Ep. 29 Raising the Bar: matching talent to values and culture at Revolut

(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to the Revolut Insider Podcast where we explore Revolut from the Inside Out one episode at a time. I'm your host, Alex Carill, and joining me today is Recruitment Manager, Rachel Nelson. Hi, Rachel. - Hi, Alex. - How are you? - I am nervous. I'm normally that side of the camera, but I'm really good, thank you. - I'm really excited for you to be here. - Thank you. - Tell us a little bit more about your experience, your career journey in Recruitment, and hopefully give us some information about the Bar Razor interview, which is one of our key steps to Revolut's Recruitment process. - Fabulous, can't wait. - So to kick things off, can you give me a little bit of an overview of your role? - Yeah, absolutely. So I look after everything, risked in compliance, so regulatory controls. So first sign of defense, and how we integrate risk in compliance into the business operations. So the guys that are the backbone of the business, who drive it forwards, growth, so marketing, copy branding, and business development. So the guys who look after where are we growing, how are we spending? So it's a really broad range of stuff globally from how do we make sure that we're meeting our obligations to how do we implement that and run it successfully, and then grow it. So I am really lucky that I get a look inside so much of what the business does, especially the regulatory types of stuff. And while we're going, it's so interesting. - I would be more interested in the business development side of things. - So that on is only super interesting. So we have a team of absolute rock stars, who look at how do we grow our top line, which is how much money is the business making, but I think that some of the really interesting stuff within business development is also then, how do we use that money? And are we using it wisely? And are we optimizing for the money that we bring in? - Yeah. - I think there's a lot of commentary for any business that's backed by investors about how we spend our money and how we generate sort of profit and all those good things. And those two levers that we can pull, so generating money and spending it wisely, really, really interesting for sure. - And as we keep earning more, as we keep growing, we're scaling, hiring more people. - Yeah. - You that's part of this recruitment team that hires our dream team. Let me ask you, what excites you most about working at Revolut? - I think that it's become even more exciting over the past few years. So some of the things that we used to come up against in terms of branding or if people knew us, those are really disappearing, as we become more of a global brand. - Oh well, we are a big global brand. But the thing that excites me day to day is that if I spot a problem, or if I think that could be a great idea for Revolut, it doesn't matter where I sit in the business or what I'm doing. If I have a really strong business case, and I really understand something, and I think that I can make the business better, someone listens. Ultimately, if you're a bright spark and you've got an idea and you can just go ahead and implement it. - So acting like an owner? - Acting like an owner forms part of one of our core values. So yeah, absolutely. And I've really felt that. But what gets me into work every morning is just this brilliant team that I work with. We hire incredibly smart people. I'm never the smartest person in the room. I learn something every single day. Being around incredible people helps for sure. - And how did you get into recruitment in the first place? - So very few people that work in recruitment will say to you, I wanted to be a recruiter from being 11. - I dreamed about being a recruiter. - I just couldn't wait. So everybody would tell you they fell into recruitment, and I was no different. So I went to university to study neuroscience. I hated it. Couldn't stand organic chemistry. And I started and then went back to restart in doing social anthropology. - Wow. - Which is basically a degree of being a really interesting denigest. So it's non-locational, but it's not people. And I think that something people would say about me is that I'm a people person for sure. I knew during my undergraduate studies that I needed to do an internship. Because I think it's really important that you set the foundations for your career really early. And I looked at a number of different things, but I ended up receiving an offer to join Michael Page. And Michael Page had a really, or had at the time, I don't know if they still run them, a really strong internship program where you could join them for the summer. And I was very, very fortunate that I was placed into their flagship finance brand. It really fit me. And I found a home where I could learn really fast and grow and do the recruitment job. And what kind of skills do you feel like that internship gave you to prepare you kind of for your role now? - Yeah, organization, critical thinking, deep thinking, a real understanding of how business ticks. And then on the flip side, talking to people and how you think about really