thank you Daniel so much for joining us today so Daniel we would love to hear about your story and career development let's start from the very beginning how did you get your postsecondary experience and how did that lead you to where you are today well first of all thanks for having me on and someone who has had a unique and untraditional career path I'd love to tell my story and my story actually starts before post-secondary institution which takes me to where I am right now I grew up in a family in which my father and
my father's father were both accountants I was told kind of talked about you're going to this University you're going to get your CPA and then you're going to take over the family company and I was like well it's not really what I want I usually am a big Advocate to go do what you want to do in life my father also did that as well and so I went down the route of not for-profit management I attended Queen University and studied not for-profit management and kind of catered my own degree in the sense that I
took Arts courses and I took Commerce courses to get to me to a career that led me to downtown Toronto where I worked my way up in which I was doing Audits and taxes and Consulting with people at the non for-profit level and doing audits basically and in that process I was met by a family friend of mine was a recruiter and she reached out to me and she said I have a perfect job for you and I was like oh what's that and she said it is within an accounting firm or an accounting company
and I was like I'm I'm not a CPA I'm not my father and I went all the way back to my youth in which in my youth you know I was told you're going to be an accountant you're do and she's like no this is about in recruiting and it's about relationship building and what I'll talk about throughout this session today is all about superpowers and my superpower is relationship building is collaborating is connecting the dots for people and so since then understanding my superpower I've developed that and honed in I've utilized my experiences in
not-profit management I've utilized the knowledge that I learned at the dining room table listening to my father speak as an accountant and now lead a recruiting team across Canada that supports students at the campus level so University interns or new grads to get jobs in an accounting firm that is is the leader in the middle market around the world we have 120 offic about 55,000 professionals that support audit tax and consulting services so as you can see a very untraditional career path but a lot of the stuff linked me and got me to where I
am right now goner the days or when I was in university I didn't have the opportunities that students have nowadays to kind of connect with professionals virtually going through coffee chats having social media and stuff like that so I did things right out of University but from going that from going on working on Bay Street to working for an accounting firm to doing you know everything I developed an appreciation for what my superpower is which is the connector of dots and and relationship building that's where I am today leading kind of our recruiting efforts across
Canada at RSM I was kind of the brought on when RSM launched in Canada 2017 to develop campus recruiting across Canada Within Canadian market and so since then I've taken over as our campus recruiting leader and doing a lot of the the executive stuff and and making sure we continue to grow as the the individual that at the firm that we are yeah that's awesome and I like how you called it an untraditional path because I feel like nowadays a lot of students think that there's a linear path to what they want to end up
doing but I guess me as well being in it for a little bit I realized that that's not always the reality so kind of seg going into my next question what is one key valuable lesson or story from your career Journey so far oh my goodness that is such a cool interesting story and I would always say and I I might give you two I I'll give you one right now is the saying it's not always what you know but it's who you know and I like to take it one step further and says who
knows you out of all the careers or about 75% of the careers that I've had in life I got them because I knew people once again leaning back to my relationship building so gone to the days where you just submit a resume and expect to get an answer there is a a slogan with a lot of recruiters that they won't consider people unless they've seen them at two or three events or unless they connected with them at two or three times there's a reason why firms like RSM do virtual and in-person activities it's not just
to you know give money but it's to connect with top talent and I think coming out and showing who you are will definitely set your best foot forward you know as I mentioned earlier I landed the jobs that I did because I knew people I'm thinking back to you know the job that I told you about when I got my job and at CPA I used to work for the charter professional accountants of Ontario I got the job there because I knew the recruiter it was a family friend who knew my talents I got the
job at RSM because I saw this new company coming about and I looked on the list and he's like hey I know two people on there I reached out to those two friends that work at RSM I worked at them previous and they were like this is an easy win Dan knows the student clubs knows the school contacts he knows recruiting like and they made things happen really quickly so I'll come back to it's not always what you know but it's who you know and I like to take it one step further and says who
knows you and then the other one and I have to do this and you said one but I'll do another one I am an openly gay man who went through S iy and IVF to bring my now 5-year-old daughter into the world and I say this and I tell a little bit of the story because RSM has a culture of you being your most authentic self and I tell people this all the time when they're in interviews and they say what tips can you give me it comes down to this basically be who you are
let yourself shine and everything will go from there so I think it's very important that you are authentic in all that you do and that you you know come out with your best foot for by being authentic that was a great piece of advice I think that really hits home for anyone who's going to be listening to this because again nowadays recruiting is so much different than it was back in the old days so I think that now a lot of firms are really putting that emphasis and placing that focus on just being yourself and
