CIMB Singapore

Oliver Guo

1. Can you walk us briefly through your leadership role as Head of Talent Acquisition? What are your key responsibilities and areas of focus?

As Head of Talent Acquisition and Business Partner for CIMB Singapore, I lead a team which manages the end-to-end candidate and employee lifecycle — from sourcing the right talent to implementing strategies that support long-term retention.

And this is a key focus area for us, as employees are the lifeblood of any organization. At CIMB, we deeply value our people — this is reflected not only in the wide range of learning and development opportunities we offer, but also in the regular employee engagement activities we organize to celebrate their contributions and achievements.

2. How has your recruitment strategy evolved post-pandemic or in response to remote work trends?

Increasingly post-pandemic, remote working has become a topic of candidate’s concern during our interview and offer process. As more companies mandate employees going physically back to office, CIMB Singapore has adopted a slightly different approach and continue to promote a hybrid work arrangement to the general employee population especially non-client facing roles as we recognize the importance of employee mental wellness for them to last the mile. This is also in line with our strategy to retain employees for the longer term and maintain as well as pass on institutional knowledge whilst they continue to progress their careers and develop personally with the organization.

To add, we have an internal mobility policy that strongly encourages employee to look inwards rather than outwards for their next career moves – and these could be work opportunities across the region as we leverage on our strong ASEAN footprint.

“At CIMB Singapore, we encourage a hybrid work arrangement, especially for non-client-facing roles, as we recognize the importance of employee mental wellness in helping them go the distance.”

One big change as well is that candidates are more open to virtual interviews; in the past, it was either face to face, which can at times be challenging to arrange due to conflict schedules or phone interviews, which is hard to read a candidate’s reactions to certain questions. Virtual interviews are a good blend of convenience and relatability – you can also spot candidates who abuse the process and read off scripted interview responses!

All these various initiatives culminate in a solid recruitment strategy that allows us to attract and retain talents as we keep pace with what employees are looking for and also ensure we provide opportunities internally. We recognize different candidates and employees have different work as well as personal needs and we support where we can.

3. What are the key competencies you believe talent acquisition leaders will need in the next 5-10 years to succeed in an increasingly globalized and technology-driven landscape?

Agility and adaptability are key competencies to adjust to the fast changing world in an increasingly globalized and technologydriven landscape as well as potential black swan events such as the pandemic.

As leaders in our respective functions (even individual contributors are leaders in their own areas of expertise), it is critical that we stay open-minded to changes and ideas, and be agile to adapt. While first-movers will have advantage, it can be equally useful to observe the lessons learned from first-movers and improvise a strategy that will work for your company — we should be mindful that every company has its unique dynamics and culture.

Lastly, it is also important to manage all these changes with a heart. Fundamentally, talent acquisition is a Human Resource function and matters dealing with people should always place people at the heart of the solution.

4. What advice would you give to TA leaders and HR leaders who want to introduce scientific rigor into their hiring strategy but are working with legacy systems or traditional mindsets?

There is increasing introduction of scientific rigour most prevalently heavy analysis of data to make data-centric decisions but this could face pushbacks from existing employees with traditional mindsets or challenges with legacy systems which do not support data gathering and utilization. As Stephen Covey in his The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People shared, perhaps the key habits to practice in this case would be mutual benefit and empathetic communication i.e. to share how introducing scientific rigour into hiring strategies can help the team and the organization as well as being open to hear the opposing concerns especially where traditional mindsets are the biggest obstacles.

For legacy systems, it can be that the organization has made heavy investments into a multi-year contract with the vendor or that existing employees are too used to the legacy systems and display no willingness to learn a new system, it is then a matter of convincing management or employees that this is a short term pain, long term gain kind of approach but also be smart to recognize when is an appropriate time to raise for consideration taking in mind the risk-reward ratio optimization of when to raise.

That said, there have also been stories of scientific biasness including how recruiters supplemented by Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the selection process tends to be bias towards a certain identical employee profiles i.e. essentially the same profiles as existing employees which results in Groupthink and a lack of diversity. We should not create diversity for the sake of doing so but a meritocratic organization with diverse employee profiles and hence ideas will help the organization to grow more progressively.

Oliver Guo, Head of HR Business Partner & Talent Acquisition, CIMB Singaporea.