How Is UBS Hiring For The Future? With Jonna Sjövall

Speaker A: You won the best, you got the best. Absolute best of the best. The best, the best talent and mountains of it. Mountains of it. Mountains on it. Everybody's got talent. I got talent. I got talent. I got talent. Hello and welcome to the Talent Blueprint, your guide to building talent first skills based organizations. The Talent Blueprint comes to you from Bimari, the AI platform powering enterprise scale workforce transformation.

Speaker B: Hello and welcome everyone to this week's installment of the Talent Blueprint. I'm your host, Sultan Saidov. And today I am delighted to welcome Yona Sjeval, the global head of talent attraction and campus recruiting at ubs. Jona, thanks so much for joining us. Uh, really excited to have you here.

Speaker A: Thank you very much for having me. I'm as excited.

Speaker B: Well, we have a lot around to cover today, but I'd love to start with just a bit of a story of your career so far, how you ended up in this role and a little bit about what you do today.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think summing it up in one sentence, it's engineer turned marketeer. I have a background in engineering so I have a master's in engineering. And after school I started in management consulting and as part of our job there we had to go to career fairs and help convince new analysts to join us. And that's how I started to get into all things employer brand, talent attraction, talent acquisition. After that I worked in an employee brand agency for more than 10 years and UBS was my client. And yeah, five and a half years ago, soon I then switched over to the client side and I am now Zurich based working for the biggest global wealth manager.

Speaker B: Well, I'm sure all of our listeners will probably have heard of ubs I imagine, uh, it's been an interesting organization in which to think about the role of recruiting, particularly in the last six years. I used to work in finance before founding B Marie and financial services has gone through a lot. What's it been like bringing your perspectives into that in house role and how has that changed in the six years you've been there?

Speaker A: So first of all, you're absolutely right, there's a lot of things that have been happening and finance is a really interesting industry both because we really need the future talent to join us early on because that's how the model is built, but also because how finance needs to respond to what's going on in the world to be relevant to clients is changing very rapidly with everything from digitization, AI, crypto, um, from my experience, what's really interesting with UBS is That we want to be in the forefront, but we are in a heavily regulated industry. On top of that, we're Swiss, which makes us, uh, I think our risk profile is that we're very risk averse and we want to make sure that we're doing the right thing. Not just the things right, which sometimes slows things down tremendously, but at the same time when you can make some change, then you can make change at scale. And that's what I find really, really exciting. We then also of course ended up acquiring Credit Suisse last year, which added some additional interesting things to think about when you're combining two big global brands together and need to think about what's the brand for the future. And as part of that employee brand,

Speaker B: there's uh, quite a few things to unpack in what you've just said in terms of what's changing, not just in finance, but in thinking about the role of candidates and recruiters. And I want to start with the first piece you mentioned around hiring early and growing careers in finance. Uh, you know, the place I'm based, London, I think as a city is at the forefront of this because a lot of people start their careers in finance. It's a big financial services center and it's a place in which a lot of people then move on to other walks in life. But the mindset of hiring for potential has been a core component of how the financial services industry has been built and I imagine that concept has been evolving and so the role of recruiting and TA is evolving. How have you been thinking about that, both in the general sense of how to train your teams and set them up to higher full potential. And is that starting to have a different view now that you have to think about this new merged global organization?

Speaker A: Yeah, that's two very different questions, but they kind of come nicely together. I think starting really with hiring juniors, hiring for potential and then training them so that they can really fulfill their potential is what we need to be really good at. Uh, and the recruiting organization, especially if we talk about campus recruiting, we are enablers so that the business can hire the most suitable talent for them. So we need to get the business on board. And I think that is the biggest mindset focus for our campus recruiters. We need to make sure that when we come with suggestions, solutions, rules, ideas, trying to get people to change their minds, be open minded. We need to have data and we need to have insights, but we need to be outcome focused. We need to really think about what problem are we solving for the business right now and what problem are we solving for the bank, for the future or for the long term? Sometimes those two things can be a bit contradictive because it's for any hiring manager, you need somebody in the seat right now who can do the job. At the same time, if we look at it from a talent perspective, especially when we talk about juniors who are starting their careers, the world is open. So trying to mix and match that, uh, in terms of what does the business need to succeed versus what do we need to do as an organization to make the candidates succeed when they join us, that's kind of the secret sauce. And that's an interesting journey. We're on to your second question. Around two global brands coming together who also have some similarities in terms of like big global Swiss banks, but also a very different brand in many different ways and a different operating model. It's actually not that easy. However, one thing that was really surprising me last year when we went through the acquisition and we went on campus months afterwards, was that actually in London, New York, Singapore, Hong Kong, nobody cared. We were caring so much about this was the credit brand, this is the UBS brand. Are the employer brands the same? How are we going to go to market? The candidates just wanted to know what now they didn't really care. So that was quite interesting to get out of your own little brand bubble where you think it's such an important thing. What was much more important is what can we offer now with the combined forces that we have. So it kind of forced us to switch gears and look into the future.

