JPMorgan Chase's Mike D’ Ausilio shares his perspective with alumni.
What brought you to JPMorgan Chase 10 years ago?
I admired JPMorgan Chase and its leadership as an outsider, and through my network I was able to meet various people across the company. Those meetings showed me firsthand the caliber of people and also the culture of the organization.
When the right role became available at JPMorgan Chase, I jumped at the opportunity. My current job is my fourth job since I've been here. So I'm a product of internal mobility at JPMorgan Chase and throughout my career. Constantly getting opportunities to work with great people, solve big problems, be challenged, grow and develop has always helped prepare me for my next role.
Why is JPMorgan Chase a unique place to launch a career?
You can have lots of different careers here over time without ever having to leave. If you think about it, we have 50,000 technologists; we have lawyers, marketing people, finance people, security professionals, bankers, traders, just to name a few ― there are so many different things you can do over time.
That's a proposition that we can offer due to our size and global footprint that not a lot of places can. We realize that sometimes people don't always know how to navigate the company ― we can help with that. But the opportunity is there. Many of our most senior leaders are products of internal mobility. So remain curious, continue to learn and develop, and if you need help navigating your career, speak with your manager and build a plan.
What are some of the core values and qualities you look for in new hires?
Beyond the technical or domain expertise, I generally look for people who are curious. Someone who wants to keep learning and puts the team and company ahead of their own objectives, and who always does the right thing for their stakeholders, customers and clients. Someone who brings a different perspective and can continue to help us look around corners and focus on making the company better. Recruiters, in particular, must have a passion for the company and love what they do. They must know the business and the roles that they're recruiting for, so there's a technical element to their job as well.
What are some of the ways recruiting new talent has evolved over the years?
The fundamentals of what we do in Talent Acquisition haven't really changed. Our job is to match people and opportunities ― to assess people and understand whether they're going to be the right fit for a role in order to deliver on business goals and objectives. How and where we look for talent continues to evolve as the needs of the business and expectations of candidates change. We look more and more outside of our industry and across a wide variety of universities, local colleges and vocational schools. We also continue to focus on preferred skills over degrees, with more than three quarters of U.S. jobs posted not requiring a college degree.
In 2021, over 5.5 million candidates applied for jobs at our company. Those applicants expect customer-grade experiences in line with what they would expect from JPMorgan Chase products and services, so the pressure is high to deliver. Talent Acquisition is one of the few parts of HR that is externally facing every day. This amazing team around the world delivers the JPMorgan Chase brand to candidates every day. And that becomes more and more important, particularly in a competitive environment like the one we're in today.
Where does JPMorgan Chase look for talent that would be considered "a different industry?"
If I go back 20 years, most of the hiring in financial services came from within financial services. We generally looked for people with industry experience and they typically came from another bank. As our businesses continue to evolve, and in a company as diverse as ours, we're looking for new skills, new ways of working, diverse perspectives and new ways of disrupting our competition. That causes us to look more broadly for talent across almost every industry ― that could be companies that are known for great customer service, tech companies with strong engineering talent, start-ups that have found a niche, or the traditional banks and global financial services firms.
We've got to be able to look for that talent, engage with them and have a compelling reason for them to want to join us based on their expectations and what's important to them.
What is the Emerging Talent strategy?
Our Emerging Talent strategy supports our broader strategy of casting a wide net to look for talent in lots of different places. We realize that great talent exists everywhere, but opportunity may not always be there. To help address that gap, we run several Emerging Talent programs around the world that focus on recruiting and training cognitively, experientially and representatively diverse talent that sometimes doesn't always land in traditional pipelines and channels.
We run these programs through partnerships around the world ― everything from Year Up (which is one of our largest programs) all the way through various apprenticeship programs, both in the U.S. and abroad.
We partner with community colleges and nonprofits to identify talent, help train them and help introduce them to our industry. Hopefully, at the end, they land a job with us and have a meaningful career. But if they don't, we've helped them and the community. So it's a win-win for both the young adults who are a part of these programs and for us because, over time, many of them join the company in full-time roles.
How do you retain talent?
It starts with making sure we're aligning the right people to the right opportunities and then setting them up to do their best work and be successful. People really do want a sense of purpose and a connection to a mission that's greater than their own.
That means being part of an inclusive team where they can put forward ideas and contribute to the solutions. That's working for a good manager who's really a coach and helps bring out the best in them. And it's also creating an environment where people can continue to grow and develop.
Some people may want to be here long term, some people may not. But we have enough opportunity across the company where, if folks want to grow and develop here, we believe we can help them be successful.
Can you talk about the unique value and perspective re-joiners bring to JPMorgan Chase?
I think it’s great when people come “home” to JPMC. People leave for different reasons – sometimes it a personal situation, a desire to go back to school, an opportunity to learn something new or a different challenge. While obviously we think people can continue to learn, grow and experience different challenges here, we understand the personal factors that go into a decision to leave. When people do leave, we benefit tremendously when they come back and bring new experiences, new perspectives and different ways of working to the team.
We also have a formal ReEntry program that offers experienced professionals, who are currently on an extended career break of at least two years, the support and resources needed to re-launch their careers.
What are some of the challenges you faced and lessons you learned over the past year?
From a hiring perspective, 2021 was a year like no other when you think about coming out of 2020 and all of the uncertainty that the world was facing relative to the pandemic. As we entered 2021, a lot of companies, including ours, were investing, growing and continuing to make strategic investments for the future.
At the same time, I believe the pandemic sped up the evolution of candidate and employee expectations, which was already underway prior to COVID. And just like when you come out of any crisis, people reevaluate what's important to them. Coupled with a tight labor market, we're facing a critical time ― lots of companies are hiring, there are a lot of jobs available, and candidates and employees are being very selective about what they expect from their next role and employer. All of this creates one of the fiercest wars for talent in recent memory.
We've had record hires across the company. So the opportunity is clearly there for our existing employees to move and grow their careers, and it's also an opportunity to bring new, diverse talent into the company. But it's also a challenge given the amount of hiring happening across the job market, and that's why it's really important to show what differentiates us and what a career at JPMorgan Chase would look like for those who are interested. We have a winning strategy. We have marquee brands that are well known around the world. We have the best team on the field in our entire industry and we continue to invest not just for today, but for tomorrow.
But none of that happens without great talent. And we must work hard to recruit every day to make sure that we're attracting the best and most diverse talent onto the team to help us compete and win.
About the ReEntry Program
JPMorgan Chase invites experienced professionals, who are currently on an extended career break and have been for at least two years, to apply to the firm’s ReEntry Program. Ideal candidates are at the Associate and Vice President levels (or equivalent) at the time of departure from the workforce, with relevant experience for the role in which they are being considered.
Applications are being accepted for the 2022 program, which runs from March 21 until June 30. The deadline to apply is Jan. 31, 2022.
Roles are location dependent. Locations include:
New York, Columbus, Chicago, Tampa, Newark, Wilmington, Dallas, Plano, Boston, Denver, Elgin, Houston, Minneapolis, Palo Alto, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Buenos Aires, London, Bournemouth, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dublin, Frankfurt, Paris, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Singapore, Hong Kong and Sydney.
Click here to learn more and apply.
