UBS’s Jonna Sjövall on Successful Data-Driven Talent Attraction Strategies

SeekOut's Talent Visionaries series features innovative leaders and their extraordinary work in creating and scaling high-performing teams. The personal philosophies and invaluable insights of these workplace champions offer new perspectives in an ever-evolving talent landscape.

Jonna Sjövall is the Global Head of Talent Attraction and Campus Recruiting at UBS, the world’s only truly global wealth manager, a multinational investment bank, and financial services company headquartered in Switzerland. She’s an award-winning recruitment marketer with over 15 years of experience in employer branding and talent attraction who frequently speaks at industry events.

On the power of people and how to attract them

I have a master's degree in mechanical engineering, so I spent years studying something completely unrelated to talent. But my interest in the field started by accident right after I graduated. I was working as a management consultant, and part of my job was to recruit university graduates at career fairs. I ended up joining an employer branding agency shortly after in a sales role, which was unexpected for me because I had never worked in sales. This role helped me realize why TA was so interesting—I saw firsthand that a business cannot function without its people. No matter your product, company, or industry, companies will always need good people first.

“If you say what you do and do what you say, you’ll get very far in TA.”

For those who are just starting in talent acquisition, learn what it takes to attract the right type of people to your organization. Hone your marketing and sales skills. Get to know people and what’s important to them so that you can develop the right content to pique their interest and tailor your conversations to the individual. It can feel overwhelming to cut through the noise because there are hundreds of companies competing with you, but if you say what you do and do what you say, you’ll get very far in talent attraction.

On successful data-driven talent strategies

Don't be afraid of data. My engineering background taught me to embrace ambiguity and get comfortable with numbers, but data is something that anyone—no matter your background—can approach confidently. Trust data to make decisions and embrace asking questions that you don’t know the answers to. I'm always interested in learning how things work, and I'm willing to rip them apart.

“The more data we have, the better we can make decisions.”

Beyond having KPIs and following up on them, I recommend identifying your must-have data points and how you could use them to influence your stakeholders. For example, say that you want to hire lots of cybersecurity experts. Where can you find them? Where can you be competitive? How can you attract them? Building a story and creating a pitch based on data points will guide high-impact strategies. The more data we have, the better we can make decisions.

On joining employer branding and talent acquisition teams

Employer branding often sits within communications and branding, but at UBS, the employer branding team is integrated with the talent acquisition team. We have the same goals, the same KPIs, and we gain so much value from having marketing and branding experts within a team that reports to the same leader. That said, we work very closely with our friends in the central brand team.

On approaching AI with intention

AI comes with opportunities and risks. We need to figure out how AI can be used to help the TA function without adding issues like biases when looking at a candidate’s skills or potential to succeed. TA professionals who can master AI and implement it at scale at large companies, especially in a highly regulated industry, will have a competitive advantage over those who simply jump on the bandwagon of trends.

On developing industry knowledge

I tap into my network of brilliant people who I've gotten to know throughout my personal and professional life to talk about anything I’m interested in. I have a conversation with someone outside UBS nearly every day. My network is well-rounded and full of talented people in interesting roles who have unique views to share, and I’m so grateful for it.

I’m also deeply curious about how the industry is evolving. I'm obsessed with what our competitors are doing, what the workforce is talking about on social media, and what articles are being published about the future of work.

On books to add to your reading list

I think we should all read more fiction for fun. We are obsessed with self-help and business books, but there’s also value in indulging in fiction. Allowing yourself the space to explore fiction can inspire creativity, and I believe that to perform well in your job, you need to rest and get lost in something unrelated. I’m into murder mysteries and political dramas, so I’d recommend The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson and the entire trilogy.

“To perform well in your job, you need to rest and get lost in something unrelated.”

And the last one is Thank You for Arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion by Jay Hendrix. I discovered it through a friend of a friend after talking about how my 12-year-old is into people dynamics and learning how to argue with his friends respectfully. The book explores how to manage things when they don’t go your way and how to find common ground with people who don’t share your point of view.

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