Rethinking Your Hiring Strategy in Uncertain Times

A DISCUSSION WITH JPMORGAN CHASE, PROGRESSIVE INSURANCE AND BAYER PHARMACEUTICALS

WATCH VIDEO OF HIRING DISCUSSION WITH JPMORGAN CHASE, PROGRESSIVE INSURANCE AND BAYER PHARMACEUTICALS

With the outbreak of COVID-19 forcing hiring freezes and transitions to virtual processes, we turned to a few of our corporate partners at JPMorgan Chase, Progressive Insurance and Bayer Pharmaceuticals to understand how they are analyzing their workforce and shifting their hiring strategy as they experience a turbulent job market.

Get a sneak peek into how these companies are innovating their hiring strategies and helping the business move forward.

Discussion includes these hiring leaders and companies:

  • Chuck Xenakis,  Executive Director of Recruiting, JPMorgan Chase Global Technology
  • Jane Shaw, IT Manager, Progressive Insurance
  • Ralph Schriver, Head of Software Engineering, Bayer Pharmaceuticals
  • Anthony Hughes, Tech Elevator CEO, Moderator

SUMMARY & QUOTES: EFFECTS OF COVID-19

CURRENT HIRING MARKET & STRATEGY

  • While these companies have been forced to move hiring and onboarding online, what’s driving each of them is the long list of technology projects that need to be completed.
  • In March 2020, Tech Elevator’s Employer Matchmaking events hosted 80+ companies and 1,500+ virtual interviews at their six campuses, down approximately 18% from the previous year. [7:14]
  • Progressive Insurance continues to hire and is honoring all offers made to entry-level technology jobs / IT Apprenticeships. [10:11] 
  • Bayer Radiology continues to move forward with hiring, while getting creative with onboarding, and has many in-flight projects to continue to design products that are saving lives in the healthcare space. [11:53] 
  • JPMorgan Chase is still hiring and has nearly 2,000 open technology jobs across the globe. COVID-19 has increased the list of technology projects needing completion. [13:16] 

EFFECTS ON RECRUITING

  • Brand reputation and employer branding opportunities in recruiting have presented themselves, especially in an industry like healthcare where software programs and products have an impact on patients’ lives, giving employees a sense of reward.
  • One lasting effect of this time will be a better understanding of the total value in virtual interviewing and overall increased learnings and efficiency.
  • Broadening the scope of candidate pools you’re tapping into is critical in this time. “Hiring for potential and passion is more important than skills. You can teach skills if you hire a life-long learner. Changing the way we think about hiring and diversifying the pool from which you select candidates. Some of our top talent at Bayer Radiology are not classically trained and a best practice.” – Ralph at Bayer Pharmaceuticals [49:05]

SOURCING TALENT FROM WITHIN / RESKILLING

  • Opportunity to reimagine the talent base presents itself in terms of reskilling and digital upskilling from within the company with a focus on automation and in-demand technical roles for the future of work. [38:27]
  • “We are always looking at upskilling proven internal talent. When we have someone in our call center, who has acclimated well to our culture, does a great job, learned the business and wants to expand their career into a technical role. We are looking at programs to get that internal talent into IT. That is another great way to increase employer brand.” – Jane at Progressive Insurance [41:36]
  • “I got a call from Katie [at Tech Elevator] who said ‘Chuck, we have a really unusual situation. We have somebody from JPMorgan Chase who quit JPMorgan Chase to come to Tech Elevator because she wants to become a software engineer.’ We immediately had a conversation with her that sparked conversations with our HR business partners, technology partners, to say there have to be more great employees who have found a passion for software engineering and want to do this. How do we find them? How do we help them? How do we get them into programs like this?” – Chuck at JPMorgan Chase [43:29]
  • “You want to build loyalty and brand? Retrain your people, change their lives.” – Chuck at JPMorgan Chase
  • “There’s a lot of process burden in the work we do. One of the things we’ve been doing is trying to migrate much of our testing to automation. By freeing up testing technicians through automation, we can shift them into development areas like coding – one area where Tech Elevator can help us with reskilling our hands-on folks to be more on the engineering side.” – Ralph at Bayer Pharmaceuticals [47:44]

VIRTUAL ONBOARDING

  • Virtual onboarding includes preparing not only the individuals, but also the mentors to help them understand how to connect new employees. New training materials to deliver to new hires about how they work remotely is a good practice so that they understand the role and remote work process.
  • At larger scales having new employees start remotely is something that hasn’t been done before. Areas of the business like cyber technology, infrastructure and HR operations all need to work together to form the best possible plan for onboarding while continuing to communicate with new hires.
  • Set expectations with new hires. Being very clear on expectations of being a remote worker, coach them to use the technologies and continue outreach and touchpoints to ask ‘how are you?’ regularly.