Talent Acquisition Transformation at Wells Fargo

The Next Practices Weekly call series has become a well-attended and wide-ranging discussion for HR leaders each Thursday at 11am ET / 8am PT. On this week's call, i4cp VP of Research and Managing Editor Lorrie Lykins, and i4cp Senior Research Analyst Tom Stone, facilitated a conversation with special guest Joanna Clark, Senior Vice President, Talent Acquisition Strategy and Transformation at Wells Fargo. Here are some highlights from the call:

TA at Wells Fargo had been decentralized for a long time, but is now on a journey that focuses on centralization, process simplification, strategic consultation capabilities, and data-driven insights and decisions. This is a multi-year transformation of the TA function.
At Wells Fargo they have spent time over the past couple of years refining their capacity management model. Every month the TA leaders get together to judge current and future capacity across the different parts of the business. The formalizing of this process (vs. chat, email, phone) has really made a difference.
Related to this has been some attention to their high-volume TA process. There has been a change in recent years given the emergence of gig work (Uber, etc.) and the expectations of candidates for a quick, simple hiring process for certain roles. This includes considering greater automation, but also the experience for the candidates for high-volume roles. Interestingly, some changes they might implement here could carry over to non-high volume TA processes.
In terms of TA technology at Wells Fargo, they have consolidated onto Workday as their Applicant Tracking System (ATS), and also use Beamery CRM.
Clark noted that in TA at Wells Fargo, in partnership with the L&D function, they are looking at how to take a more skills-centric approach to their talent processes, because increasingly there just aren't enough candidates that have exactly all that is included in a given job description.
Wells Fargo has always had a strong, if informal, culture of internal mobility, with historically over 50% of hires being internal. More recently, with higher goals for mobility, there is an increased focus to formalize a process in partnership with the talent management team.
Wells Fargo is using AI and RPA to help better leverage data across their various platforms. Doing so has greatly increased the usefulness of their data for HR and business leaders. Clark noted that generative AI is currently be evaluated, especially for business use cases to help eliminate repetitive work and also to bring to life their policies and procedures to make them more usable.
Clark emphasized how important mentorships are in the TA space. More and more organizations are offering cross-company mentoring for recruiters, and she is a big advocate for this.
What does Clark look for in TA professionals to join her team? People who can think outside of their day job, can see the bigger picture, and think about transformational change.

Links to resources shared on the call:

Upcoming i4cp virtual events
i4cp's Next Practices Now conference
Information on i4cp Membership
i4cp's The Productivity Predicament report (members only)
i4cp’s The Productivity Predicament brief (publicly available)
HR is Using Generative AI (AI Toolkit Excerpt for non-members)
I4cp's Guidebook on Talent Mobility and Internal Talent Marketplaces (members only)

This event is approved for certification credits.