Despite a backdrop of reduced consumer spending, retail closures and an impending global recession, the FinTech sector has proven to be surprisingly resilient. 

Though some forecasts paint a gloomy picture of job cuts, the reality is far more nuanced, with significant opportunities to plug the undoubted gaps in business support and outrace the legacy banks in a new world, where the need for speed, is key. 

David Tully, Associate Director at Resource Solutions explores what HR and recruitment leaders should expect to see shaping the FinTech talent sector over the coming 12 months.

Increase in demand for creativity and curiosity

As an industry, we’re already a pretty creative bunch in FinTech. But one of the key takeaways for our industry was nicely summed up by TechCrunch as “move fast, [and] make things,” as multiple and sometimes impromptu teams roll out financial technology solutions to help combat the crisis. Whilst in a pre-Covid world we could add incremental innovations for marginal gains, the global pandemic has shown that we are at our best when we are solving genuine human needs and solving these problems more creatively than traditional banking. Yes, we’ll still need plenty of ‘doers’ but we have never needed creative thinkers more.

Hiring tip: Review your hiring criteria. Ensure you are assessing for the skills you need, such as curiosity, innovation and resilience. Take a glance at our favourite assessment vendors here.

Purpose beats Pay

Ok, I may be overstating that somewhat, but when I spoke with our specialist FinTech Recruiters about what trends they were seeing in candidate behaviour, they all shared the same thing: candidates are asking more questions and most of these were around purpose. The question “How have they been helping during the pandemic?” came up time and time again. In the booming London FinTech community, our clients have always needed a compelling employer brand but now, more than ever, this narrative needs to be honest and transparent with genuine meaning. And no, it’s not enough to just say “We have just raised £50m in series B funding”…

Hiring tip: Leverage your employer brand to help tease out your purpose and tell it as an engaging story. Our employer brand specialists share best practices on how to do this in our Candidate Experience in the Expectation Economy report.

Flexing up (and down) your workforce is the new normal (Offering Free Yoga doesn't count)

Workforce planning, that Holy Grail, is arguably more of an art than a science, but across our FinTech clients, we’ve been able to forecast hiring trends with near military-precision. The pandemic has changed this, with some organisations cancelling roles whilst other FinTech employers are doubling their hiring.  One of the key takeaways for HR from Covid-19 is the need for an agile workforce that can flex up (and down) when needed.

Hiring tip: Find out how we can scale up your hiring with specialist recruiters in just 24 hours using our agile recruitment service, rapidsource.

Time-to-hire will be expected to go down (massively)

The FinTech winners in the battle to solve Covid-19 problems acted fast (my favourites: Starlings’ ‘Connected card’ which is essentially a linked second card to help others shop for you; and FinTech Volunteers ‘Save My Local’ which allows small businesses to sell vouchers for future purchases, giving them a cash flow lifeline).  With an increased focus on speed, expect your hiring community to demand a decline in time-to-hire. As HR and Recruitment leaders, the challenge is to balance your permanent and non-permanent workforce while also ensuring your recruitment process is stripped of all unnecessary actions with no duplications. Ensure your recruitment partner can offer you highly segmented FinTech talent pools that are pre-engaged.

Get ready to have a global workforce (if you haven't one already)

There are two key reasons the FinTech workforce will be increasingly global. The first isn't rocket science: following lockdown, more people will be working remotely and may choose to be anywhere on the planet that has enabled wifi. However, it is the second factor that is more unique to FinTech: the pandemic has highlighted the scale of the world’s unbanked and the human misery this causes. FinTech, rather than traditional banking, will remedy this and so we’ll see historically European-focused FinTech companies entering the global market. This will then lead to the unlocking of FinTech in underbanked markets including China, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Mexico and Pakistan.

Hiring tip: If you don’t have a talent acquisition team with a global footprint, make sure your Recruitment Process Outsourcer does.