Total Talent Development & Management Solutions
Situation/Problem
A leading bank in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, with a vision to be the preferred choice of genuine Islamic banking solutions, was in the transformation process of building a new corporate culture that created value for the shareholders, employees, and above all to the customers. The CEO was on a mission to revamp the organisational culture into a youthful and agile culture, full of fresh ideas in a short period of time. In order to do that, the head of talent management at the bank started the process of selecting, recruiting and grooming top talents to join the bank as highly potential and future leaders.
Initially the bank faced some obstacles as their recruitment model was outdated and they did not have formal job descriptions.. As a result, the development process surfaced the need for the bank to find solutions for the selection, recruitment and development of top talents.
Client Needs
The bank aimed to hire 50 top talented and highly motivated postgraduates to join a rotational programme that provided the opportunity to develop into well-rounded efficient individuals, and potentially become future leaders within a year. It was clear that the top talents required enhancement programmes on their functional and technical skills, coaching and mentoring, and exposure to the bank’s strategy and business.
Thus, a complete developmental, cross- functional and rotational programme was required to fulfil the bank’s vision.
TTM Solution
TTM associates’ collaborated in a detailed and in-depth analysis process with all relevant stakeholders in order to better understand the bank’s situation, requirements and expectations. Aimed to acquire, on-board, develop, and evaluate the programme’s talents, TTM’s team designed and developed the following approach to meet the client needs:
Phase one – Recruitment Process
- Job Profiling of the Management Trainee
- Designing a Recruitment Model using the Whole Brain Technology, to acquire the talents through:
- Screening Process
- Competency-based Interviewing Process
- Assessment Process
Phase Two – Development Academy
Taking into consideration the role, responsibilities and expectations of the Talent, TTM designed a Behavioural Development Multi-Modular Programme for the newly hired trainees. The process followed was:
- Employ a wide range of development activities to engage the trainees and extend their capabilities.
- Classroom training and development opportunities that are consistent with the trainees’ and organisation needs.
- Offer learning assignments and/or projects.
- Provide mentoring, coaching and learning portfolio.
- Utilize Professional Development Plans PDP’s and Job Rotation.
Phase Three – Evaluation Phase
An intensive talent development programme was required to evaluate the participants, which lasted almost a year. A specific mechanism was set in place using several factors including thought tests, contributions, behavioural change assessments, feedback, etc.
One of the important activities implemented to evaluate the participants’ developed profile was through an Action Learning Project that was assigned by the bank and moderated and supervised by TTM associates.

Develop capacity and administrative skills and the ability to relate them to leadership and self-development
Outcome
During the year of acquiring and developing the bank’s potential talents, the programme had successfully gained 48 talents out of 50 in various departments. These new talents exhibited exceptional performance and brought new ideas into each business unit such as consumer banking, corporate banking, marketing and digital remittance.
Based on the success of this project, it was repeated with new groups within the bank over the next 3 years.