Banks and financial institutions are hungry for software engineers, with HR departments reducing the hiring process from months to a few weeks, according to a new report in Business Insider.
Older, more traditional institutions such as Goldman Sachs are also competing against fintech startups, hedge funds and technology giants for the same pool of development talent. This is good news for software developers and backend engineers who are interested in using their skills in a financial-industry context, and who want to leverage job negotiations for the best possible deal.
"If you're behind and you wait 72 hours, guess what? You're now 16th in line if all those other companies move quicker," Matt Stabile, manager of the data science and engineering recruitment team at technology-recruiting firm Averity, told Insider about the challenges facing these companies’ hiring departments at the moment.
Those technologists who want to work for a bank or financial institution need to prepare for an extensive interviewing process that includes coding tests. Although the rate of hiring has increased, hiring managers and recruiters aren’t cutting any steps out of the process—instead, they’re compressing the interviews, feedback, and testing into a relatively short timeframe.
Fintech startups and tech companies are also more likely to offer hybrid or remote work, a perk that many technologists really want. While the financial industry has a reputation for paying extremely well, benefits such as flexible scheduling may prove just as crucial in terms of attracting top talent.
Which tech skills are financial institutions particularly interested in? According to an analysis conducted this summer with the help of Emsi Burning Glass (which collects and analyzes millions of job postings from across the country), it’s clear these companies want a variety of skill-sets, from SQL and data analytics to project management and software development. Java, Python, and JavaScript are among the most-requested programming languages.
In addition to that, financial institutions are also interested in technologists who’ve mastered the principles of artificial intelligence (A.I.) and machine learning. With all the pressure to make services “smarter” (and data analytics more insightful), a technologist with an A.I./ML background can surely land an interview at a major financial institution—or a hard-charging fintech startup.
