• Mike Mihaylov, Financial Services Sales Leader at Venquis


• 09.02.2017 09:15 am
undisclosed

All financial services firms want the ideal tech employee – someone who ‘gets’ the business and has years of sector experience as well as possessing high level technological skills. However, there are very few of these people in the market and attracting them could cost firms a small fortune. We’d encourage employers to open up their hiring strategies and perhaps target talent without that financial experience, as they may find they identify potentially game-changing employees that way. By really drilling down into the core competencies of the role, it’s highly likely that employers will see they could take on talent without financial services experience that could do the job just as, if not more, effectively than someone with that track record. 

These change and transformation roles are pivotal to guiding firms through major periods of change, and not hiring properly could prove disastrous. We’re not suggesting that firms take on any inexperienced professional with technology skills, but there are people out there who aren’t being identified who could make a major difference. It’s a hard task to track down talent that can understand the technology requirements and limitations of a firm and then create cost effective and business aligned solutions but it’s one that firms really can’t afford to cut corners on. The options are to either invest more heavily in the number of people you’re hiring for change projects, or to smarten hiring strategies and look for talent that’s more out of the box. Firms need someone with the skills to work with both the business and IT, these people do exist, firms just need to look in different quarters.