Trending

The Solution To Fintech Recruitment?

Interviewed Company Somet Recruitment
URL: www.sometrecruitment.com
Interview with Owen Jobbing and Paul Adkins
Monday 3rd July 2017
Subjects: Disruption, Fintech, Recruitment, Retention, HR, Scaling

“We are disruptive in style as a business.”

So let’s explore what this means in terms of fintech recruitment.

FintNews: With both Owen and Paul having experience (30 years from my understanding) in what they term ‘structured recruitment companies’ they’ve now set their intention towards ‘remodelling’ the business of fintech recruitment. Business Remodelling. A good phrase for the process. And here we see what we term a Traditional Model and the work in progress that is the Innovation Model. Comparisons of Traditional versus Innovation are a regular theme these days.

Traditionally recruitment consultancies have a sales floor – from which they conduct most actives via phone, and presumably some email, cold calling, meeting clients and potential clients, meeting candidates, and essentially being the middleman in the process. Brokers and middlemen in all sectors are at risk from disintermediation, that being the removal of the need for them. So it’s hardly a surprise that recruitment is at the very least under pressure to change.

The innovative model Somet is adopting is not a disintermediating one, it’s essentially a facilitating one, a value adding one, an approach using a different set of principles as opposed to a different mechanism, although there’s crossover in principles and method…

A key phrase used by Owen was ‘Mirroring the Industry.’ Now this is particularly telling. It suggests a responsive, indeed reflective approach. As a founding principle, mirroring the industry is in itself a defining methodology. Here we see the replacement of fixed procedures and methods with a conceptually dynamic approach.

Mirroring the industry means changing as the industry changes, moving as it moves, reflecting it, being its reflection. This highly fluid methodology is far harder to define than a process driven one, it is, by nature, not fixed. Instead it relies on actual understanding on both the sector at large and the client in particular, and given that recruitment is a marketplace, this is again mirrored for the candidates as well as the fintech companies recruiting them.

It comes down to creative ways to interact through and with the marketplace. It’s about being creative, innovative, individualised, and at the same time, systematically so. A hybrid of art and science, if that helps.

In practice what this entails for Somet is deep involvement in the sector, the sector being fintech. It requires digital social interaction with small groups of technologists to engage with them on a more personal level. It requires interaction with CEO’s and HR / Operations Directors to fully understand the situation they are experiencing, and where it is they are trying to go.

The outcome of this successfully delivered is a service with more credibility, less of a direct sale approach, (which traditionally dogs the reputation of recruiters), and a service that vectors recruitment and human resources and the scaling and growth plans of the client companies. As described to me, one of the functions of the company, Somet Recruitment, is “to provide content for senior leadership.” Content, perhaps let’s re-name that as business and market intelligence, is one of the key components to delivery of this kind of semi bespoke service.

“When we surveyed a number of leaders within the fintech space, the number one and two concerns were staff retention and acquisition.” Somet Recruitment

One of the the responses to this from Somet is to create events / seminars / workshops bringing together the board and management of fintech companies to discuss retention and acquisition of staff. So here we see the company not just jumping in with ‘we have the solution’, instead they are actively engaging with the client companies in the problem, which will have many facets, and essentially facilitating the process of putting together and delivering a workforce acquisition and retention strategy. This integrated approach makes vast sense.

If a company is recruiting on one hand and losing staff on the other, there is clearly room for a good look at why this is happening, how this is happening, and how it can be addressed. If the company has a culture that causes high staff turnover, that is an issue that needs professional specific attention, and it’s unlikely there is any single individual within the company able to oversea the potentially critical process. If a company is finding it hard to recruit, they are well served by exploring the cause of that problem, and building the fix in. So we see the application of a two sided approach to the problem. A recruitment consultancy and a retention consultancy.

“As well as doing the recruitment for them we do it with them.”

Further reading: 

The Problem With Recruitment

Author

Related posts

DBS Bank Successfully Tests Trading Digital Assets on a Public Blockchain

Tom Bleach

Clair Expand Accessibility Through Metabank and Galileo Partnerships

Francis Bignell

How Apply Financial Help Fintechs Not Get Fined For Having Fat Fingers

Manisha Patel