As the senior director of talent acquisition at Freddie Mac, Michele Espada’s leadership and forward-thinking approach to recruiting top talent allowed her team to transition to 100% virtual hiring over the timespan of just one weekend in mid-March.
Because of Espada’s foresight, the transition to virtual hiring has been seamless. In fact, the average time to fill open positions has decreased by three business days since mid-March and the talent team has hired and successfully onboarded more than 250 employees since then. To ensure a diverse workforce, Espada and her team partner with Thurgood Marshall, Hispanic Scholarship Fund, WayUp and others to build diverse candidate pipelines at the early career/entry level. She also leverages the company’s employment branding strategy to reach diverse candidate pools through targeted campaigns visible on sites like LinkedIn and Facebook. As this work demonstrates, Espada has already laid the foundation for successfully leading Freddie Mac’s talent strategy into the future.