understanding someone. So layered questioning, getting underneath some bodies, wants, needs, expectations, motivators, then selling to clients. So I've met Alex. He's amazing. And I know he's amazing for your job. How do I translate a whole human person to a client whilst also making sure that I'm giving them something that they want? And I'm selling to their needs. - It's deal making. - Totally. - Negotiation, right? - Totally. But with people. - I think you said, you know, you get these skills early on that help you in your career later. And I know that we have our internship in our graduate's programs at Rebel Loot. Do you have any advice for the next class of interns that are coming in? - Oh my goodness, yes. Ask all the stupid questions. Because if you don't understand something basic, you can't build upon anything. It was one of the things that I learned in my internship. I asked so many stupid questions and nothing was too stupid. And it set me up for a foundation of being someone that wants to understand and does understand things deeply. I don't be afraid to challenge because how much do you do in every three months of heavily? - So much. - Oh my god, so much. - I'm different now to three months ago. And I've been here, what would be considered quite a long time at Rebel Loot, you know, three and a half years. So, you know, making sure that you don't just think, well, I'm only here for three months. You know, our internship program is a feeder to our graduate program. So it matters for sort of employability. But also, you could accomplish so much. We had a great patch of interns this year just gone. And the impact of what they did, we still feel that. You know, we still see their mark on some of the processes that they built. And I wouldn't want anyone to shy away from really getting involved. - That's great advice. And what do you think is the best skill that you gain during your internship? - Layered questioning. And I think that's what we talk about at Rebel Loot problem solving, fundamentally it's layered questioning in a more structured way. So not accepting a first answer asking why, understand what motivates the why. We talk about data all the time. What then underpins the why? Fundamentally that is all layered questioning, right? Or tiered questioning, I think we used to call it. But that's something I've never let go of. And I can be like a dog with a bone, which allows me to do root cause analysis and all this stuff I'd never thought I would be doing as a recruiter. I was very lucky to come work for another recruitment business. I always knew that I wanted to come and do a house recruitment and work for a business itself. But I got the opportunity to join Oliver James, who are a world leading actuarial recruiter, much faster. The role was a lot broader. And I learned all of what I learned and translated to revenue about data. So they're sort of informatics and their data management and how agile they were and how they were delivering value for clients was a very different proposition to all my page had at the time. Yes. And then the call came from revenue. You can resist. Yeah. So the call from revenue came. And why did you decide to join such a smaller company? Because it was a fraction of the size of what it is now at that time. So I mean, small is a relative term, right? So head count wise, when I joined, I think we have 1,500 staff. We now have 12,000 staff. So yes, smaller, not smaller in ambition, not smaller in mindset, not smaller in way of working. One of the things I think is so impressive about the business is that it's managed to retain so much of what made it so successful very early as we've scaled. And all of the core things that drew me to revenue. So agility, database growth, working is lots of little startups within a startup. And the global sort of ambitions haven't changed. We've achieved a lot of them, right? So being on that journey has been amazing. All of the things that make it what it is and who we are haven't really changed. And I felt them, you know, when I was interview, I really felt them here and I still feel them every day. I feel like part of what makes Revolut in the place to work is that our values are so instilled in what we do. Yes. That really follows us through. And if you can say, well, actually, in the Spirit of Nettler Settelene, I would suggest this. Even though it's approved, everything's signed off, but if you think you can make it even a little bit better, you can't suggest that. And I feel like that's in a lot of what we do. It's ingrained in the work that we do. Yeah. So I've never worked for a business that lives and breeds values the way that Revolut does. I think that what differentiates that is you'll see in a lot of Revolutes branding that the values are on the wall, OK? And that can sometimes feel a bit cheesy. But if you go on the website, you can see that each of the values has fundamental pillars that underpin it. So it's not just riding on the wall. There are key tenets to each value that we look for in people. And what exactly will that manifest itself like that means that it drives the business forwards. And we do reset all the time and talent to