Recruiting IT Talent for Financial Services: Best Practices
Key Takeaways:
- The digitalization of financial services has led to a greater need for IT workers in these companies.
- Using technology in recruitment, building an employer brand, and creating a talent pipeline are some best practices companies can use to attract top talent.
- Interviews should assess both technical skills and cultural fit.
The financial services sector has embraced the cloud and digital services for customers, which makes having IT staff members necessary for most BSFI companies. Unfortunately, these companies must compete against tech firms for the talent they need, and they also battle a perception that the financial services industry is either too greedy or too boring.
Focusing on staffing best practices for recruiting financial services IT talent gives companies the advantages they need in order to meet their recruiting goals and attract quality candidates to their positions.
Understanding the Financial Services IT Landscape
Financial services companies need IT employees who can help them navigate the new realities of technology in this important sector. Some specific needs in this area include cloud computing, website development and maintenance, troubleshooting when problems occur, and cybersecurity to protect customers’ data and operations systems. Data analytics and project management are other skills needed in this area.
CIO.com identified the following as some of the most in-demand IT jobs in the finance sector.
- Software engineer
- DevOps engineer
- Data engineer
- Business analyst
- Data scientist
- Chief information (or technology) officer
These positions include entry-level and management/administrative positions. These are the jobs GDH’s financial services recruiting seeks to fill most often.
Creating a Comprehensive Talent Pipeline
One thing many companies do in order to quickly source talent when needed is to build a talent pipeline, or a database of potential candidates for positions companies may need to fill in the future. Companies can start a pipeline by adding promising applicants to an email list of future open positions. GDH can help here because we’ve already created a strong candidate pipeline.
Putting a signup on the employer branding section of the company’s website and on social media pages allows interested tech workers to sign up to receive updates. Once companies have a list of potential candidates, it’s important to keep lines of communication open by sending periodic updates and other useful information about the company and the industry. Offering free skills training or webinars is another way to keep those in the talent pipeline engaged and interested in future opportunities.
Leveraging Technology in Recruitment
Not only is data useful for the financial services companies offer, but it can also offer insights into the recruiting process to attract and hire better candidates to their open positions. Data analytics also serves to streamline the recruitment process, including automation that saves time in candidate screening, interview scheduling, and skills assessments.
It’s important to measure metrics like cost to hire, time to hire, acceptance rate, and retention rate in order to know how your company is doing with hiring. Improving these metrics will lead to better quality hires, but only if you measure the current metrics first.
Effective Interview Techniques
Whether interviews are conducted in person or remotely, using effective interview techniques that assess both technical and soft (behavioral) skills.
Technical interviews may include programming or other tasks that test their knowledge and aptitude along with questions that demonstrate technical know-how.
Behavioral interviews focus on soft skills like teamwork, problem-solving, and time management. Personality assessments can help to identify candidates that are a good cultural fit and have the soft skills you need.
Building a Strong Employer Brand
Employer branding helps attract top IT talent by emphasizing company culture, values, and growth opportunities of the brand. Besides having an employer website, social media pages can also be branded to show consistency among digital channels.
Employer branding can also be done outside the digital footprint. Job fairs, industry conferences, and community events are other opportunities to showcase your employer brand to potential candidates and colleagues alike.
Employer branding can mean the difference between top candidates not applying for your positions due to lack of information and top candidates being excited to be considered for your openings. Building a strong employer brand attracts and engages top talent by showcasing your company as a desirable workplace.
Emphasizing Diversity and Inclusion
Diversity and inclusion practices that focus on hiring the best person for the job no matter what group they may belong to improve hiring and create strong teams. Some companies have embraced a blind screening process where they don’t look at race, gender or other characteristics on resumes before the interview process begins.
Once hiring is completed, companies can create a supportive work environment by ensuring employees are treated equally and that women and minorities have mentoring opportunities to encourage their progress and careers.
GDH has a strong emphasis on DEI, which could be used as a framework for any company looking to improve on its diversity and inclusion practices.
Conclusion
Using these best practices will give your company the highest odds of hiring the best possible talent for all your needs. Approaching IT hiring strategically can help your company meet the evolving needs of the industry..
Another way to gain an advantage in IT hiring as a financial services company is to use the expertise of GDH to implement these and even more best practices to bring top talent into your company. With GDH, your IT workforce solutions are made easy.
