our show. Dripping in snark and attitude.

[00:30:09] Subscribe today wherever you listen to your podcasts. We out.