say, OK, what defines what makes someone brilliant when they join? Or how do we seek out somebody who goes on to be a superstar, right? And values tend to do that. I was lucky enough to interview Jonathan, who was the head of the department. Yes. And he mentioned that we're a high performance but a high reward company. And I think that isn't for everyone. But there is that high reward that when you put in that effort and you see the impact that you're making for 50 million customers around the world, it's actually really incredible. Totally. Like it's exciting. It really is. Yeah. And I think I once heard someone refer to it as like playing for the national soccer team, right? You know, if you are best in class, stay fit, you'll get you cap. Yeah. And I like that analogy. And I think that in recruitment, the reward is even weirder in some ways, because you sit down and sat across from you in, I mean, we're in London today, is like the guy you hired when you were a junior of recruiter three years ago and he's the head of a department. You're like, that's amazing. You go, right? And you see all this amazing stuff that that person might be doing. You know, you was a touch point and you didn't bring them in. They're brilliance brought them in. But what a cool thing to watch. Very cool. Very cool. You've also been in a position where you've moved around, even though it's still under recruitment. And you also work with people that maybe have worked in manufacturing and are moving over to Fintech, let's say. What do you say about that kind of transfer of roles? So I think that revenue is at skills-based business, OK? What does that mean? When we recruit you or when we assess you or when you go through probation and we say, how you're doing, we're looking at a fundamental skill. And I think that we have some really interesting universal skills that all of us have. So all of this in our job description will have certain types of skills or in certain jobs will have crossover skills. But mean that if we have a fundamental way of thinking or a fundamental skill, it can be picked up and put down. That's why you see a lot of people who come from weird and wacky other places who might not make sense on paper. But when you actually make talent acquisition and talent more of a science, not only does it become better experience for people who are joining the business, who then join an armobile. But it means that you can really hone in what you're looking for and understand how we bring those brilliant people into revenue. What's been the most rewarding part about hiring on a global scale? For me personally, it's about thought diversity, actually. It's so easy for us to think that we've thought of everything, but we all come from our own experiences, our own culture. And it's not about meeting a roast dinner. It's how I don't see things the way that somebody else sees things. You know, you talked about growing up in LA, right? The type of people that you intersected with will have been totally different to where I group in like tiny North Yorkshire, right? Because of the type of environment that we have, having people all over the world, leads to really robust thought diversity. And it stops us from being single-minded and from executing something that we can only see through our purview. - I love that answer, yeah. - Okay. I think it's part of what goes into building a dream team is like you said, it's not diversity, but also what that enables us to do. It enables us to think deeper, to create better solutions. And it's the way it plays to work when you feel like you're around these people that can help you push even further. - Yeah, and we talk about deliver wow. And what does deliver wow mean? It means solutions for everybody. Can somebody, and the other side of the world use this? And when I talk about thought diversity, it's a fundamental thing, right? If you want to make sure that the business goes on to deliver wow everywhere and not just in some small little slice, it's a really important. Definitely. While in that number, we're gonna take a quick break. And when we come back, I want to ask you about the bar razor interview so you can give us some more details about that. Wonderful. We'll be right back with more insider views. This episode is brought to you by Revolut. Thank you to the 50 million customers who have joined us on this journey to change the way the world does money. And if you want to join us on our mission to revolutionize finance, come be part of the future of Fintech. Explore more at Revolut.com/Coreers. And we're back on the Revolut Insider podcast. Here are the recruitment manager, Rachel Nelson. Delighted to be here. Welcome back. Rachel, before the break, we were talking about scaling and building better processes. Yeah. When it comes to Revolut's recruitment and talent acquisition, we have several steps in this journey. Can you tell me about the bar razor interview and why this step is so important? Totally. So the bar razor interview is our final formal stage. So typically after a bar razor, you'll go on to meet a team. Okay. But fundamentally, the bar razor is our final formal step. Normally. So by the time you get to