I was sitting having coffee with a well-known FinTech entrepreneur the other day who was looking at recruitment for her startup. She was talking pipeline. She wanted to hire a junior developer that would have room to grow into the role. What she didn’t want was to end up with a shortlist, where the team had to choose between four or five of the same type of person. She wanted to make sure that, from the start, her team was looking at the widest set of parameters, in the most diverse set of talent pools. So that when they arrived at the short list – who ever may end up there – they could be sure they were getting the brightest and most promising talent out there. (Yes, that is a lofty goal – but not impossible).
A phrase that comes up often in innovation circles and startup building is culture fit. Companies are looking for new recruits to meet the required skill set to fulfil certain job roles. But they also need these new employees to work well with other members of the team. Friction, managed badly, can lead to delayed projects, substandard work and, ultimately, to team breakdowns. However, hiring for so-called ‘culture fit’ can often lead to cultural homogony – with in itself is bad for business.
Fishing in the same pool of talent can also lead to a noticeable ‘skills gap’ in recruiting – where many different companies – with an array of job vacancies – are competing for an ever smaller group of potential employees. This is one of the reasons big firms such as Apple, IBM and Google have removed the requirement of a university degree to apply for positions.
At FinTECHTalents this October we will be examining many of these trends associated with culture in our ‘Culture Shock’ stream on Day 1. Building up to the event, we will be quizzing our community in a special bumper edition of our Snapshot Survey Series – Is there is skills gap in UK FinTech? Take the survey now to have your say.
During Culture Shock we will start out with a talk looking at how the FinTech ecosystem can go about finding and filling those famed tech ‘skills gaps’. Currently, we have Sean Farrington of Pluralsight confirmed for that panel. Stay tuned for more FinTech leaders to be added soon.
Next we will have Ilka Dunne of Rand Merchant Bank, Derek Smith of Lloyds Banking Group and Claudia Coppenolle of Deutsche Bank ready to sit down and discuss how a company can learn to focus less on ‘culture fit’ and more on how to create a work environment that is empowering, productive and works for a wide variety of talent.
Culture Shock ends with a look at how banks, FinTech startups and financial firms can compete for talent against Big Tech and startups from other so-called ‘cooler’ industries. Debate – The war for talent should be a lively discussion.
Join us and have your say on culture, transformation and nature of talent in the Culture Shock stream at FinTECHTalents – two days of innovation, collaboration, live stories, music & craft beer at HereEast, London this 30th & 31st of October.
