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Last week TD Bank Group celebrated TD Tech Day, an annual event showcasing the Bank’s unique innovation, technology and modernization story. This year’s theme is inclusive innovation and highlights how TD is delivering technology and innovation to help drive inclusion for the benefit of our colleagues, customers and communities.
Over the past year TD has reaffirmed its commitment to strengthening its technology workforce by tapping into relationships with key recruitment and tech talent organizations, such as Black Professionals in Tech Network (BPTN) and FDM Group, to continue to help build a strong pipeline of diverse talent and new colleagues.
The TD 2023 hiring goals build upon its 2022 announcement to hire over 2,000 technology roles with skills in DevOps, cloud, machine learning and automation, along with those trained and experienced in agile methodology, UX design and mobile.
In addition to diversifying its talent pool and developing opportunities outside of traditional talent streams, the Bank is focused on upskilling current talent by giving colleagues the opportunity to work on both new technologies and standard industry tools being used globally, including Azure, Cloud and DevOps.
“Growing and empowering skilled technology talent is critical to helping drive our forward-focused strategy to deliver faster, simpler and better outcomes for our customers and colleagues,” said Greg Keeley, Senior Executive Vice President, Platforms and Technology, TD Bank Group.
“The technology industry has long been seen as a field that isn’t diverse – but we’re determined to change that. We know that the more our workforce reflects the diversity of our customers, the better we can help meet their needs. While there’s still work to do, we’re committed to intentionally building and diversifying our tech talent pools.”
Continuing its focus on inclusive recruitment practices, TD launched a pilot program with FDM Group in 2022 designed to help “returners” restart their careers in technology at the Bank.
The Returners Program targets people – predominately women – ready to return to the workforce after taking time off work for reasons including childcare, family leave or unemployment, and helps train or re-train them for technology roles.
The first cohort of 10 people – six women and four men – have since finished their training and are now working as Scrum Masters implementing Agile principles within the Bank.
Following the success of the first cohort, the program has grown to 59 colleagues with an expansion of training to include operational engineers, launching subsequent cohorts of Full Stack Engineers, Mainframe Engineers and Quality Engineering Tech Leads.
“Candidates who have a career break in their CV are often overlooked for roles,” said Jennifer Weber, Vice President, Business Shared Services Technology at TD. “We are proud to work with FDM through the Returners Program to help launch careers in technology for participants.”