The Challenge: Talent and Assets, Together
When the Canadian division of a global bank set out to expand its commercial banking business nationally, the mandate wasn’t simply to fill seats — it was to acquire talent and the assets that came with them. A newly appointed Canadian President, a commercial banker by background, recognized a strategic opportunity: the Canadian market was ripe for a credible challenger, and the fastest path to market share was through experienced bankers who could bring the networks and expertise to convert assets.
The bank’s internal recruiters, while capable, had been built for a different kind of hire. They didn’t fully grasp the seniority, market experience, and relationship capital required, and the candidates they surfaced rarely had assets that could be moved. The President knew the strategy demanded a more specialized approach. The head of talent acquisition brought in Robertson — a firm with deep recruiting experience in Canadian commercial banking, including prior engagements with this same client.
Our Approach: Executive Search Principles Applied at Scale
Robertson designed a project RPO model that operated as an embedded extension of the client’s talent acquisition function, working directly with the bank’s Canadian leadership. From the outset, our approach was shaped by a single conviction: hiring 200 commercial bankers is not 200 transactional placements — it is M&A, strategic transformation, recruitment and business development. Every assignment carried that weight, and every conversation had to deliver on two fronts: securing the banker and advancing the bank’s business plan and asset growth strategy.
Five pillars defined the work.
Subject matter expertise. Our recruiters were not generalists temporarily assigned to a banking project or processing ad response. They were specialists who understood the difference between a relationship manager carrying a $50M book and one carrying $250M, who knew which competing institutions had recently tightened credit policies, and who could speak credibly about loan structuring, syndication, and sector specialization. That fluency earned us credibility with the client’s executive and operational leadership, and, just as importantly, with the bankers we were trying to recruit.
Contact mapping over keyword search. Before outreach began, we built a comprehensive map of the Canadian commercial banking talent landscape — competitor by competitor, region by region, sector by sector. We identified who covered which industries, who reported to whom, which producers carried the largest portable books, and which teams were experiencing the kind of internal friction that opens the door to a conversation. This mapping became a living asset that drove every interaction and gave us bilingual coverage coast to coast, including in the smaller and remote markets where competing recruiters typically come up empty.
Direct outreach by experienced recruiters. No junior sourcers, no scripted email blasts. Every approach was made by a senior recruiter capable of holding a substantive conversation about a banker’s portfolio, career trajectory, and the real reasons they might consider a move. Top performers don’t entertain a recruiter who can’t speak their language, and our model made sure they never had to.
Partnership with the business line. We spent meaningful time with the client’s leadership team to understand a question internal recruiters rarely have the bandwidth to ask in depth: why does a senior commercial banker leave one institution for another, and what gives them confidence that their assets will follow? The answer wasn’t compensation alone. It was the prospect of a more workable risk appetite, the ability to write deals that had previously been declined, the potential for greater deal flow and earnings, and the credibility of a leader who had walked the same path. Once we understood the genuine value proposition, our recruiters could articulate it authentically — not as a pitch, but as a peer-to-peer conversation about where their franchise might thrive.
Team lift-outs from competitors. Some of the most strategically valuable placements weren’t individual hires at all — they were entire teams. Because our mapping work identified not just bankers but the relationships and reporting lines around them, our recruiters could approach a respected market leader and have a credible conversation about moving with their deal team, analyst support, and book of business intact. Team hires compressed timelines; multiplied assets brought in per conversation and accelerated the bank’s market presence in ways individual hires alone could not deliver.
Results: Scale Without Compromising Quality
The engagement delivered approximately 200 hires in 200 days, with some pipelines built in as little as 35 days. A significant backlog of open requisitions was cleared, and the partnership extended as the bank continued to grow its commercial footprint.
The more meaningful measure of success is what happened after the start date. Many of the bankers recruited through this engagement went on to become top performers recognized within the organization, and a substantial portion remain with the bank today — years after their hire date. They brought their assets, they grew their books, and they stayed. For a project of this scale, that is the standard by which the work should be judged.
