BMO Enterprise Campus Recruitment

BMO's Campus Recruitment and Early Talent program has undergone a major transformation, moving from a mostly 'friends & family' hiring strategy, to a more deliberate search for top talent with an emphasis on reaching and exceeding BMO's diversity hiring goals. The BMO Campus Team strives to think outside the box and develop solutions to elevate the student experience and BMO's brand as an employer of choice for both students and new graduates across North America, through strategic outreach, impactful digital marketing social media campaigns and strengthened relationships with key business partners and Career Centres on campus.

While Covid had initially presented the campus recruitment team with many challenges, they successfully pivoted all aspects of their Student Experience programming and Recruitment campaigns to raise the bar with how they connect with students in our new reality. Supported by an extensive and creatively communications strategy, BMO addressed the challenges with several key initiatives.

In Fall 2020, the BMO Campus Team launched the ‘BMO Days’ bus tour to virtually meet students from across North America. With 64 campuses reached, 95 BMO business reps, 1600+ students in attendance, the feedback on this incredibly successful recruitment tour was outstanding – but they were just getting started! [Watch the wrap-up video here]

In Fall 2021, the BMO recruitment team ran with the theme but "upped our game" and launched the ‘BMO Career Track’ virtual train tour, with 8 stops across North America to ensure that they engaged as many students as possible to share their student opportunities. These sessions were designed to increase awareness of BMO’s internship/co-op and new graduate opportunities for early talent while establishing BMO as an employer of choice. Sessions included an engaging 'About BMO' kickoff, a line of business breakout sessions with BMO recruiters and business representatives and culminated with a fun Kahoot Trivia Challenge for the chance to earn a Meet and Greet with a member of Team BMO.

At the beginning of each year, all of Career Centre Partners are invited to join in for a half day (previously onsite, but now virtually) BMO Open House Career Centre Day to learn more about BMO and what they have to offer students. Career Centre Partners are recognized as the best allies when students have questions or are trying to decide where to accept an offer to. Having regular touchpoints with Career Centre Partners is a critical component to BMO's overall Employer Branding strategy and feedback from Career Centre Partners has been very positive and appreciate the unique opportunity this provides to learn more about the employer.

BMO’s Campus Influencer Program is another critically important aspect of the BMO campus recruitment and employer branding strategy. Recognizing that the recruitment team can’t necessarily reach all campuses and that students prefer to hear from their peers about what it’s like to work at an organization, they have developed this program to further enhance their reach to the student demographic. Each year, they select a new cohort of former BMO students to act ‘Influencers’ on their own respective campuses, to amplify the BMO culture and key messaging. Equipped with the tools they need to connect with students, they attend BMO recruiting events and even host takeovers on Instagram. The goal is to have a diverse cohort of Influencers from varying academic and ethnic backgrounds to further strengthen our commitment to BMO’s Diversity and Inclusion goals, with over 40% of student hires being of BIPOC individuals – a goal they are proud to have surpassed.

Overall, the BMO Campus Recruitment Team has worked hard over the past 2 years to transform the student hiring at BMO into a year-round program that is much more strategic and thoughtfully planned in order to position BMO as an employer of choice with diverse talent across North America. CACEE is pleased to recognize BMO Campus Recruitment for their innovation, excellence and achievement in Student Engagement and Employer Branding. Congratulations!