Originally posted on Fintech Scotland website by Solutions Driven’s Head of Business Growth Nicki Paterson. July 15th 2021.
I read recently that in the next four years, The Global Fintech Market is expected to grow at a rate of 23.58%. With news emerging that the Scottish Government has appointed an advisor to assist tech, with £7m earmarked for the project, Scottish Fintech has a great opportunity on its hands to grow.
But this growth will need great talent to sustain it. Talent that will sustain growth and drive innovation – not an easy feat considering the current shortages of candidates across all tech markets.
This shortage isn’t due to slow in the next few years either. In a recent study, The World Economic Forum pointed out that the global talent shortage in technology, media, and telecommunications alone is due to reach 4.3 million workers by 2030.
What Does This Mean for Fintech Recruitment?
It means that it’s becoming more difficult to hire top talent and will continue to become harder. We already know that top tech talent hold most of the cards, shortages meaning they have their choice of employers and can command top salaries.
Businesses that want to continue to innovate and stay at the top of their game need the right people to do so. Which means being able to attract and engage the best candidates. But with many businesses in Scotland at the startup or ramping stage, recruitment often doesn’t come top of their list.
Getting the right people in place is a combination of being able to access alternative talent pools, and engaging them and your traditional pools.
How to Improve Candidate Engagement?
The type of people you’re looking for aren’t usually out of a job. Right now, it’s not just candidates who need to impress employers, employers need to impress candidates too. And that means working on your candidate engagement:
Working on Your Candidate Value Proposition
Salary and standard benefits are no longer enough to engage with top talent in the tech space. You need to do more. That means improving your candidate value proposition. What do you offer over and above the competition?
The easiest way to improve your candidate value proposition is to improve your employee value proposition. Use internal surveys to ask your current team what they like about working for you and what you could be doing better. The happier people are at work, the more likely they are to spread good word of mouth among friends and peers.
Changes could be more flexible hours, the ability to permanently work from home, better choice of benefits, company shares (particularly for start-ups), or better work culture. Many people are also looking for more social responsibility from their employers, both with charitable efforts or sustainability.
When you have identified what areas are important to your current team, ensure these are clear on your careers site, on your social media, and in any candidate collateral, you issue.
Put More Effort into Diversity and Inclusion
Currently, just 24% of people working in fintech in Scotland are women. Considering women make up 51.5% of the population, that figure looks low. Just 1.4% of fintech workers are black and 6.2% Asian. (Solutions Driven 2021)
All of these are untapped, diverse markets that businesses should be engaging with to diversify their talent pools and find candidates their competitors can’t. But how do you improve candidate engagement in these areas?
- Talk to the diverse people in your current teams – what could you be doing better to make them feel included? Is there anything you’re doing wrong?
- Set up diversity groups – is there scope for a women’s panel in the business? Could you set up a diversity workforce?
- Embed diversity into your KPIs – set targets for diversity and make them part of your recruitment team’s KPIs.
- Improve diversity branding – make diverse figures visible on your website, your social media, and your candidate content.
- Improve your language – masculine language using words like “ninja” and “rockstar” turn women off applying for roles. Look at making your language more inclusive.
Spend More Time Engaging Candidates
Candidates like to feel sold to. They want to feel as though joining your business will benefit them and you, and that they’d be a valuable member of the team.
If “candidate engagement” consists of sending a couple of messages or emails, that’s not going to cut it. Much like a sales process, great talent needs multiple touchpoints from your company to attract the candidate. After all, a 2019 survey by Indeed showed that 13% of job seekers have ghosted a business because there wasn’t enough engagement with the hiring manager or recruiter.
If your own team doesn’t have the time to carry out a longer process like this, you need to ensure your recruitment partner does. They must be well-versed in the complexities of tech talent and spend the time and energy showing them why your business is the right one for them.
At Solutions Driven, our candidate engagement works alongside our 6F Methodology, where we ensure someone is right for a role and a company by looking at their compatibility in Fit, Freedom, Family, Fulfilment, Fortune and Future. If someone matches with your business in these areas, they’re more likely to feel an affinity with the business, feel fulfilled, and become long-term employees.
Great candidate engagement has a multitude of benefits for your business. Not only are you more likely to find and attract the talent you need right now, you also build a pipeline of connected tech talent for the future. If people have a great experience, even if they don’t get the role, they’re more likely to re-apply or be open to an approach further down the line.
Word of mouth is vital in smaller sectors and by ensuring your employees, prospects, and potential prospects all have a positive view of your business, you’re setting yourself up for future hiring success, as well as current.
