Sharp suit? Winning smile? Graduated from a prestigious school? It still might not be enough to score a job at a top bank if your neural waves look suspicious.
Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBSPF) has added an esoteric strand to its hiring process at careers fairs and university campuses, Bloomberg reported Thursday: mind reading.
Prospective jobseekers are (presumably willingly) stuck with scanners and then played a series of videos and images. A readout based on students’ cerebral responses gives them a description of their personality type and suggests an area of the bank’s operations that might be a good fit.
Patrick Eltridge, RBS Chief Information Officer, told Bloomberg, that the use of “gamification and online simulation” both gave the bank a new tool for evaluating applicants and also provided graduates with valuable feedback.
The gambit reflects a broader drive among banks to persuade talented graduates—and especially those with a background in tech—to work for them, as opposed to joining startups.
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The increased prevalence of mobile banking, shifting customer demographics, and diverse cyber-hacking threats have spiked demand for talented technology graduates across the banking sector. Over the past two years Deutsche Bank (DB) has doubled the size of its graduate pool; JP Morgan & Chase (JPYYL) also recently ramped up its hiring of technology staff.
“The majority of the technology graduates we want to bring in are people with a focus on software engineering,” Scott Marcar, Deutsche Bank’s IT boss in London told Bloomberg.