Speaker B: And when you think about what the candidate wants in that situation, the expectations and worries of candidates have changed, brand aside. And I imagine you're also looking for slightly different skill sets, whether it's in the UBS mindset or the credit suites mindset. So looking at, ah, the now, but hiring into the future, what are some of the new things coming to mind? And is the role of the recruiter having to change to face into hiring for potential for the next five years?

Speaker A: It's a really good question and there's no simple answer to that. What's changing is the needs of the business, right? So as a really big global company, we need to be quicker, we need to be more agile, we need to look at what's going on outside of our world so that we can be relevant to clients. At the same time, we also need to be relevant to candidates. And as you said, candidate needs are changing rapidly. Covid was really, really interesting because it flipped everything on its head. Because everything went virtual, companies had to be more flexible. There was a lot of working from home hybrid policies that came out of that. But at the same time it's also generational, right? Depending on what happened when the kids that we're hiring now, they went to college, doing college from home, that's a very different experience from the people who have been on campus for four or five years. So it's all connected to what's going on in the world. And I think it's less of a generational topic, it's more about what's going on in the world topic. But regardless what the reasons are, we need to be faster to adapt. And on the flip side, how recruiting needs to change. We need to continue uh, and push for being relevant both for the hiring managers, the bank, but also the candidates. And what that means, that means different things to different candidates. Right? Somebody who's interested in AI and technology that we need for our technology arm might have different needs and wishes than somebody who wants to go into the pyramid of investment banking. They have different drivers of what they want from their career, they have different expectations on work life balance, on training and development, all those things. And we somehow need to find a way to talk to candidates who might be open for both, but at the same time we need to cater for both in the best way possible, at the same time, catering for what the business needs. So it's not super easy, which makes it fun.

Speaker B: Well, in the uh, it's not super easy lens, I know that the ah, UBS team have uh, been quite creative and innovative over the last few years in both the approaches, but also in the use of technology to help build communities, facilitate conversations. But I'm curious when you think about what is uh, changing versus needing to change in the use of technology and data to assist the talent, teams and functions, what's front of mind?

Speaker A: We need to walk the talk. So if we're really serious, and we are really serious about doing things the right way, we need to understand how technology is an enabler. Technology is never going to replace the recruiters, but it's going to help the recruiters do a great job. And that brings us to the next question. What is the recruiter's job? And rather than going through manually, a lot of detailed CVs, screening candidates, making phone calls, organizing super days, it will be more about relationship building with the candidates. And that's what technology is there for. To free up our time, to be more efficient where it makes sense, but also for us to spend more time where it makes more sense. So I think we just need to think about it in a way that it's an enabler for what we need to do. But it's not that the work's gonna go away, is that the work's gonna be different.

Speaker B: I couldn't agree more. And that principle applies not just in recruiting, but in so many service roles today. I think in this question that's on a lot of people's minds around what is happening with AI? How is it replacing people? I think the general perspective in many roles is AI is replacing certain types of work, not people. And people can actually lean into different types of work that are more relationship focused, but also that can be assisted with data and insights. And I think the question of what types of data and insights are really useful in HR and recruiting is different to other functions. But I know that a lot of what UBS has been looking at is the understanding of what is the work, what is the architecture of jobs and people. How are you thinking about that as the sort of foundation to help create a more advisory role for the talent teams that you work with?

