Skip to content
// ← EVERY SEATTHE FUNCTIONS

Every floor · The machinery

People Partner (HR)

Works with a business unit on how it hires, pays, develops and manages its people.

BY MICHAEL SHANG · SIXTEEN YEARS IN COMMERCIAL BANKING · UPDATED

// 01 — WHAT A PEOPLE PARTNER DOES

Advisory rather than administrative: workforce planning, capability, performance and the difficult conversations. In a bank it carries a regulatory edge most HR does not — remuneration that must not reward the wrong behaviour, accountability regimes, conduct records that follow a person between employers.

// 02 — WHO ARRIVES HERE

HR backgrounds, and increasingly people from the business who move across; the specialist areas — reward, employment relations — hire on their own expertise.

// 03 — WHAT THE INTERVIEW ASKS

These are the shapes the round takes, not a question bank — banks phrase them differently and the wording is never the point.

  1. 01A high performer behaves badly. What do you do?
  2. 02How would you design an incentive that does not create a conduct problem?
  3. 03How do you advise a leader who does not want your advice?
  4. 04What would you look for in a hire for a credit team?
  5. 05How do you know whether a culture problem is real?
  6. 06What is different about people work in a regulated business?

What the panel is listening for. Whether you can be the business's partner and the institution's check at once — the seat is not credible if it can only do one.

Practise the round in the finance, technology and operations quiz: one of its five questions is this seat's own, and every answer has the senior interviewer's read.

Take the quiz →

// 04 — ONE QUESTION, WORKED

QWhat would you look for in a hire for a credit team?

A strong answer asks what the team decides, then hires for that: someone who reads before concluding, can say no clearly and with a route back, and changes their view when the file does. It would test that with a real file in the interview rather than a competency question, bring the credit lead into the judgment, and watch for the candidate who is fluent and always certain, which is the profile a credit team can least afford.

A weak one lists the generic strengths — analytical, a team player, resilient — which describe every candidate and predict nothing about a credit decision.

The seat is credible only when it can be the business's partner and the institution's check at the same time, and incentives are where those two meet hardest. How a lending desk is measured decides what it approves in a good year, and the relationship manager's scorecard on this site is written about exactly that.

START HERE · The RM scorecard

THE IN-TRAY · ONE MINUTE

Make the call on one file.

A short file on the ground this page covers. Every option opens with how far it sits from a senior banker’s read.

WHAT THEY HEAR · CHAPTER 2

Asked to define a ratio they have never met, a candidate gives a fluent, confident definition. It is wrong.

What does the panel hear?

1 FILES · PICK A CALL ON ANY OF THEM

5 MORE ON CHAPTER 2 · THE FOUR SIGNALS →WHERE DO YOU READ FROM? THE PLACEMENT →

// THE FREE CASE

FREE · NO PURCHASERead one complete case first Case 01 of the interview case pack — Northmark Engineering, the file, the diagnostic and the ninety-second walkthrough — in full, for an email address.10-PAGE PDF · FREE

// ALSO IN THE FUNCTIONS

The whole board, and how the four blocks fit together, is on what jobs banks hire for.