When a renowned global financial services organization was seeking to grow and strengthen its Risk function across its US offices, its leadership team knew that they needed a team of experts.
As Risk is such a dynamic industry, they recognized that a key requirement would be to have a leadership team comprised of Risk Management experts who could bring new and innovative ideas and perspectives to their department - and that would mean expanding their workforce to include a more diverse range of backgrounds and experiences.
The challenge
Traditional hiring and recruitment methods were not producing the desired outcome. After finding it challenging to identify and retain the candidates they needed, the firm engaged Hanover to develop a solution for their talent acquisition goals.
As experts in both the Risk sector and in developing effective diversity and inclusion strategies, our team knew this would be a remarkable partnership that would not only benefit our client’s business, but also provide an incredible opportunity to those in our network of leadership talent.
How Hanover’s approach paved the way for success
When Hanover was engaged for this assignment, we quickly assessed that the strongest approach would be to develop a ‘search in reverse’, with the objective of cultivating a robust and powerful pipeline of Risk Management professionals.
“Key to success,” says Hanover Americas CEO
James Ridd, “was the client acknowledging that they were able to attract top talent by focusing on creating opportunities for potential high quality candidates that they may not have considered.”
Understanding that for the Risk function to be its most progressive it would be necessary to be flexible with organizational structure and roles, we proposed conducting a broad-reaching market mapping exercise to identify and engage the top Risk Management leaders in our client’s primary locations of operation.
Once we had identified these individuals, we shared their details with our client, who in turn could assess whether or not they had an open role that would be a suitable match - or if they could create a new position that would both better fit the candidate and also push their organization in a forward direction.
The results
Using this approach, our in-house research division was able to conduct an extensive mapping project that encompassed Risk Management experts across the entire sector and country.
Critical to the success of this mandate was establishing a candidate pool aligned to our client’s aim for a truly diverse and inclusive leadership team, ensuring individuals from underrepresented backgrounds were engaged and given equitable consideration.
Our team of industry-expert Partners conducted in-depth informational interviews, thoroughly screened candidates to fully understand their experience, potential, and ambitions, and assessed for fit with our client organization’s mission and culture.
Over the course of this assignment we engaged with over 125 leaders in the field, and within a single quarter supported the successful hiring of five Risk Management leaders into critical roles.
James says, “Running a search with a fresh and new lens enabled Hanover to deliver a unique solution that produced positive results as well as a quality pipeline of candidates for future requirements.”