Speaker A: I think without data you don't have anything, but with too much data you have everything but you can't do anything. I love data, but I think very often data is seen as uh, something that's just adding to the pile of things that you need to look at. So we say we're data driven, we do a lot with data, but what do we actually use the data for? And from a kind of skills perspective or even talent matching perspective, your outcome is going to be only as good as the input in the first place. So first of all you need to know what you're looking for and you need to be quite good at specifying what are you looking for, what is a must have in this role versus what is a nice to have or a nice add on versus what are the skills that this candidate really brings. So to be able to do a proper matching, if you don't have the input in the first place, you can't do it. So that's the first question, like how can we be good enough at uh, identifying how we are to map this so that it makes sense and then how are we going to keep that alive and going as uh, people are learning new skills on a daily basis these days and role types are changing, requirements are changing for a really big organization to map that out, work with it and then change it is quite a big jump for sure.

Speaker B: And this touches back on what you, uh, mentioned about the Role of employer brand. It may be that it's often easy to be in your own bubble, as you say, and ah, at the same time that's actually a key component of thinking about the overall TA function. How do we define success? How do we understand our work criteria, our candidates, our employees, our skills? What is your view on how employer brand should best fit in to this sort of evolving model of a data driven TA function?

Speaker A: I think employee brand as such needs a strong connection to the overall brand, but it also needs a strong connection to what are we trying to achieve. So if you think about a person walking down the street, they might see, I'm um, taking example Zurich Airport, they might see a UBS corporate brand, huge billboard and then they apply for a job on our APS and they see something different. They're not going to think like, oh, this is the employer brand team who did this or this is the corporate brand team who did that and this is the advertising team. Everything will come together in people's heads and it builds brand perception. However, to answer your question, employer brand sometimes is seen as kind of an ivory tower of um, brand guidelines twice. What are you allowed to do? Where is the logo supposed to be placed? What language are we using? It's less about that and it's more about what's the input. Again, what's relevant to candidates, what do they want to know and then how can we bring that message to them? So it fits with the overall brand. At ubs, employer brand sits in hr but we have a very strong connection to the central content branding team and that works extremely well because we have such a, uh, tight collaboration with the branding team who looks across all the different divisions. HR is considered as a division like the wealth management division has certain client needs, HR has certain client needs. For us, that's the candidate need. But it really helps to have strong ties both to overall HR and recruiting, but as strong to corporate brand. And when you can merge that nicely, that's when you get the best of both really.

Speaker B: And it's also clear that the um, mindset of what kind of soft skills you build within individual TA teams are starting to become more common. I think there's a component of how do you help recruiters and sources be better storytellers that connects to how do you amplify um, the brand function? What have been some of the successes you've seen in this kind of collaboration that you're describing?

Speaker A: I'm glad you asked because I think one of the key success factors is that uh, you need to involve the right people before you make decisions. And that also goes for the employer brand. We're currently doing a revision of our employer brand campaign connected to that. We had this Credit Suisse acquisition last year. Our overall brand has a new direction and um, so does the employer brand need to have. However, uh, you need to bring in the people who are supposed to sell it in the end. So I used to work in sales and the frustration between marketing teams and sales teams can sometimes be really, really, really high. It's like marketing talks about lead generation. They want to do things scalably. Nobody talks to us. We are the ones who talk to the clients as the salesperson. And I think if you bring everybody around the table before you make decisions, that's really important. So in the brand team or in the marketing function, you have marketing expertise. How to think about Persona, who are you after? How can we translate this? How do we talk about this? But uh, the people who need to sell the jobs are the recruiters in the end. And if you just give them something that you have come up with, regardless how good it is, you have zero buy in. So you need to bring people in before you make those decisions and make them part of the brand, otherwise they can't sell it.

Speaker B: I think the mindset of treating talent like customers, including internal talent, has a lot of things that we can still apply from learnings of how organizations run their sales marketing functions. In your own lifetime of seeing successes in TA and the kind of things that you've done at UBS in the last, uh, five, six years, what's the work that you've been personally most proud of?

