The bank will be the first in Southeast Asia to recruit successful candidates through a hackathon.
The Singapore-based bank, DBS, recently announced that it plans to hire 100 technology skilled professionals, in emerging and disruptive technologies across cloud, machine learning and Big Data, as it ups the ante on ‘reimagining banking’. Taking a unique approach to hire the best of the lot, the bank is going to recruit successful candidates through a hackathon and be the first bank in Southeast Asia to do so.
The 100 new selects will join DBS Asia Hub 2 in Hyderabad. This coding challenge, which has already received more than 3000 applications, is open to both fresh graduates and experienced professionals, who can apply up to 12 March, 2017.
Talking of the initiative, Mohit Kapoor, CEO, DBS Asia Hub 2 said “We want to build a culture of experimentation, backed by robust technology solutions and creative intelligence to consistently innovate and evolve our digital journey. Hackathons, such as this help us connect with top talent across the country who are game changers and will be instrumental in reimagining banking.”
The recruitment drive, DBS Hack2Hire, consists of two parts—an online assessment challenge to gauge the programming and technical capabilities of candidates, followed by a live two-day hackathon session, where their approach to problem solving will be put to test. Shortlisted candidates from the second round will undergo interviews for full-time roles at DBS Asia Hub 2. The bank has also collaborated with technology providers, such as Amazon Web Services, Cloudera and Pivotal for conducting the hackathon.
Witnessing rapid advancements in banking technology, using cloud, machine learning and Big Data, which are paving the way for a new world of seamless banking, DBS is also looking to bring developers well-versed in these new technologies into the bank to accelerate its digital transformation efforts. “We believe that recruiting via a hackathon is an innovative and effective way to attract the right talent,” said Soh Siew Choo, group head of core systems technology, DBS.
DBS has reinvented banking through constant innovation. It launched digibank, India’s first paperless, signatureless and mobile-only bank. Over the past few years, DBS has been deeply immersed in furthering its digital transformation agenda. This includes embarking on a comprehensive and holistic mission of building a start-up culture, re-architecting the bank’s technology infrastructure, and leveraging Big Data, biometrics and artificial intelligence to reimagine banking for its customers.
The technology providers, Amazon Web Services, Cloudera and Pivotal also express delight on the fact that the bank is looking to transform its operations and follow the digital path to recruit talent for new technologies.
Moreover, it recently conducted a similar initiative in India named ‘Ideathon’ to identify talent from top business schools across India. This was part of the bank’s campus engagement and communication strategy, aimed to make DBS Bank the preferred place to work for millennials.