Founded in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1832, Scotiabank opened for business to support the thriving trans-Atlantic trade between Britain, North America and the West Indies. Scotiabank paid its first dividend to shareholders a year later—the first in an unbroken history of dividend payments that continues to this day. By the late 1800s, the Bank had expanded internationally to the United States and Jamaica. The Bank began expanding westward in the 1880s and by the early 1900s, the Bank had established a coast-to-coast network, and moved its headquarters to Toronto.
Today, Domestic Banking provides a full range of banking and investment services to retail, small business, commercial, and wealth management customers across Canada. These services are delivered through a national network of more than 950 branches, over 2,500 ABMs, call centres, plus telephone, wireless and Internet banking. Today, it ranks as Canada’s third-largest bank, and provides a wide range of services, concentrating on retail, corporate and investment banking. Scotiabank’s other services include personal savings and checking accounts, as well as lending, brokerage and trust services. The company also offers asset management (including mutual funds) and, through its Scotia Capital division, investment banking services, including underwriting, and mergers and acquisitions advising. Global Banking and Markets (the Scotiabank Group's corporate and investment banking operations) provides specialized solutions to corporate, institutional and government clients across Canada—as well as the United States and Europe, and select services to clients in Mexico and Asia. Since that time, Scotiabank has substantially grown its international presence and, today, is Canada's most international bank. Today, through a team of more than 80,000 employees, Scotiabank and its affiliates offer a broad range of products and services, including personal, commercial, corporate and investment banking, to over 19 million customers in more than 55 countries around the world. Scotiabank’s core purpose (mission) is to be the best at helping customers become financially better off by providing practical advice and relevant solutions (Scotiabank, 2012, Corporate Profile section). A vision that includes a culture of inclusion is the heart of their global community of Scotiabankers where they value individual talents, perspectives and innovative thinking. Scotiabank’s values of integrity, respect, insight, spirit and commitment inform and complement this approach and enable career growth. The growth and success of Scotiabank can be attributed to their committed team of employees that live the shared values of the organization and work together to provide customers with expert advice and service. Leadership’s goal at Scotiabank is to be the best Canadian-based international financial services company. This is achieved by having the best leadership and team of Scotiabank employees to help meet the demands of their global business environment. From their Board of Directors to every member of the Scotiabank Group, their HR department believes in attracting and developing the best leaders to build strong teams and the best employees to deliver solid results (Scotiabank, 2012, Leadership at Scotiabank Group section).
In order to achieve these organizational goals, the employment interview continues to be a prevalent device used by Scotiabank’s Human Resources Department in the recruitment process.
According to van Doorn interviews at Scotiabank focus on applicants' soft skills. In the Canadian market soft skills have a high value especially for more senior level jobs, says van Doorn. In his opinion, job hunters sometimes stop their job search to go back and get more certification [thinking this will make them more employable], when it might have served them better to have focused on improving their soft skills (2011, para. 7). "Soft skills" refer to a cluster of personal qualities, habits, attitudes and social graces that make someone a good employee and compatible to work with. Companies value soft skills because research suggests and experience shows that they can be just as important an indicator of job performance as hard skills” (Lorenz, 2009). Portland-based human resources expert Lori Kocon says, “today's service economy and the ascendance of work teams in large organizations puts a new premium on people skills and relationship-building; and with business being done at an increasingly fast pace, employers also want people who are agile, adaptable and creative at solving problems" (Lorenz, 2009). Although interviews can be and have been used to assess job knowledge and cognitive ability, they are probably best suited to the assessment of non-cognitive attributes such as interpersonal relationships or social skills, initiative, dependability, perseverance, teamwork, leadership skills, adaptability or flexibility, organizational citizenship behaviour and organizational fit.
To determine organizational fit, Scotiabank uses a structured interview technique called the Behavioural Interview (BI). The behavioural interview is a behavioral based structured interviewing technique that is based on discovering how the interviewee acted in specific employment-related situations. The logic is that how a candidate behaved in the past will predict how they will behave in the future (i.e. past performance predicts future performance).
.25In a traditional interview, a candidate will be asked a series of questions which typically have straight forward answers like "What are your strengths and weaknesses?" or "Describe a typical work week." In a behavioral interview, an employer has decided what skills are needed in the person they hire and will ask questions to find out if the candidate has those skills. Instead of asking how you would behave, they will ask how you did behave. The interviewer will want to know how you handled a situation, instead of what you might do in the future. Behavioral interview questions will be more pointed, more probing and more specific than traditional interview questions. Follow-up questions will also be detailed. You may be asked what you did, what you said, how you reacted or how you felt. Instead of asking how you would behave, the interviewer will ask how you did behave. The interviewer wants to know how you handled a situation, instead of what you might do in a hypothetical situation.