Despite economically rocky times, Fintech has proven its resilience with the industry set to play a key role in financial recovery and growth this year.
Growing businesses with big ambitions all need the same thing – great people, especially great salespeople. With 300,000 people globally already working in the sector, Fintech firms are looking to employ 40,000 people each quarter.
Widely regarded as the finance industry’s hottest ticket, there’s no shortage of applications for Fintech roles. But how can you make sure you find the right person for the job?
Prioritising company cultural & fit
A CV / resume screen or application form is an essential first step of the candidate-facing recruitment process. Combined with a clear job description and set of requirements, it allows you to quickly identify candidates with the right skills and experience.
But it’s only half the story. Companies have personalities – just like people. To find a successful long-term hire that flourishes at the company, there needs to be a cultural match.
Understanding both your conscious and subconscious company culture will help you think about what attributes a candidate needs to have to succeed in and enjoy the role.
The business impact of company culture
Sometimes people think of company culture as a ‘nice-to-have’, but there’s a tangible business dimension to hiring with culture top of mind.
When there’s a great cultural fit, employees are happier; happy employees are 12% more productive, according to a study by Warwick University.
There’s a long term benefit too. Turnover at companies where employees don’t rate the overall company culture reaches almost 50%, opening organisations up to heavy recruitment costs and lost productivity as new staff members get up to speed.
How to assess the right cultural fit
Whereas technical skills and experience are easier to assess, getting a feel for whether someone is a good cultural fit for your organisation is much harder.
With 79% of organisations now conducting video interviews post-pandemic, it can be even harder to build rapport and get a feel for what makes someone tick.
Some organisations turn to data and personality tests. From ENTJ to to colours to animals, there’s a whole range of personality tests available to try and give candidates and prospective employers an idea of whether it’s a good match.
Others do some reverse engineering. They look at their top performers and try to identify common attributes or preferences. The hope is that by looking for similar working styles in a pool of candidates, they’ll find people who will thrive at the organisation.
Bring in the experts
Even in rapidly growing industries like Fintech, recruiting a new team member isn’t something that hiring managers do on a regular basis. Ironically, as a team leader the better you are at recruiting, the less you do it!
For recruitment firms, matching candidates and companies is what we do every single day. Working with the right recruiter can help accelerate the process of finding your perfect hire.
When it comes to finding a great cultural match, look for a recruiter that specialises in your particular industry. An industry expert will already have a network of well-qualified candidates and a feel for who will thrive at a particular organisation.
Industry experts know the market, the companies, and the candidates. Having specialised in Fintech sales recruitment for the past 16 years, we’ve worked with many of the businesses in the industry and got a feel for who will click there. Our Fintech industry expertise is why clients come back to us time and time again and why new clients find success with us straight away.
It’s not just the companies. We often place candidates multiple times throughout their careers, getting to understand their strengths and preferences.
A well-established network and relationships with top talent means we can often pull candidates who weren’t actively looking for a new role into the process based on the strength of a great match.
A little bit of matchmaker magic
CVs, skills, assessments, tests – they all have a role to play. But people are far too complicated to be neatly summarised in two pages or through a personality test.
Recruitment is about people, and it needs the personal touch. It needs that impossible-to-define gut instinct that tells you whether people will click.
It’s the reason that our Co-Founder and matchmaker extraordinaire, Kate Sharland, always sits down with the hiring manager and usually CEO or Founder too. Getting a feel for the people behind the job description enables us to find candidates that will thrive in their new role and continue to be a great fit years later.
To put Kate’s mental rolodex to the test and fill your Fintech sales vacancy with the perfect match, get in touch with the Finiti Search team.