you know putting yourself out there because at the end of the day that is who they're going to be working with so they really want to see what you're like so as someone who seems very passionate about what he does you seem like the perfect person for this role so do you mind giving us a little bit of an overview of the recruitment process at RSM from sourcing to onboarding yeah so RSM is in a little different of a situation in RSM is at a situation in which we have a very strong partnership with our
us colleagues we have about 82 offices across Canada in the US when it comes to our Consulting roles and opportunities some of our interns and our Associates come in to the firm and they get to do client work in the US they get to do client work in Canada and we bring at RSM the full power of our firm to our clients and our communities so that's not just we bring an office when we when we go to a client we bring people across Canada sometimes there's a specific skill set that we bring people from
the US or maybe from our UK office to help land a client or help support people um when it comes to our recruiting process I can talk about our campus recruiting process which is for interns and Associates normally we are on campuses in the fall and in the winter terms hiring for a year in advance how great is it if you can land a job in the fall September and you don't have to worry about getting a job because you already know you have your full-time job in September of the following year so great opportunities
and audit tax and Consulting and I would encourage people to really research what those mean reach out to on LinkedIn and ask people for coffee chats I say I can talk about RSM until I'm blue in the face but our teams at RSM can talk about the dayto dayss so really we are from start to finish going to support you we're going to be meeting you at events apply to our roles at rsmc canada.com careers you can apply for as many roles as possible you can do on an internship side of thing you can do
a four-month internship you can do an eight-month or even a 12month internship if it works with you and it works with our schedules we do internships in the fall winter and summer terms each year in all three of those lines of business in the Summers you can imagine it's a little quieter for audit and tax and a lot of the time even Consulting so RSM also offers through our campus hires for our interns a summer internship program so not only are you going to be doing kind of billable work and potentially you know client work
dealing with clients and developing your soft skills there but rsm's Talent team my talent acquisition team is also going to help you develop your soft skills through um a Capstone project um through a business case simulation through organizing a stewardship activity a fundraiser with all staff and the firm you can imagine you're collaborating you're building your teamwork skills you're developing your presentation skills a lot of that stuff is definitely key to your development for our students within the process as well that might be saying well I'm in first and second year I you know might
still have a lot to to learn and to figure out we also offer uh Pathways program which kind of gives you a good end to our firm it opens your network so you know it's not always what you know but it's who you know and you know offering opportunities there we also offer events throughout the year through virtual Brazen interactions to campus events to other opportunities like boot camps where we teach students across Canada about platforms and Technology like altrax really when you either take an interview to getting hired we're connecting with you throughout that
process through regular Communications that get sent out newsletters to you know interactions we have a whole Talent team and there's hundreds of talent Professionals in our firm from onboarding to Talent attraction to operations to Learning and Development you you know we're basically there to make sure that if you do get hired a year in advance you're kept engaged and and linked to our community the RSM community so that whole Talent experience is definitely something that's been reimagined and rein invented we at RSM utilize technology to make life easier so there's a number of ways that
we keep you engaged so that you know you'll have preh hire events I was just talking to our Calgary office recently that wanted to invite all of our preh hires to a Christmas party and you know we do have a lot of ways that we engage students to feel that their experience is is a is a positive one and I would finish off with you know when you come onto the group you have a number of affinity groups that you can connect with and we connect with you so not only are you going to hear
from the talent team but you're also going to hear from people from your Almer M at your school where you know we have groups called campus Champions that work work with and support their their Almer matters so you know you potentially would have a monthly connect with fellow situation fellow Western people so you know there's other ways that we build community for you around the a shared story so it's all about that Talent experience it's embedded into our slogan RSM slogan is the power of being understood the power of being you um so you can
imagine um being your most authentic self and building that Community for you to be authentic is very important to us oh finally last thing and people might also say okay Dan but but what do I have to submit when you submit your application and as mentioned you can submit to any job you want submit a cover letter a resume and an unofficial transcript all in one package put together so you know you can imagine we can assess your technical skills through your unofficial transcript your resume we can see all the good stuff that you're doing
awesome so building off of that as well when you guys are looking for this Talent you were saying that you hire very well in advance so what are some of the key qualities that RSM looks for in the candidates I love love love this question and you can imagine as RSM as a larger firm I do kind of look at what our competitors are doing and I do try to find the what things that RSM can do to be you know have a differentiator in the market we have a philosophy at RSM and it's top
