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By Russell Bennett, Chief Technology Officer, Fraedom

Across the world, fintech organisations are facing significant challenges in attracting and retaining the talent they need to grow and prosper in the future. There is no doubt there is a widespread demand for talent, especially technology-based talent, across the financial services sector but financial services organisations of all types are struggling to fill the vacancies. The situation in the UK today shines the spotlight on these concerns.

In a recent survey by Hays Financial Markets which polled 900 workers and employers in the City and the rest of the UK, 61% of employers said they have faced a moderate to extreme skills shortage during 2017. Technology skills are among those that are highly sought after according to the survey. This shortage of key technology skills will impact not just traditional banking and financial services organisations but also the rapidly burgeoning array of fintech-specific organisations

The pending arrival of Brexit looks set to make many of these skills shortages issues worse for UK-based businesses that rely on fintech. A new report from Innovate Finance, an independent membership association that represents the UK’s global fintech community, forecasts that on current performance the sector is set to grow to more than 100,000 employees, and the number of UK fintech companies more than double to 3,300, by the year 2030.

However, 82% of companies polled stated that they already face difficulties in recruiting non-EEA migrants. Under the most likely scenario for future immigration policy, in which the system for EEA migrants moves closer to that for non-EEA migrants, the report predicts a shortfall of 3,200 highly-skilled workers by 2030. This is projected to equate to a direct loss of £361 million to the sector.

Against the backdrop of such a challenging environment, much of which is outside their control, it is increasingly important that fintech organisations do all they can to focus on recruitment and retention strategies that allow them to attract skilled staff, help them to foster their development and encourage them to stay with the organisation over the long-term.

Finding a Better Approach to Fintech Recruitment

Most fintech organisations face similar challenges when it comes to recruitment. Typically, they are all looking for technology experts – designers, developers and systems architects, who not only understand business but also how to use technology to solve business problems. This kind of resource is in short supply. Finding fintech talent with relevant experience is rare indeed – and when businesses do find such candidates they often have to compete with a raft of competitors in order to secure their signature.

That’s why traditional recruitment approaches such as placing adverts in relevant publications typically have limited impact. Fintech businesses must be much more proactive and make use of all outbound channels of engagement available to them in order to track down and attract potential recruits. One such channel is what we at Fraedom call ‘crowdsourcing’, essentially a ‘bottom up’ approach to recruitment, which involves likeminded people referring industry talent (who then subsequently also go through Fraedom’s rigorous internal recruitment programme). At Fraedom, this approach has been extremely successful – and we now achieve 40% of our placements this way. In addition to pursuing such an approach, it is also important that businesses look to cast the net wider and leverage existing recruitment networks to bring in new talent.

More generally, this proactive engagement is critically important in positioning the opportunities of working with a fintech company correctly. After all, if the industry wants to ensure that a lot more people heading into work start their careers in the technology space, then we need to make certain that across schools, colleges and universities there is a much better understanding of the industry and what it’s like to work for a technology company.

That’s why we see a place for fintech ‘boot camps’ aimed at attracting more people into the technology talent pool. The focus could be on running intensive short courses (of a week or so in duration), where interested parties visit multiple companies across the industry, speak in detail to senior staff and learn about the business environment and the type of work fintechs generally do.

In what is becoming an ever more attractive landscape, it is critical that fintechs pursue this strong focus on attracting the best talent. After all, today’s candidates know that they are negotiating from a position of strength. Many have grown up with the culture of tech giants like Amazon, Google and Facebook and are therefore looking for the kinds of perks and benefits that they perceive working for such businesses would bring.

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