Case Studies

Hired 200 Commercial Bankers in 200 days for a Global Bank

A global bank with Canadian operations needed to scale its commercial banking team rapidly to meet growing business demands. To accomplish this goal, they needed to hire 200 commercial bankers in 200 days, despite a talent shortage in commercial banking professionals, and a requirement that 20% of new hires be fluent in both English and French.

With a strong emphasis on Ontario and Quebec, this project required a recruitment approach that balanced speed, quality, and bilingual hiring to ensure long-term success.

To overcome these challenges, Robertson RPO implemented a customized, high-efficiency recruitment strategy tailored to the bank’s objectives. The success of the project was driven by the following factors:

  • A robust recruitment pipeline enabled rapid hiring without compromising candidate quality.
  • Focused outreach ensured that bilingual candidates were successfully integrated into the commercial banking workforce.
  • Streamlined workflows allowed the recruitment team to meet the aggressive hiring deadline efficiently.
  • Analytics and insights played a key role in refining and adjusting hiring strategies in real time.

This approach enabled Robertson to successfully hire 200 highly qualified commercial banking professionals in 200 days, over 20% of which were bilingual.

A top 5 Canadian bank faced fluctuating hiring demands over the past 15 years. With a major transformation project on the horizon, they needed to fill 45 key roles quickly and efficiently. Recognizing the complexity of their hiring needs, they partnered with Robertson.

The Challenge

The client was undertaking a transformation project that required highly specialized contractors with deep financial industry expertise, which presented the following challenges:

  • Sourcing specialized talent in a competitive market
  • Retention concerns for in-demand skilled contractors.
  • High recruitment costs associated with traditional hiring methods.
  • Tight deadlines requiring swift and efficient hiring solutions.

Our Solution

To address these challenges, the client expanded their relationship with Robertson into an exclusive recruitment partnership. Our dedicated financial services recruitment team included expert recruiters, a coordinator, a lead recruiter, and a client-facing delivery manager. This team held multiple intake meetings and developed a streamlined onboarding process for new hiring managers to ensure a deep understanding of role-specific requirements.

Our Results

  • Higher Quality Talent: 45 highly skilled contract positions filled within deadlines.
  • 100% Retention: All contractors completed their contract terms.
  • Reduced Time to Hire by 30% to improve hiring efficiency and lowering recruitment costs.

The Challenge

A global financial services organization faced a significant talent acquisition hurdle. Their goal was to hire 45 qualified IT developers for critical projects, but tight deadlines and internal capacity constraints made it difficult to achieve their goal. The stakes were high, as delays in onboarding the right talent could disrupt key operations and hinder growth.

Our Solution

Robertson RPO stepped in with a comprehensive recruitment strategy. A dedicated team was assigned to the client, focusing on streamlining workflows and improving the overall hiring process. By conducting thorough intake meetings with hiring managers, the team gained a deep understanding of the organization’s needs. This enabled them to provide tailored support throughout the recruitment cycle, from sourcing candidates to final placements.

Our Results

Robertson RPO not only met the client’s urgent needs but also redefined what efficiency and value look like in talent acquisition. The financial services leader benefited from reduced recruitment costs, faster hiring timelines, and the assurance of quality hires.

  • Immediate Impact: 23 offers were made in the first month alone.
  • Role Completion: All 45 roles, including IT developer and Agile coach positions, were successfully filled.
  • Expanded Talent Pool: Over 4,000 qualified candidates were added to the client’s database.
  • High Success Rates: A 100% placement rate for Agile coach roles demonstrated the efficacy of the tailored approach.
  • Reduced Time to Hire by 80%

Anticipating a pandemic-driven surge in demand in Ontario, a healthcare services industry client turned to Robertson to help grow its frontline patient-facing resources in a tight, 60-day timeframe. Working alongside the client’s specialists, Robertson created a program to capture specialized job knowledge, standardize and streamline the recruitment process, go live in the field, and provide real-time reporting — all in just two weeks.

As the demand surged mid-assignment, the client twice increased its overall requirement, almost doubling the initial requisition to more than 250 positions, while also adding a third location in Saskatchewan.

Working together, Robertson slashed the client’s expected time-to-hire by more than 50 per cent, halved the cost of vacancy, and reduced the cost of hiring by more than 60 per cent. With support from Robertson, our client also enhanced its recruiting processes and now attracts and retains better candidates. More importantly, our client exceeded its own customers’ expectations on response time, quality, and cost in a period of unprecedented challenge.

Our client, a consumer products company, turned to Robertson to provide a turnkey solution to its temporary hiring needs. Located in a remote part of Ontario, and with a small in-house recruitment team, our client needed a partner with resources and experience to create and manage multiple sourcing strategies to meet its tight timelines.

Anticipating a spike in consumption of products in late 2020/early 2021, the client contracted Robertson to recruit 50 temporary production labourers within four weeks, and to manage payroll for the production workers. It was also hoping to increase first day turnout, which had averaged only 50%.

Robertson analyzed the demographic landscape and utilized the client’s existing ATS database and community outreach to create a two-pronged approach. We also used off-shore sourcing support and on-shore recruiters to create a 16/5 work schedule to ensure coverage in all areas and meet target and timeline demands.

Robertson exceeded our client’s expectations. All 50 hires were made by the 3rd training date and the first day attendance rate was 95%.

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