a bar razor, we've already assessed, can you fundamentally do the job? So do you have the skill? And then sometimes you'll also go through problem solving. Bar razor is the cherry on top of the take of all of that. And bar razor interviews are focused on culture. So bar razor interviewers are prepped to really understand from a candidate's answers that they give, whether or not they're going to be a culture fits. It can be quite difficult to talk about what that looks like because it can feel quite nuanced. So I'll start with a panel. So bar razor interviewers are a very select group of people. So we only use typically very senior evaluators who've been with the business for a long time, who we know are people who have high talent bars, who are high performers typically as well. So we use high performers to find high performance. No science in that, really. And what they're going to be assessing is whether or not a candidate meets that real value sense that we have. So I'm not sure whether or not we've covered it in enough detail, but we have five core values. How many? Five core values. Five. I always forget one. There's always one I forget. So those are deliver well, never settle, dream team, get it done, and think deeper. They're listed at length on the website. We've got some really great information about what they actually mean in practice as well. So bar razor interviewers will be looking for how do those sort of exhibit themselves in an answer. So what they will ask a candidate to do is to walk through their career history. So walking from the first steps that you took on your corporate career through to now, why did you make moves that you made? What were the wins, what were the losses? What were the learns? What were the things that you owned? And we have a very robust way of understanding the answers that candidates give to assess whether or not they are exhibiting the value set that we're looking for and that we know goes under defined success. So we always say, make sure that you know your CV inside out. Which sounds like such a basic thing to say, but if you've got a decade plus career history, you're going to miss stuff, right? Is it really understand that? Look up our values so you can see how you might deliver how a value presents itself. Also think about concrete examples of where you've delivered things and what the outcomes have been. Use the data. I was gonna say this is a good point because I feel like people kind of forget about that and they say, oh, I've done this, but it's like how can you quantify that? Totally. What was the defined definition of done? And what was the impact of that? What was your part in it? It's a very classic interview tip to give the I versus the Wii. I don't mind the Wii. We all work in a team. My department is 250 people. You know, I'm not doing it on my own, but I am part of that. And there are things that I've done and that I've delivered that I can quantify and that I can give the numbers for. And that's a really high impact. What's one thing that candidates might overlook during this interview? Motivation. We're also going to be keen to understand why have you made the moves that you've made? Why revolute? And depending on how you've come into the process, or if we've come out on the Fallon G versus if you've applied for all those things, by the time you get to this stage of the process, we would hope you'd have a pretty defined reason that you wanted to join, right? I think so. Yeah, I hope so, so. And people miss that part. So we want to know why us, because not only do our values exhibiting themselves and your answers matter, but it matters that you want to join. I think so. It matters that you believe in what we believe in and that you're on the journey with us. And you want to be on the journey with us. I also think if you've been through preparation with a recruiter and you've read the value set, and it's not for you, that's okay. Interviews go two ways. The whole point is that you decide whether or not we're for you, whilst putting your best foot forwards, and don't be afraid of saying, "This isn't right for me," because I typically find people join, and they absolutely love it, right? Or it's not for them. And I think it's important that people also make those assessments for themselves, interrogate it, and make sure it's for you. And we're kind of talking about it now a bit. What can a candidate expect after passing their bar raise or interview? Typically, they will also then go on to do what we call a team fit, which is when you go meet the team. We try to be agile in our processes, so you might have already met the team, depending on who did your skills interview, or what that might look like. If you're a senior level hire, or if we expect you to be managing a team, you might also do a people management and hiring interview. Part of our early growth, we had always incredible individual contributors who grew into big jobs, right? What we want to make sure now, is that if we're hiring people externally, they really know how to manage teams, because what is a business if not people? Exactly. And leaders make or break that. We work for great leadership, so we really