Customer spending has been declining recently, with numerous retail closures and rumours about a likely global recession brought about by the covid situation. It may not be looking great for many businesses, however, in the face of adversity, the FinTech sector continues to be resilient and forecast to boom more than ever. Recruitment within the industry has been growing steadily over preceding years and does not show any signs of slowing down today, even in the midst of a global pandemic! Here in this article, were going to look at the latest enteric recruitment trends that any human resources manager or recruiter should be aware of. Let’s see what we can expect from this sector over the next year. Ready? Off we go!
Curiosity and creativity
The FinTech field is undoubtedly made up of a creative bunch of individuals. Leading publication Techcrunch sums things up nicely, describing FinTech as an industry that moves fast and makes things. It’s a field that’s home to a number of risk-taking teams that roll out solutions to deal with a whole array of financial needs and problems. The industry has been especially needy in pandemic times.
Pre-covid, there was a lack of innovation, yet since the pandemic, the financial world has learned that we are at our best when we solve problems related to human needs, and solutions come as a result of creative thinking. This need for creativity is a rising trend for FinTech recruiters to be familiar with and is rising much more so than in traditional banking. The world needs doers but also creative thinkers, who are now in more demand than ever before. Make sure that you review your hiring criteria, assessing for creative attributes, resilience, curiosity, and innovation.
A wide range of job seekers seek purpose
Financial technology has had a reputation for being a little stale over the past few years, and today more and more candidates are looking for a role that has a purpose. If you speak to any popular tech recruiters today, they will all tell you that their candidates are curious about what impact their role will have in the real world. Typical questions at this moment in time involve ones about helping out during the pandemic. It’s a trend that shows a change in the whole outlook of the industry’s workforce.
People are looking more and more for a sense of purpose in their job, and to be more than someone who’s a cog in the wheel of global capitalism. Companies need to have an honest and transparent narrative about their work that reflects social issues. Saying “join us as it’s great we’ve raised over a hundred million pounds in series A funding this year” just won’t cut the mustard anymore.
As a hiring manager, you can leverage your brand to showcase a sense of purpose and humanitarian good. Showcase the brand with an engaging story to prospective employees and let them know that they can come and work for you to do good in the world.
Flexing your workforce
Even though on average FinTech is recruiting more and more staff every year, the pandemic has shaken the industry up a bit. Some companies are now canceling their roles whilst others are doubling the amount of hiring. It’s not precisely clear how many people companies want to hire. Planning a workforce is an inexact science, but one thing’s for sure that the FinTech workforce needs to be agile. Every company needs its members of staff to be able to flex up and down when necessary.
Changes in time to hire
All of the FinTech companies that have come out on top after the covid-19 pandemic have all been companies that have put focus on speed. Some of our favorites include Starling Bank’s new ‘Connected Card’, which provides a linked second card so that other people can help you with shopping, and Save My Local, A new volunteer initiative that allows small businesses to sell numerous vouchers for future purposes, providing them with a cash flow lifeline.
With an increase in speed across the industry, you can expect your hiring community to demand much faster recruitment processes. Companies have been taking things remotely, significantly reducing their time to hire to keep up with prospective employees’ demands. Candidates are finding it easier to apply for work given that they don’t need to travel for interviews, and this is making them more likely to pick and choose. You should try and decrease your time to hire as much as possible, balancing the permanent and non-permanent workforce whilst also ensuring that the recruitment process is streamlined.
There should be no unnecessary duplications, waiting around, or unnecessary actions because candidates certainly aren’t going to wait around! If you’re working with a recruitment partner, make sure that they can offer you talent from a wide range of job seekers, but that comes from pre-engaged talent pools. This will increase the likelihood of getting the ball rolling and will decrease the time the recruitment process takes.
Go global with your workforce
If you haven’t done so already, consider going global with your workforce. It’s a Poignant trend in the Finn tech sphere, born out of reasons that aren’t rocket science. After the coronavirus pandemic, more people started working remotely, giving them the ability to work from wherever they pleased on the planet. Companies have adapted to remote conditions, so your recruitment process can adapt to a degree of flexibility, whilst also taking advantage of global recruitment markets. If your talent acquisition team doesn’t have a global reach, make sure that you get in touch with a recruitment process outsourcer who can tap into non-native markets. It will be a real game-changer for your business!
More unique to FinTech than traditional banking, the pandemic has shown the sheer scale of the globe’s “unbanked countries”, and the suffering that has come to them. Countries such as India, China, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, and Pakistan are new on the scene, but trends show that the sector is particularly booming in Asia. Countries such as Israel are climbing to the top and Singapore has now ranked 4th in the FinTech world. Israel has taken the storm with new rising FinTech companies that have reached into the 500s, 12 of which have been valued at over $1 billion. This particular trend is largely a result of the population’s large mobile engagement. It will be interesting to see how talent plays out in 2022 and how the markets will adapt, and as a recruiter, it will be a good one to tap into emerging global markets.
Conclusion
Ever since the pandemic, one of the few sectors that have been going strong is FinTech. It’s no surprise that as companies in this field continue to gain more and more funding, continuing to expand their job opportunities. Only in the last several years has the job market completely exploded, from below a hundred thousand jobs in 2015 to nearly 600,000 by late 2018 – and these are pre-pandemic figures! The industry has not been declining and will continue to expand horizons as FinTech takes precedent over traditional financial services and institutions. Hopefully, as a recruiter, you have a solid understanding of the trends and can hire successfully throughout the coming years, especially if a staff member is in need of a hannah kepple bikini. Best of luck!
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