mirates NBD is one of the biggest banks in the Middle East – it has AED 997 billion ($271 billion) assets under management, AED 44 billion ($12 billion) in operating income and AED 23 billion ($6 billion) in net profit.
The banking giant has operations not just in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), but in Egypt, India, Turkey, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, UK, and employs 32,000 people worldwide.
Emirates NBD has an impressive legacy – it was established 61 years ago as the National Bank of Dubai – and it has a long history of experimenting with tech; in fact, it was one of the first cloud native banks globally.
Now Emirates NBD is on a transformation journey to reimagine the future of work, and actually understand how the banking industry is changing.
At UNLEASH World 2025, the bank’s Global Head of Talent Acquisition, Jonathan Mears, sat down for an exclusive interview to share the secrets to success in Emirates NBD talent transformation.
Read on to find out why vendor partnerships are key here, and how the bank is leaning into AI.
Emirates NBD on solving its hiring volume challenge
In starting its talent transformation, the banking giant looked very closely at its biggest challenge – “where is my big rock that I need to break”
Mears tells UNLEASH: “We are very fortunate [that] we have a very strong employment brand in the region – this is a testament to the culture and history of the organization.”
This means for volume roles, Emirates NBD doesn’t do a lot of direct sourcing, but there’s a high volume of inbound applications.
That volume was the problem that Emirates NBD wanted to solve through technology – “we chose volume because it is where we saw the opportunity to have the quickest impact and the quickest value”, notes Mears.
There was a particular focus on volume hiring for inbound and outbound call centers “where we get 10,000 applications for one role”.
“Our ATS and our recruiters couldn’t deal with that volume” – “we were leaving 9,900 applications in the dark”, and that’s not an ideal brand or customer experience since “a lot of people who apply are either customers, or potential customers”.
“What we’ve been able to do with technology is [think about] how can we service the community better? Are we missing out on key talent? Are we missing out on top talent?”
The focus was on finding a way to automate the process for both recruiters and candidates alike.
With the help of Hirevue, Emirates NBD has moved to virtual, asynchronous video assessments.
“Rather than a fixed, scheduled interview, which tends to get rescheduled, missed, forgotten, or traffic delays”, people can do the video assessment in their own time, and when best suits them.
The results speak for themselves. The bank has saved 8,000 hours and $400,000 in interviews, cut the time to offer by 80%, and boosted candidate NPS by 100% since going live in January.
“Now we’re looking to scale even further, both within the UAE, but also through to our entities in other locations and countries.”
When giving his advice to other talent leaders who are further behind on their talent transformation journeys, Mears’ advice is to segment their talent.
There’s no one-size-fits approach to acquiring talent” – “acquiring technology talent is very different to acquiring Treasury talent”, it’s also very different to hiring call center agents or hiring legal professionals.
AI, skills and ‘intelligent workforce planning’ at Emirates NBD
Hirevue has been a key partner in tackling the volume hiring problem at Emirates NBD, but the bank has multiple other vendor partners.
For Mears, these vendor “relationships are absolutely key” for the banking giant to “stay current in the marketplace”, as well as to help “keep our minds open for what’s available in the future”.
Emirates NBD has used Microsoft technology as a base for building generative AI solutions both within HR and across other business functions – plus, the bank has a strong relationship with LinkedIn for recruitment.
It also has a close relationship with Oracle, which Mears describes as “a stalwart of the industry, particularly from a HR systems perspective” – he’s excited about the tech giant’s product roadmap.
Agentic AI is very much on Emirates NBD’s agenda – specifically on how to automate the pre-boarding and onboarding processes to make them seamless and personal.
“My aspiration from a candidate perspective is I only want them to enter their information once,” Mears shares.
In addition to agentic AI, UNLEASH was keen to find out what’s top of Mears and Emirates NBD’s talent to-do list for both 2026 and looking ahead to 2030.
Top of mind is “how do I step into intelligent workforce planning”.
“Talent acquisition are always at the sharp end of HR in terms of being able to deliver the right talent at the right time.”
Th bank is keen to ensure “we’ve got the skills for the future” – “we are moving to a more skills-led economy”.
Of course, “there are going to be roles in our organization that require deep banking experience” – and those jobs will never be replaced with “fungible skills talent”.
The questions are “what is the future potential of that fungible talent?” Where are the adjacent skills that are transferable?
“Can I take somebody from business banking to corporate coverage, or from corporate coverage to investment banking”, for instance.
Plus, there’s a need to think about where to buy, where to build, where to borrow talent.
A fourth element has been added – where to ‘bot’ talent, aka automate tasks to AI agents.
“For me, how do you create an amalgamation of all four of those to create organizational value, vitality and health,” concludes Mears.