All kinds of plagues lined the desk behind her. They are the first items you’ll notice as you walk into her expansive office. “You can sit over there,” she tells me while pointing to a sitting area close to her table. I will join you shortly.” She later steps out of the office to attend to something, she returns a few minutes later. She sits behind her desk. I placed the tape between us as its starts to purr.

Ayodele Jaiyesimi is the head, human capital management at FirstBank of Nigeria PLC. The laurels that lined her desk testify to her contribution to the growth of bank’s human capital. She has been at the forefront of recruiting some of the best hands in the country both entry level and senior positions for FirstBank in other to drive its growth.

Innovation, passion and partnership are the underlying words that drive not just Jaiyesimi and her team but the entire work force of FirstBank. “We recruit people who are innovative, people who are passionate, we want people who think partnership. Hence it is a win-win.”

Partnership is a word that works for Jaiyesimi and the people she recruits. This has earned FirstBank trust of its employees in a country were trust between the employee and the employer, is rare. “We have our values passion, partnership and people. When we talk about partnership, we are not talking about partnership with external stakeholders. We are talking about partnership with internal stakeholders too. Therefore you find even the group managing director going to locations to share the vision. We have town hall meetings where we sit down and say these are the things that we are trying to do, these are the initiatives. We have a culture of inclusiveness. Even some of ideas, some of the products that we have today are products that have been developed not necessarily by the team that is in charge of product but by people who have sat down to think through ideas.”

Recently, under the leadership of Jaiyesimi, FirstBank got an award as one of the Great Places to Work. In addition, she has also overseen FirstBank the change in perception of FirstBank being an old generation bank. Today she says FirstBank a work force with an average age of 36.

“This is fantastic,” she says. “The average age five years ago was 46. What we have done consciously is to open those doors to a lot of graduates. We have the First Academy, a training institute where we have a very robust graduate programme. For our entry level, we go through an elaborate screening process. There was a year; we had about 200,000 people who applied for our test. Since the application process was online, we had shortlisted the candidates. In the end we had about 94 candidates who sat for the test. Hence we always take the best of the best of the crop. Candidates go through that test, they go through proper assessment centre and then they come into the classroom and they do four months classroom project. We have an e-learning programme, we have mobile learning programmes we have pot-pourri of various programmes that successful candidates go through. And so, by the time they finish the four months training they will come into FirstBank totally inspired and well equipped for their journey. We have a lot of young people who have applied to work with us. Last year the youngest person is about age 20.”

As the head of human resources, Jaiyesimi agrees that women are given vantage positions at FirstBank even in her department she has quite a number of women who work with her.

“I am one those that believe that when you reward people or when you single out people it is not necessarily about the gender. It is about how well you do. And so at FirstBank, when we recruit we don’t say because you are a woman or man so can’t do this job. It is an equal opportunity organisation. The most important thing is to prove that you can, then you get the job.”

In spite of this, Jaiyesimi agrees there is always a challenge for women especially the married ones. “We don’t have a crèche in here but that doesn’t make us less baby friendly because we do have a special working hour for nursing mothers and depending on the department. We have established structure in my department for example we have special working hours for nursing mothers. We take into cognisance some special needs women.”

As a woman herself, Jaiyesimi says she has been able to put some structures in place to ensure her family is well taken care of while at work. “As a woman if you decide to build up your career in a bank, you have to have a good structure in place. I will give you my story. Almost all my children are very young but to have a balance life, I still have to look after the home. I still have to cook soup even if I have a cook. I also cook. To show you are domesticated you must be at home and around your husband and family else when you retire there won’t be any memories.”