Speaker A: That's a tough one. Um, it will go back to something I mentioned just before, which is really going from being an ivory tower employer brand function around. This is what's allowed, this is what you need to do here. Here are the assets. Go to completely switching and flipping it on its head and thinking about who are our customers and what do we need to do to make them successful. So for me it's not one single campaign or anything. It's really how the team M has evolved to be very, very customer centric. And with customer, I'm talking both the candidate but also really the other functions that we need to work together with, especially the recruiter. So really bringing that closely together. There is one campaign though that I uh, am still always mentioning if people are asking from a marketing perspective. A couple of years ago we were ramping up our internal consulting function at UBS globally and we were looking at people who work at McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, Bain, PwC, EY, Deloitte. And we had to have a compelling proposition to them. And we worked together with the business, really with the actual computer, to figure out what's our competitive edge. And then we convinced the head of brand that we need to have a little bit of a play with humor, which was not something that UPS used to do at that point. And the campaign was hugely successful. It was spoken about among the partners at our competitors. From a consulting firm perspective, we managed to fill a lot of roles because we were very clear on what we offer versus what we don't for the people that we were after. And it was super fun because it was the first time that we did something that closely with the business and we took a little bit of a risk. And in the end we were able to really measure the outcome in terms of quality of hire, time to hire, and really get the business what they needed. And that was really, really rewarding.

Speaker B: I love that. And if you think of, uh, the competitive edge component that you just mentioned, not from the vantage point of a campaign or a brand, but from the team that's building it, what are some of the things that you would give as advice to people in talent acquisition or talent marketing to think about their own competitive edge and how to be successful in this emerging space?

Speaker A: That's also one of my favorite questions because I'm super lucky to have amazing, amazing people on my team. You need to have a vision and the vision needs to be bold. And that will help you get the right people on board. So we worked really hard to define what's our vision at that point as an employer brand team. Now my team is much bigger, but it started from the employer brand team. And we decided we want to be a world class employer brand team, if not the best one out there. And then you need to line yourself up to become one, right? So then we really discussed, okay, what does that mean? What needs to change? What capabilities do we need? And it was super, super fun. And some people got really excited about it, others didn't, which is part of the point, right? So you get people with you who are aspiring for something bigger. And we managed to get so many things through because everybody knew what the goal was. And of course, uh, to be able to be a worthless team, you also need to make sure that your customers are happy and you do the right thing. Right? So that kind of came with it, but it was all about ambition and getting people on board. And what we're trying to do and talking about how we're going to get there. It's like any leadership, like you want to follow something that you believe in and ambitious people want to work for ambitious people. So having the right ambition, I think was also a really important part of it. And then you need to get the right people in, you need to convince them to join you and you need to give them room to play. And that's what I'm really hyper focused on still now. My team, again, it's broader, but we have the same principle across.

Speaker B: Well, to the topic of, ah, vision, you've also touched a little bit on your vision of how the function and the role is evolving with technology being assisted. What's one thing that you're most excited about or looking forward to in the next couple of years around? What's happening to either the employee experience, the talent acquisition, team experience, or just the market and technology as a whole and what it might unlock.

Speaker A: So I'm really excited about AI. It's going to come down to how can we again be more relevant to the candidates and how can we find the right way of staying in touch in a way that's interesting but not annoying the candidate? How can we gather the data we need so that we can quickly do something that makes sense? How can we pivot faster? I'm looking forward to the speed that hopefully will come with AI.

Speaker B: I couldn't agree more. And I think part of that speed comes from technology starting to assist us to catch blind spots rather than just be more efficient. I think traditionally we think of technology as an efficiency driver, but speed isn't just efficiency. Speed is reaction to opportunities and I think that is definitely a big unlock that is happening. Well, this has been a fantastic conversation. Is there any final thoughts you'd like to share for our listeners about your perspectives of just things that are front of mind and uh, that you're passionate about?

Speaker A: I'm just super passionate about people and I think we talk a lot about technology. We talk about AI, we talk about ambition. In the end, ah, the human element is what's actually going to make or break it. So maybe it's more of a word of advice like don't forget the human aspect. In the midst of all the excitement for technology. And I'm talking to myself more than to anybody else because people will still make it happen and you can have the best idea, the best product, product in the world, but without the people there with you, you are just not going to get that far.

Speaker B: Well, thank you so much for, um, joining us today for this fantastic conversation.

Speaker A: Thank you very much for having me. The Talent blueprint is brought to you by bimari, the leading AI talent platform. Learn more@bimary.com.