down and encouraged and everyone kind of buys into it and it's called the five C's and these five C's kind of embody what all of our staff our first choice advisors is what we call them kind of make up those 5 C's are caring courageous critical thinking collaborative and curious and you might be asking what are those like what do those mean if I were to look at what one of those five C's means to me it is caring because you know as someone once said you know when you care it shows and when you
don't care it shows so we embed these into our interview process we embed these into our day-to-days to make sure hey you know I'm going to acknowledge one of my colleagues today because they were really collaborative with me and that made a huge impact so those five C's are something that we also embed into what we look for in candidates because I will tell people is this someone that I want to put in front of a client um is this someone that I want to work with day-to-day so you know RSM I'll be very direct
we are not going to be giving you pre-screen surveys we're not going to be doing those pre-recorded interviews in which you never get to speak to a recruiter I've talked to a number of candidates that have said to me wow I'm accepting this job because I've already interacted with you four times um within this recruitment process and some of the other people I in I've never even connected with them our whole point is to understand who you you are to understand what makes you tick so you can imagine we can check out your technical skills
through your transcripts but the the thing that we're looking for the most are your soft skills your teamwork your collaboration your communication skills yes you can get those from jobs but you can also get those from extracurriculars or volunteer experiences so I tell students all the time that say I'm trying to get a job but I keep struggling because I don't have any other previous experience and I'm like talk about your other experiences I spoke to a student about a couple months ago and he said that very thing and then he said but I'm going
to tell you this I'm a president of my fraternity and I deal with a $50,000 budget and I have five people underneath me and I was like perfect right there you articulated in in a couple sentences key soft skills that I think you would make a great candidate at this firm that person got into an interview and the hope is that they can potentially get a job with us so you can imagine at a campus level so if you're an intern or an associate soft skills are something that are hugely beneficial and if you can
articulate those in a resume and everything that is always key also it comes always back to it's not always what you know but it's who you know so reach out to people on LinkedIn when I do my events or when I speak to staff all the staff at RSM know that if they cultivate and have you know good interactions with candidates they reach out to me and say you to put this person into an interview so it's always you putting your best foot forward and making those events you know I'll go back to my days
at CPA Ontario in which I would do one-on-one coaching sessions or oneon-one sessions with some students and you know a couple students would come in right after the hiring deadlines occurred and they'd be really really upset and I would say to them well what's going on and they're like I didn't get this job and I was I was like okay well where else did you apply what are your other options and they oh no I just had one job that I wanted to get into and I was like you know you don't put all your
eggs in one basket so I think it's very important that you get out and do networking step out sometimes out of your comfort zone I've seen students they were in their first year and they went to an networking event and they were overwhelmed that like one person I had to pull aside and we just had a a discussion to then working your way through school and becoming the president of your accounting Society to then Landing that perfect job at you know a firm like RSM and then to develop and growing your career so it's all
about you know kind of working on those soft skills to really allow you to be that that professional and that's what we look for in an inequality candidate so as a campus recruiter you obviously have a very unique perspective of things so can you think of a specific example or success story of an individual who has gone through RSM either I guess through campus or some co-op program so I can think of a multiple ones and this is the the joy of what recruiters do and you know I interview and I've built teams at RSM
and the first thing that I ask uh recruiter when I interview them and this is going to be for anyone that wants to get a job at RSM I'll probably ask you this question what do you enjoy most about campus recruiting and the individuals that say I enjoy people's development iy en people's growth are probably the ones that will go to the top of the pile the individuals that say you know I like a good Library campus recruiting is all about building relationships with people my recruiters if I were to ask them they know the
ins and outs of all the people that they've hired I always say you know I give huge codos to people when they hire their first candidate or their first person into the role and they say watch where this person's going to go and like for example I still keep in contact with the very first person at RSM that I hired and you know I get contacts with them and they regularly connect um I will tell you that you know I'm thinking right now of three individuals one of them the first one I look at the
individual when I hired the person it was one of those stories those success stories in which the individuals family was all kind of around and it was like a huge jump for joy this person just got a job and I see this person and I encourage people all the time and say to them you know do something that's going to make you famous and do something that's going to make you famous you don't need at RSM we have what are known as employee network groups that allow you to build community around a shared story and
