Why the Banking Sector Should Be Worried About the Skills Shortage (and How We Can Help)
Writing in the Telegraph earlier this month, Dame and Lord McFell of the Banking Standards Board acknowledged that “trust in the banking system has been damaged” but encouraged the public to “not lose sight of the fact that that a healthy, vibrant and open economy like the UK needs well-run banks and building societies that serve the needs of all”, adding that “millions… rely on the banking system every day and the jobs of over 500,000 people across the UK depend on it”.
This month those 500,000 or so people are very much in demand – with the most recent KPMG/REC report on jobs showing vacancies rising to a five-month high as candidate availability fell at its fastest rate since the start of the year. Those numbers are for all industries but the report noted that the demand for Finance staff was particularly high. Commenting on the report, REC’s chief executive Kevin Green said “employers need to realise that people are deciding to change jobs because they can earn more than in their current job. Increases in starting salary offers are being driven by skills and talent shortages across the economy, and businesses are going to have to think hard about retaining scarce resource” and “almost a third of recruiters say that starting salaries have increased in comparison to last month, and we’ve seen another increase in the number of people that have found a new job via a recruiter.”
As a recruiter specialising in executive roles within financial services, all of this echoes my own first hand experienced. The skills shortage has been made particularly obvious to me by more and more clients inviting us to provide retained solutions as a standalone agency than ever before.
Kind Consultancy as an organisation has the skills, experience and capability to uncover truly exceptional candidates. We continually identify who the best in the market is and build relationships with such candidates to understand their skills and long term objectives so that we can match them to exactly the right opportunity when it presents itself.
Should an organisation have a requirement where we don’t already know the perfect person, we have the ability to map out the market in-depth. We work equally closely with our clients to make sure we understand their culture, vision and the longer-term objectives and making sure our candidates mirror this. Many non-specialist and internal recruitment teams don’t have the time, experience or resources to do any of this, and as highly skilled candidates become more sought after in the market, simply matching a skillset to a job profile will not be enough.
Contact Kind Consultancy (https://kindconsultancy.com/ or 0121 643 2100) if you have any requirements you want to discuss.
[Sources: 1, 2, 3. Photo source.]