The FinTech industry has been experiencing extremely rapid growth since the beginning of 2020. However, while the number of services, capabilities, and funding opportunities for FinTechs has been accelerating, this rapid growth still can’t find an equally fast response within the job market. Especially for senior positions, there is a significant shortage of experts, specifically in the FinTech sector. Therefore, recruiters and talent acquisition specialists are scrambling to find skilled employees to fulfill critical roles. The good news is that this scarcity makes the hiring process more inclusive in terms of the background of potential candidates. Companies are becoming more open to hiring talents from different backgrounds for FinTech roles. This means that as long as you know how to implement your technical and soft skills into finance and technology-related businesses, it doesn’t matter if your previous experience has been in gaming, e-commerce, or even retail. If you’re eager to become a part of this flourishing industry but worry about your lack of experience, keep reading to find out how you can implement your existing skills in FinTech positions.
Soft skills in the tech industry are more important than they seem
Many people still have this misconception that if you’re working in a technology-related sector, your hard skills are seen as more valuable than your soft skills. However, especially senior positions are generally coming with requirements to lead a team or manage relationships among departments or with third parties. Therefore, thinking that mentioning your social skills is irrelevant during an interview for a FinTech job can be one of the biggest mistakes regardless of the title of the position.
According to Softest’s report, in-demand soft skills for the FinTech industry include problem-solving skills, communication skills, analytical skills, and industrial adaptability. Even though your main focus will be on financial services, you still need to be able to understand your clients’ needs and change your approach according to their industry while considering how they can use your services most efficiently. If you’re coming from a social science or business-related background, you can take advantage of your education in this area compared to other candidates who have a computer science degree or come from more technical fields like physics or engineering. It’s always important to remember that not everyone in a technology company is responsible for coding and working with the back-end side of the services. There are many positions in the leading companies related to strategy building and account management which don’t require any hands-on experience with software like Java or Python.
Most in-demand hard skills for FinTech jobs
Speaking of software, even if you don’t have sufficient experience to work on the product building or development side, you need to have the basic knowledge to sustain efficient communication within and among departments. In the FinTech job market, programming skills in Java, JavaScript, C++, C#, Python, and SQL are highly demanded. Therefore, knowing how these programming languages work can get you one step ahead of other candidates. Besides, since you will most probably be working with big data, having a good command of data science toolkits like R, Python, Weka, NumPy, and MatLab can also be very beneficial. Luckily, now it is easier than ever to expand your knowledge of these software with the help of free or paid websites like Codeacamey, Udemy, Pluralsight, or Skillshare.
Do you still have doubts about whether you’re eligible or able to transform your skill sets from another industry to FinTech? Take a look at our job opportunities in leading FinTech companies in Europe or submit your CV now and let our expert recruiters decide on your behalf. As soon as we find a suitable position for your skills and experience, we’ll reach out to you to make you a part of this fast-growing industry!