We recognized that the best support we could provide the Veterans community is the hiring of veterans, which required us to obtain management commitment for this initiative and creatively source Veteran talent. 

Our first step was to educate our management team on the benefits of hiring Veterans into our workforce, which we did through a combination of internal Veteran talent and external Veteran clients and organizations.  Thereafter, our RVets Employee Resource Group (ERG), working closely with HR Recruiting, requested and received approval from Management for an MBA Veteran summer hire, which was an exception to current practices.  This education and dialogue led to the creation of our first ever Veterans Hiring Symposium in 2017 for Global Markets, Research, Corporate Banking, and Global Investment Banking. The Symposium was a targeted forum in which we invited 8 MBA and Undergraduate Veteran students and featured in-person participation by our RVets leadership team and many members of senior management. 

The 2017 Veterans Symposium was a huge hit with all participants and resulted in 3 summer intern MBA hires, all of which ultimately received and accepted full-time offers from RBC.  It is worth noting that we also hired 3 additional MBA/ Undergrad Veterans in our 2018 Symposium. Importantly, the Vets symposium is now a core Vets recruiting event for RBC.

Sandye Taylor, Global Head of Diversity and Inclusion