5 Ways To Get Through To Your Financial Services Recruitment

Why Most Banking and Finance Hiring Initiatives Fail

Imagine a hiring manager posts a position. After some time applications slowly come in. Then more time passes. There is not enough time to wait for the perfect candidate. That seat was meant to be filled, and now deadlines can’t be met and an already overworked team is forced to take on more work. That situation is not uncommon for managers trying to fill critical roles within banking or finance. Financial services recruiting is nothing like recruiting for other jobs. Financial services recruiting has unique difficulties with precision, discretion and grasping the intricacies of the regulatory environment beyond the more general staffing techniques.

This is an industry wide issue, not a unique situation. Job vacancies, an increasing burden of compliance and regulations, and an intense recruitment competition for key personnel combine to make what was once a straight-forward HR function a challenge of recruitment strategy. The good news is that this does not have to continue.

The Costs of Getting It Wrong

Vacancies cost money. Misaligned hires cost a lot. Productivity slips, morale suffers and there are training costs. Financial services recruiting is about trust and accuracy and time. When financial services fail to appropriately fill vacancies the trust of clients and the regulatory situation is at risk.

The format will immediately pick up on the fact that an upgrade to your recruiting strategy is long overdue, but today it is more important than ever to out recruit your competitors, because they are already hiring the employees you need. Below are five solid, practical upgrades to recruitment strategies that will help you reach the employees who you want.

1. Specialize Your Sourcing Channels

Casting a wide net with generic job boards nets generic results and worse cost both time and money. Professionals in private banking do not mingle on the same job boards as retail or hospitality job candidates. The channels you sourced need to be tailored for your financial services recruitment. These job boards should include niche professional networks, specialized industry job portals, and closed talent communities that experienced professionals frequent.

Rather than cast a wide net, narrow your aperture. Focus your search on talent communities that potential candidates who hold professional designations such as the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and Financial Risk Manager (FRM) designations as well as licensed professionals reside. Specificity pays off. You will spend less time sorting through bad applications and more time engaging with quality candidates.

2. Craft Job Postings That Use Finance Jargon

While jargon-free job postings may feel accessible, in this case they will fail. Actuaries and accountants with designations such as fellowships and licenses have a level of specialization that recruiting descriptions need to address. A poorly constructed job description will describe an uninformed employer that candidates will pass over.

Use specific terms. Include the regulatory frameworks relevant to the position(s) including, but not limited to, Basel III, MiFID II, and Dodd-Frank, as necessary. Describe specific tools, portfolios, or compliance tasks that the candidate will manage. This level of detail may not seem like a big deal, but it shows that you are serious about the position.

3. Cultural and Regulatory Fit

The ability to learn the culture and the rules in which you operate is critical for a successful career in this sector. In an environment with a lot of oversight, a candidate’s ability to understand the rules and internalize the institution’s risk tolerance is as important as their technical capacity.

Don’t just concentrate on the resume; get the candidate to explain how they would manage ambiguous situations. Get them to tell you how they would deal with situations involving a co-worker’s breach of compliance or a co-worker not disclosing a conflict of interest. Hiring someone who shows the ability to fit into a compliance culture can create transformative change in an organization. Recruiters get it wrong when they don’t incorporate this perspective, and it usually results in the organization going through the same hiring process only a few months later.

4. Use Data-Driven Talent Analytics

The finance world is overflowing with data and instead of relying on instinct alone, recruiting with data can provide insight that will provide an edge against the competition. Predictive analytics can help recruitment efforts by identifying longevity, performance, and flight risk, the likelihood that a candidate will leave the organization. More than just replacing guessing, these analytics help recruiters in finance streamline and optimize their recruiting efforts.

Analyze metrics for time-to-fill, offer-to-acceptance ratio, and performance review post-hiring. Identify recruitment challenges and adjust sourcing accordingly. Recruitment practices should vary based on the identified challenges and recruiting practices should be optimized to account for recruitment challenges. Analytics will ensure that every effort is optimized. Financial services recruitment will take a differentiated approach to optimize recruiting efforts.

5. Focus on Relationships, Not Just Recruitment Pipelines

High-volume hiring may provide a short term solution, but recruiting with the goal of simply filling seats will create a reputation as an undesirable employer and will not attract the best candidates. The professional world in finance is very interconnected and candidate experience will have an effect on your external reputation as an employer, shaping your ability to attract employees in the long-term.

Treat every candidate with respect and build relationships with every candidate, even if it means they won’t be hired. Create an environment of goodwill, and this will ensure you have candidates willing to apply and refer others to fill open positions. Financial services recruitment is built on relationships and is the only way to build a long term pipeline of great candidates.

Five Tips to Get Strategy Into Action

Knowing these five approaches is one thing. Executing them is another. Especially when internal HR teams contend with time and resource constraints as they manage the many competing demands of the business.

One of the common pitfalls that high performing internal teams experience is that they lack the bandwidth and resources for certain specialized projects.

If your current and ongoing hiring activities are falling short of expectations, it may be time to engage with external recruitment partners who live and breathe recruitment activities.

Financial services organizations bear sensitive compliance obligations when hiring, and a specialized recruitment partner will have the knowledge and experience with regulatory compliance obligations to help you hire fast, quality candidates within the assigned resource and time constraints.

Do not let the recruitment of key personnel fall by the wayside again, as it stretches your organization beyond acceptable limits and has an adverse effect on employee morale and retention.

If you want to hire quality candidates from the available talent pool, reach out today to discuss how an effective financial services recruitment strategy can change your recruitment dynamics.

A recruitment specialist with the right experience will understand the needs of your organization. Call now at +91 729 102 4327 to place a call. The solutions you need are a phone call away.