Financial services firms must look beyond sector experience or risk a lack of innovation

Financial services firms must look to hire on core competencies and skills, rather than sector experience, for change and transformation roles if they want to avoid falling behind the competition, according to Venquis.

An analysis by the specialist change and business transformation consultancy found that firms are often reluctant to hire professionals without significant experience in the financial markets. However, doing so, according to Venquis, could help to identify more professionals able to bridge the gap between technology and business, which would potentially drive increased innovation, creativity and enable the development of more cost effective and credible solutions.

Mike Mihaylov, Financial Services Sales Leader at Venquis, comments:

“All financial services firms want the ideal tech employee – someone who ‘gets’ the business and has years of sector experience as well as possessing high level technological skills. However, there are very few of these people in the market and attracting them could cost firms a small fortune. We’d encourage employers to open up their hiring strategies and perhaps target talent without that financial experience, as they may find they identify potentially game-changing employees that way. By really drilling down into the core competencies of the role, it’s highly likely that employers will see they could take on talent without financial services experience that could do the job just as, if not more, effectively than someone with that track record.

“These change and transformation roles are pivotal to guiding firms through major periods of change, and not hiring properly could prove disastrous. We’re not suggesting that firms take on any inexperienced professional with technology skills, but there are people out there who aren’t being identified who could make a major difference. It’s a hard task to track down talent that can understand the technology requirements and limitations of a firm and then create cost effective and business aligned solutions but it’s one that firms really can’t afford to cut corners on. The options are to either invest more heavily in the number of people you’re hiring for change projects, or to smarten hiring strategies and look for talent that’s more out of the box. Firms need someone with the skills to work with both the business and IT, these people do exist, firms just need to look in different quarters.”