As consumer appetite increases for digital finance. So, people can manage their own money online at their convenience and in real-time. The fintech industry is facing a massive skills shortage. Whilst fintech companies globally are securing billions in funding, recruiting the right talent fast to scale their companies and outpace their competitors is quite another matter.

Despite being a young sector, fintech is redefining every major industry. The UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain are establishing themselves as leading Middle East fintech hubs. Whether it is digital lending and banking and payments, blockchain, cryptocurrency, NFTS or asset management, most in-demand skills are:

• Data remains the king and every sector requires scientists who can synthesize and mine data
• Business, financial, and data analysts with predictive and prescriptive analytics;
• Artificial intelligence
• Blockchain experts with the explosion of cryptocurrency
• Mobile technology-related skills
• Cognitive and soft skills and capabilities

 Key Steps to Hire The Right Candidates Faster

Automate and streamline the recruitment process: For faster hiring especially in sourcing and screening candidates. This could include live chat or bots on your company website to filter relevant candidates.

Role clarity: Define the technologies that you are looking for is crucial, especially in an algorithm-driven recruitment world

Remote working: It is certainly opening up the talent pool and many roles can be filled by contractors who are anywhere in the world

Flexible working practices: Millenials are redefining traditional productivity measures such as how many hours are worked in the office. They are measuring the output of the work performed

Ditch the CV: Introduce robust skill-based assessments and gamification to assess technical, thinking, and problem-solving skills

Incorporate behavioral interviews into the recruitment process: Behavioral interviews provide a deep insight into how candidates respond to common real-world scenarios

Real-life environment: It is always a good idea to ask a prospective employee to work on a small task with the existing team to see how well they collaborate and understand the technology that you have

Modern technology stack: Matters to candidates because of the breakneck speed, at which technology is evolving. People are looking to work in modern stack environments to deliver the best results and advance their skills and experiences.

Salaries and benefits: They are very competitive so it is important to get your budgets allocated correctly. With an acute talent shortage and low retention, companies are being forced to pay higher salaries to attract and retain the right skills

Build a talent pipeline: To save time, reduce the average time to fill vacancies and hire the best candidate before your competitor does

Improve gender and diversity balance: Whilst some companies are making headway as remote working has become more prevalent, consider women and different nationalities to widen the experiences and skills available.

Learning and career development: It should be a priority so your employees cannot be poached. Millennials are the largest demographic pool of candidates that have FinTech skills and this generation moves regularly and seamlessly between jobs because they are on the lookout to learn new skills in different environments.

FinTech is a high-growth industry and it is transforming the global ecosystem. By adopting even one of these approaches you will minimize the number of wrong hires. Whilst tech education has yet to evolve, offering real-time learning is the key to attracting and retaining elite talent. Ultimately the success of any organization in this field to grow and stay ahead of competitors comes down to being able to attract and retain the best tech talent.

The post Overcoming the Fintech Recruitment Challenge appeared first on The Integrator.

COVER STORY

The cover story closely examines the scopes and challenges of hybrid work, the new model incorporated into work environments, worldwide.

Hybrid work has become a new norm worldwide. The COVID-19 pandemic hit has structurally changed work conditions in most enterprises invariable on their size and strength. Working remotely wasn’t new to the tech industries. However, keeping the lowest and adequate strength at the office and letting the rest of the workforce contribute from the feasible locations could be the newest idea in the business.

The lessons learned during the pandemic are important for companies for any devastating situations of this kind. Therefore, steps are taken to configure and facilitate work and keep that unaffected in similar situations.

Workplace Shifting and Hybrid Paradox

Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft rightly said, “The ongoing workplace shifting, hybrid paradox, and the great shuffle can be compared to nothing that happened in the last hundred years.”

The lockdowns imposed all over the world made workers shift from offices to homes overnight. The majority of businesses and enterprises were not prepared to handle the paradox that had been created. The workforces of these companies were uncertain about how, when, and why they work. The fascinating thing is these concerns have been addressed with technology and solutions within the past 18 months. Not only did they learn to conduct work or enforce business continuity but also reskilled the workforce and found ways to fix issues remotely.

Secure Work Environment

The concept of hybrid work hasn’t been brewed after the pandemic hit although the pace of work towards the model has been accelerated due to it. Tech companies in the US and elsewhere in the world suggested the model of work, in which employees can collaborate and contribute to respective projects irrespective of their work location.

Mr. Amanulla Khan, Managing Director of Linksys – META says, “the work culture started to change well before the pandemic. Solutions that accommodate office and remote work have been in development for a while now. However, business continuity plans of the companies after COVID-19 hit accelerated the need for remote working solutions, increased discussions on cyber security, and significantly blurred the line between consumer and enterprise, across the globe.”

When employees work from remote locations and access office networks from numerous devices, information security becomes a major concern. While traditionally rigid verticals, incorporating financial, healthcare, and educational enterprises, also have subscribed to remote/hybrid work options, the cybersecurity and information security solution providers also find new landscapes of business.

Coordination and Collaboration

Coordination of the workforce is highly important when it comes to working from remote locations. Similarly, customers also feel connected with service providers or product suppliers. Integration of efficient hardware and software is required to facilitate seamless communication between all stakeholders.

Microsoft, Cisco, Google, Zoom, and TeamViewer have been showing strength and dominance on the software side. Whereas, Jabra, Logitech, Epson, Poly, and numerous others including niche players influence the market with their hardware solutions.

Apart from the regular call, meet, and message features, the software applications host digital whiteboard, real-time collaboration, co-create, and content share within them. Similarly, hardware manufacturers trying to create intelligent videoconferencing enabling cameras with AI and machine language.

“Unlike static webcams, Jabra PanaCast cameras stitch visual inputs from at least three cameras, covering 180 degrees, and bring them to a single frame intelligently. They can handle pinpoint and shift focus to a speaker, capture whiteboards, screen-in-screen feature, count the number of members in a conference room, and calculate the time they spend on a meeting. All these actions seamlessly happen on a single screen,” said Abraham Mammen, Director – VC, Eastern Europe, Russia, CIS, Middle East & Africa, Jabra quoting the devices released by the company.

Desktop and Cloud Infrastructure

Hybrid work collaboration can be implemented successfully only if the supporting environment shows competency. Edge service platforms, virtual desktop infrastructure, cloud-native solutions, and data management tools play a vital role in this segment.

Large enterprises signaled that until 2025, they want to concentrate more on digital infrastructure than physical at offices. It appears the phenomenon persuades small and medium enterprises also to choose similar actions within their organizational range. Online huddle rooms, displays, and video walls are extremely becoming popular among companies that embrace the new-age technologies.

Solutions providers have diverse approaches on this matter. In the SME sector, Zoho helps companies to digitalize entirely with their 50+ pre-developed solutions after reviewing their business constraints. At the same time, VMWare, Infor, and some other companies offer end-to-end ERP solutions with single or multi-cloud support. SAP, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google are competing in the top-line market. Resellers and product or (and) solution distributors offer both suggested and tailored solutions to businesses.

Conclusion

The unprecedented pandemic has impacted every sector. Initially, every business faced operating troubles. Some industries were competent to reorganize and ensure business continuity in the best possible way. However, customer satisfaction, reassuring of data security, and keeping up with profitability had dealt with their own challenges. The latest technologies and solutions have combinedly covered most challenges and inculcated top practices for the evolution of the new age in the tech and professional world.

The post Hybrid Work: The Beginning of a New Age and Sophisticated Practices appeared first on The Integrator.