Dewey Grant
Author
Finance recruiting is all about finding qualified and reliable professionals with the right mindset. It indeed can be challenging to recruit for the financial sector, but if you decide to partner with specialized agencies or use professional recruiting tools, the entire process becomes simpler. Both recruitment agencies and automated tools can help pick the best experts for both the mid and senior levels, including in risk, investment, corporate banking, and more. The good news is that the financial sector will forever be a steady economic growth source. However, this doesn’t mean that it’s easy to recruit for it. Many roles of quantitative and finance data analysts are in demand, so the competition for new talents is rising. This article tries to look at some of the most important facts that financial recruiters must be aware of.
6 facts about recruiting in financial sector. Source: shutterstock.com
Artificial Intelligence Becomes a Common Part of Recruiting Automation
When it comes to innovation, the financial sector is amongst the market’s leaders. The most innovative tech concept now remains to be intelligent automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI), so financial institutions don’t mind leveraging what this technology has to offer and its transformative benefits. For instance, RBC has recently got 2 Model Bank Awards for integrating AI and digital models so that employees and customers can work with them. And the rising interest in AI is not limited to only employees and customers. In fact, it’s very much discussed in the recruiting sector. Financial institutions are more and more interested in using AI for many of their other departments, where they think they could reap some benefits from it. This doesn’t help only with increasing efficiency, but also with making more qualitative hires.
Compensation Is Still Driving Candidates
It’s true that people are more and more interested in the finance sector because the talk is all about money. In other words, if you want to recruit candidates in finance, it’s important to offer good compensation. Salaries need to be competitive, not only at financial institutions, but also in the fintech and startup sectors as well. This is because salaries in financial services and banking are growing. Within a company, for example, raises are usually at 4%. Moving to other companies would average a 9%. In other words, compensation is something that people are always after when trying to enter the financial sector. Of course, there are those who sandbag, and recruiters sometimes make use of the tactics to exceed the candidates’ expectations further along the negotiation funnel. However, by offering an artificially reduced compensation to raise the bar further in the interview stage, many recruiters are losing valuable prospects right on the initial offer stage.
Fintech and Startup Companies Are Very Important
While moving towards the AI and digital worlds, candidates that have technical skills seem to be in very much demand, no matter the industry they might be activating in. This indicates that big financial institutions are in competition for new talent. However, they still seem to be losing because many candidates prefer to move to startups and in the fintech sector. Whenever they are asked why they prefer to leave jobs with traditional financial institutions in favor of fintech and startups, most of them say that they want to learn new things and no longer deal with bureaucratic work. Others are interested to engage in all sorts of projects they are indeed passionate about. Banks that are more interested in future technologies have already modified the culture at their workplace and offer all sorts of interesting perks to candidates. For instance, Scotiabank has recently released the Digital Factory, where there are 350 tech roles. The banking culture is starting to become not only more casual but also modern, especially since the customer base has a need for new candidates who can help people interact with the banks more easily.
Diversity Is Very Important
It’s very important to have inclusion and diversity at financial institutions because the workforce is always reflecting the customer base. Therefore, the workforce at the company needs to be diversified. Finance specialists must possess extensive roles not only in back and middle office roles but also in the front office ones. Credit derivative analysts have the role of helping with equity amongst research associates.
Social Media Is Not Used Enough
Social media has a large impact on recruiting, as 95% of financial recruiters use LinkedIn to source their candidates. According to a survey conducted by new recruits at the Boston Consulting Group, it seems that the financial sector doesn’t take full advantage of LinkedIn and other social media platforms. In a survey, 80% of people said they would be interested in visiting social media profiles of banks when looking for an internship or a job 9% of them in fact applied for positions after seeing there are jobs advertised on social media, whereas 2% of respondents found internships with financial institutions with the help of social media. Financial recruiters should make use of this situation and leverage the power of LinkedIn to their advantage – especially given that different types of email search tools can pull information directly from social media and give you access to the candidates’ email and phone numbers in a single click. Using these tools instead of communicating over LinkedIn or other social media sites significantly speeds up the recruiting and interviewing process.
Strong Employer Brands Make the Real Difference
Candidates today have the consumer mindset, as they are interested in gathering information on demand. This is making things tough for them when it comes to attracting and engaging with other candidates. However, those who are interested in a company get informed better most of the time, self-selecting the recruiting process. What can make you stand out from the competition is accessing information by creating a strong employer brand. The brand is what communicates the value of an employee’s proposition.
One of the case studies that show how financial institutions are capable of leveraging their branding power was led by RBC. The company discovered that candidates could attract creative, innovative, or friendly environments for all sorts of development opportunities. The only problem was that their recruitment marketing couldn’t highlight RBC’s culture’s key benefits. A branding campaign for new employers was focused on opportunities for creativity and innovation, whereas supportive leaders conducted their own campaigns on social media, new websites, and some other recruitment channels. In only 1 year, RBC among Canadian tech talent went up 25 positions.
Should You Work with Finance Recruitment Agencies?
The finance sector is indeed a leader in innovation. Recently, it has gone through all sorts of changes. Finance recruiting agencies that are hiring help the up-to-date finance recruitment model to go through all sorts of trends, but also challenges. Here’s what finance recruiters and professionals could do to improve their gains more creatively:
- Creating an employer brand that’s more appealing
- Applying only recruitment tactics that are fresh
- Influencing the employee referrals
- Matching requirements against any skillset
On the other hand, working with dedicated finance recruiters can be quite pricey, considering the industry’s dynamics. So, it often makes sense to rely either on your recruiting staff or consider using specialized tools designed for candidates’ search – especially if you do not need to hire new financial analysts on a daily.
Conclusion
Finance recruitment agencies know how important employer branding is, not only as far as recruitment goes, but also when it comes to how the entire business goes. Having an agency by your side is always a good idea if you want to be professionally represented and to ensure that your organization is not only branded but also has a highly developed culture revealed. The priority of any finance recruitment agency is to understand what the hiring needs of any candidate are. However, today’s recruiting tools can often be as effective as agencies and the best part is – these tools are generally more affordable.
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