RBS has become a byword for all that is wrong with the UK banking industry. Greedy, fat cat bankers, epitomised by Sir Fred Goodwin, who have taken our money and gambled it recklessly. And when things went wrong they were bailed out by the taxpayer.

Against such a backdrop, it would it would be a surprise if the person in charge of recruitment for this much-maligned bank didn’t have a sense that the cards were unfairly stacked against them.

However, as Susan Bor, RBS’s director of group resourcing, looks out across the City skyline from the 11th floor of the bank’s Bishopsgate offices, she is clearly relishing the task.

Bor admits that the past 18 months have been painful. “But you can only feel that for so long,” she says. “We are not down. We don’t think ’we don’t have bags to offer people’,” she adds.

Bor is clearly determined to buy into the new sense of direction provided by Goodwin’s successor Stephen Hester to revive the bank’s fortunes and return it to the private sector within the next two to four years.

As part of this strategy, the bank plans to concentrate on core businesses and to divest itself of others: RBS Insurance, and Sempra, its commodities trading arm, part of its Global Business & Markets division.

Despite RBS’s turbulent recent history, Bor is bolstered by her belief, reinforced by Hester, in the critical role that resourcing has in the bank’s future.

“Our return to standalone strength will be largely driven by our ability to acquire and retain really good quality people. At this juncture, how we deal with candidates, how we get them across the line, has never been more critical.”

While hiring numbers have slipped dramatically from the 30,000-35,000 a year in the heyday of the financial services boom, this year RBS still plans to hire around 21,000 people across all parts of the group. “The recruitment process and the work to support it is central,” says Bor.

That said, there are “dominant capabilities” the organisation is particularly keen to acquire, namely: finance, risk management, IT and marketing.

This and indeed all the bank’s recruitment will be driven by attrition, and the need for ’A players’, or as Bor puts it, there will be “an upgrade dimension as well”.

For Bor, talent is a broad concept reflecting the breadth of activities within the bank. And it is no less important in an RBS branch where “a talented person rather than a half-talented person can make a real difference to the perceptions of customers and the revenue streams of the branch” than in the higher echelons of management.

“If I don’t do my job well there could be ramifications,” she adds, as if underlining the magnitude of her task.

Bor is crystal clear about her mission and that of the 400 staff under her (up from just nine when she joined) who serve RBS across the UK, Europe, the US and Asia. “Our raison d’etre is to acquire the best talent for the organisation in all the markets we operate.”

Bor’s team operates in a wide range of disciplines: in-house executive search, investment banking and capital markets, professional, sales and services, and finally the volume end - hiring call centre and branch staff. But across the spectrum the vision is the same.

It’s a difficult trick to pull off in any organisation, but particularly one whose brand reputation, Bor admits, has been damaged - she believes as a result of being dragged through the mud by the media, “disproportionately”.

It is made harder, both because the talent RBS needs is in short supply and because candidates are so much more discerning.

“How do you get people from outside to join, who might be more passive at the moment?” she asks, then gives her answer: “Working harder, a softer ’burn’ and a longer relationship with potential candidates.”

To augment this, and to counteract the negative publicity RBS continues to attract, the head of resourcing for each of the bank’s candidate groups is responsible for producing a brand enhancement plan. For example, the head of specialist functions will meet three or four times a year with recruiters such as Michael Page to keep them up to speed on what is happening.

The bank has also overhauled its advertising, using real experiences of its own staff. “It’s telling it like it is rather than ’We are the world’s fifth largest bank, we are this, we are that’. We have changed our tone.”

In some senses Bor says this new approach is a “nicer one” than the old “we are biggest and the best, and we will pay you the most” one.

Bor says that when it comes to attracting talent, “for the most part people are not in this game for the money”. However, she echoes the views of Hester that unless RBS is competitive, particularly on the investment banking side, RBS could lose out to its competitors. “We will just have to wait and see what happens over the next six to nine months,” she says.

At the same time, she says that at the senior end of the bank’s recruitment spectrum the bank is not having any “different conversations”. This may change following recent reports that RBS’s top layers of management will either have all or some of their bonuses deferred until 2012.

However, at least at the moment, Bor says RBS is not seeing any drop-off in the number of applications, while the turndown rate is a “negligible 5%”.

Bor points out that away from the rarefied air of investment banking, salaries in its branch network remain competitive.

Graduate applications are up, says Bor, though she cautions that with 47 graduates going for every job, people shouldn’t read too much into this.

Bor says that along with a competitive remuneration package, part of the strategy is for 20% of lateral hires to come from the graduate pipeline.

While well aware of the challenges of attracting talent, Bor says the benefits of an efficient recruitment process shouldn’t be understated: “That’s where we bring value to the model.”

Under her stewardship, what was a mishmash of 7,500 processes has been streamlined into one centralised, standardised end-to-end process covering attraction, selection and assessment.

“Four years ago you could send a CV into six divisions, and you might have got answers from them all, interviews with some and not others, and competencies would have been different just because there was no central view.”

As part of the drive to cut costs, Bor is also keen to reduce RBS’s use of recruitment agencies in favour of direct recruitment. “Direct is one of my biggest mantras,” she says

The ease with which Bor converses on both the people and process side of her role is perhaps no surprise. Until her last two jobs at RBS,which have both been pure resourcing, her previous experience was as an HR generalist. It included spells at Granada, Tesco and Abercromby Motor Group.

“I have loved every job I had,” she says. “Even if the job was a dustbin person, I would love the job. It’s such an important part of your life that not to enjoy it is such a hideous waste.”

It was at Abercromby where she first came to realise the importance of getting the right people into theright jobs. “We started bringing in people who hadn’t necessarily had experience in car sales, but had a profile that would lend itself to client management,” she says.

After two years, Bor was headhunted by RBS, though she admits that had it not been for meeting Neil Roden (RBS’s current group HR director) she wouldn’t have touched it. “My perception 11 years’ ago was that financial services was boring, and that I wouldn’t get a stretch in it.”

It’s a testament to how RBS has got into Bor’s blood that not only does she clearly love her job, but that these days she is such a passionate and committed cheerleader for an organisation, that despite its chequered recent history, she believes has much to offer jobseekers.

CV:
2007 to present director group resourcing, RBS 2004 Head of resourcing and development, RBS
2000 HR director, retail direct, RBS
1999 HR head of service operations, RBS
1997 HR director Abercromby Motor Group 1998 Granada Group, UK Retail and Rental – various roles in HR and training
1986-88 Personnel manager, Tesco Stores EDUCATION University of Aberdeen MA