I'll talk about this a little later this individual you know is at an entry level now is a senior associate and now leads across Canada one of our employee network groups in which partners and leaders are coming for him for advice so you don't need to be a partner at a firm to be a leader you know in my role even I lead our pride employee network group that supports our lgbtq2 plus Community I was instrumental in building across our Toronto offices and most of our offices across Canada inclusive bathrooms in which all it was
was this is important we need to do this let's get it done and yep happen next day so the individual that I first talked about I'll say his name is Pedro you don't need to be a partner to evoke change do something that's going to make you famous the second one I'll give you two here and the other individual his name is Mark Mark reached out to me and said you know one of my areas of development is I need to work on public speaking what can you do to help me out and you know
practice makes perfect I was able to get them speaking on panel discussions and leveraging his knowledge and his experience and him being his most authentic self and yeah you can understand it wasn't perfect in the beginning I have been a horrible speaker in the beginning you know and I think practice makes perfect but I was able to kind of Coach him afterwards and now he speaks on National groups now he's thriving because he's working on his skill and he's acknowledged that this is an area of improvement so I think you know it's always in my
world you know tap into those individuals find word their strengths are but also be direct in what their um areas of improvement are and I'm a big believer of superpowers in every individual you all have your own unique superpower that will allow you to thrive and be your most authentic self yeah I love how you keep using superpower I feel like that's such a good way to put it especially during the recruitment process when you also just need a little bit of a pickme up yourself so how does RSM approach diversity and inclusion in the
recruitment process like are there any specific initiatives or programs that students can look to oh my goodness so this is such a hot Hot Topic you know different companies will say it as different things it's whether EDI or CDI or Equity diversity inclusion culture diversity inclusion RSM for the past 10 years has really put a large emphasis and a lot of financial investment on this and finding and it's even in some of the pillars of our strategy is building a diverse Talent Community you know one of the reasons I'm at RSM is because of our
culture because of as I mentioned earlier the slogan of the power of being you the power of being understood it's not just something we slap up on the wall it's actually something that we believe in from top down we practice what we preach so you know each of our groups and each of our firm in general you know yes you have your day job but you also have a job which is to support culture diversity and inclusion at the firm you know you can imagine a lot of money goes into our EGS our employee network
groups and there's 12 of them in total that allow you to build community around a shared stories and anyone can get involved with this from an intern even preh hire can get involved with this all the way up to Partners these employee network groups there's ethnic EGS like Ace for our black community Olaf for our Hispanic Community inspiration for our Asian Community there's groups like abilities for people of varying abilities first for families women in leadership Pride as mentioned earlier about our lgbtq2 plus Community there's group for our veteran Community Our Generations for various Generations
I mean the list goes on and on and in these groups is where you Foster Community you Foster professional development so you can you know step outside of your comfort zone I'm involved with star our women and leadership group because I want to offer a safe space for my daughter to grow as a woman in a leadership role and you know I asked the tough questions what can I do to support her what struggles is she going to have there's a lot of volunteer aspects stewardship giving back to the communities a lot of our groups
have you know initiatives so each of these groups have leaders I said Pedro earlier I lead across Canada our Prides employee network group we recently um in the US and Canada um secured money to um sponsor uh initiative called family equality and Welcome Friends which is an lgbtq2 plus summer camp so we financially support them throughout the year we sometimes offer you know opportunities for them when it comes to the recruiting side of things you can imagine there's a lot that you can do to be inclusive for our candidates you know there is unconscious bias
training that we we teach our staff when it comes to the recruiting side we do what is known uh on campuses we'll go out and we do diversity in business so we'll do a panel discussion where we talk about you know bringing out people from each of these employee network groups to talk about what business is like but the other things that make business great you know understanding that there is a community for all um there is a very open Community gone are the days in which you know people think of an accounting firm and
they think of a white boy club that's not you know what RSM is about and there's a huge emphasis so you know having an an RSM is a big supporter of a number of initiatives on campus student clubs like for Pride alliances or women in leadership for people of varying abilities for you know our black community there are a number of initiatives that allow people to understand so a lot of money and resources do go into supporting those and as mentioned the the diversity and business um panel discussions is is another great way that you
know we support our community we support our postsecondary institutions and allow people to realize that we're in a community that is very diverse so if you are a student Club out there I always say this if you're a student Club looking to you know engage with a firm that is very diverse and that is encouraging people to be their most authentic self reach out to the RSM Community yeah I love all the networks you all have at RSM I feel like there's something for everyone which makes it very inclusive and that was everything for today
those are all the questions that I had for you but thank you so much again for joining us and I'm sure everyone's going to find this very insightful thanks for all your help this has been wonderful