understand what that means. What's important is who you bring on the team. Totally. We've all worked for people who are so good at their job, but can't identify a skills gap. Can't make the people feel good, and we do a lot of leadership development in our department, and we talk about leadership branding, and being good at the job, or being phone or energetic. If that doesn't make you a good leader, I dress up as Santa Claus, when we have a Christmas town hall, that doesn't make me a good leader. Makes you a great coworker. It might make me really fun. But it doesn't make me good leader. Exactly. We want to make sure that we're hot on next-generation growth, as well as just supporting our brilliant people who are here right now. Definitely. And when you look at our talent acquisition process, what do you think that we can improve on? Time to hire. There's a really strong argument for robust processes for both sides. You get a lot of commentary on LinkedIn people saying, "Why does this take so long?" If you are going to join a company that's fast growing, that has a mission and goals, you should have time to really assess if you want to join, and they should be able to assess you. That's part and parcel of being surrounded by a team of A-players. But because we're doing it at scale, we don't always do it quickly. And we ask our most brilliant people to lead this interview. Typically, the most brilliant people are also really busy. I'm sure. So if I could do anything better, I'd do it quicker. But I wouldn't want to sacrifice the quality of the process we give in order to just make it quick. And you mentioned motivation earlier, and I feel like both ways it also shows the motivation for someone sticking through this interview, and also knowing it's worth it for this person, they want to stick around to actually see this through. - Totally. If you're somebody who we know needs to be sped up for ever reason, we'll push you through. We're working on optimizing this process every day. - And when you're not working on optimizing processes every day, what are you doing in your free time? - What do I do in my free time? Well, I'm a mum. So I have a little boy who keeps me very busy and a sausage dog. So I've typically got one of them on my back and one of them in my hand. It varies depending on the day. I live on the outskirts of a national park, just outside of Manchester. So on a weekend, you can typically find me in hiking boots. I also love bouldering. I'm big into rock climbing. It's easy to make yourself sound really exciting. Always hobbies, but I just love to be with my family and taking a beat. - I'm curious about your bouldering. Do you see any parallels between bouldering and your work? Denmark, if you know this, you've set me up very nicely. - No, I haven't. - So when you're bouldering, a bouldering course is called a problem. - A bouldering course, huh? - Yeah, so you have levels of difficulty and you basically work your way through a problem. - I did not know this, going into this interview. - I couldn't help it. I was like, here, set me up. So yeah, so I work on problems inside and outside of like. - Well, that's the show, everyone. - Jesus, I'm saying in the world. I can't believe you didn't know that. You set me pretty soon. - No, I did, I know. (laughing) - All right, well, looking back at your career, what's a piece of advice that you have for your younger self? - Find enablers, find the people who will understand that your weaknesses aren't just weaknesses. Their skills aren't developed yet. And lean on them to make sure that you get to where you want to be and find them quickly. Different people throughout my career have helped me understand and develop in different ways. Whether that's been imposter syndrome or hard skills, like data analytics or problem solving or just the need for some really brutal feedback and the quicker that you find the people that you can be vulnerable with, who will enable you to be as brilliant as you are and as anybody is the better. Because we all have flaws and weaknesses, none of us are perfect. And you can either knock people down because they're not the finished article or you can help them build themselves up. For me, it resonates to have these enablers that help you in your personal life. But I think it's so important to find those people in your professional life as well. Someone that can mentor you, can help you, can push you a little bit further. It really does make a difference when you can be vulnerable, like you said, to make those mistakes, but learn from failure. - And I think that the quicker you find those people, the better. - I love that. I love that. Well, thank you so much for coming in today and sharing your, oh, you kidding, it's been great, yeah. - And I've really enjoyed this chat. Thanks so much, Alex. - Thank you so much. And for those listening, you can add the podcast to your favorites so you don't miss an episode and follow us on Instagram at RevoluteInsider. This has been the Revolute Insider podcast where we explore Revolute from the inside out. Until next time, remember, the sky is not the limit, it's just the beginning. Revolute, change the way you money.