A combination of fear about Brexit and the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the financial services sector has triggered a period of unease that is manifesting itself as a recruitment crisis.
Jobs could be lost overseas or could be taken over by AI, which is making the sector appear unattractive to would-be candidates.
A recent survey of the top financial services firms highlighted the three major issues facing the industry: the retention of existing key talent, attracting new talent, and providing leadership development. How are financial services businesses overcoming these issues?
Embracing mobile technology
Steps are underway to improve retention rates for key staff through performance management processes. This leaves the problem of attracting new talent into the organisation, with most of the firms surveyed agreeing that talent sourcing was a high priority. Perhaps surprisingly, the use of formal assessment tools in the hiring process is not widespread.
Software has been designed that can predict how a candidate will perform and how they will engage with your organisation. It can also indicate whether their values fit with those of your business and indicate how likely will be to stay with you. This is a big improvement on the static tests of the last decade.
The next step is to consider where your candidates will take these tests. By 2020, half the workforce will comprise millennials, who have grown up using mobile technology in every aspect of their lives. It makes sense that they would want to access employment assessments from their mobile phones, yet the survey showed that less than one in ten firms offer the assessments for mobile devices. This is a glaring opportunity that few are seizing and that could give firms the competitive advantage.
Objective and methodical approaches
Gone are the days of recruiters relying on their ‘gut feeling’; today, a methodological approach that is objective is preferred. Assessment tools enable you to create a profile of a candidate’s personality and work style in addition to their ability to do the job.
Digital competency and agility are key skills that every organisation needs, and where better to assess this than in an online assessment test through a mobile device? In the future, gamified assessments could become the norm.
It is not all about the candidates impressing you; in addition, you will need to impress them with your high-tech, slick assessment experience. You can even carry out your own analysis of how your assessment tool is performing by comparing the predicted and actual performance of the selected candidate.
Assessments are not just for recruitment; for example, they can help in the selection of candidates for promotion to leadership roles. This is a crucial decision that you need to get right if you are going to safeguard the success and reputation of your organisation; however, less than half of the firms surveyed used assessments to manage promotion activities and the majority did not utilise computer assessments as part of their leadership development programmes.
The message here is that financial services businesses are missing out on technology that is already available and that could help them greatly in the recruitment and retention of key talent.
