Simon Long, our Talent Acquistion Lead here at Fimatix gives his thought on the impact of AI in recruitment.

The candidate shortlist process – a challenge for both sides of the fence – due to the globalisation of talent and sheer volume of potential applicants the reliance on key word searching using skills, location, availability and pay to create a perceived quality shortlist has increased over the years. Many tools have been built to help, in particular with volume recruitment. All candidates have experienced being overlooked by these systems and the less experienced recruiters in an agency or talent function need time, training and experience to know key word searches are just a tiny fraction of the process before they understand the nuances of an application. and what good looks like

For an applicant, cutting through the noise is tough and as applications have become more automated so has the quality of engagement with the market place. Bog standard, impersonal and unhelpful auto rejections that make no sense nor add value. On the flip side, one touch applications meaning agencies and managers receive 100s of profiles, 95% of which are irrelevant for a myriad of reasons, including simple Right to Work.

As AI itself continues to replace jobs and tasks but at the same time create new positions adding value to society, it will be intriguing to see how AI in recruitment is going to be used, especially in terms of DE&I to fill these roles. How will employers attract, assess and attain IT talent pools where the skills needed are no longer the hard, binary type that you either have or don’t have, but degrees of capability in emotion, connection, trust, and empathy.

For years the skills in IT have been quite easily identified and logical, based on exams, certifications, degrees and software specific. Using key words searches those with the “best” qualifications and experience on paper rise to the top of the shortlist for interview. As employers start to place more emphasis on emotional capacity (such as empathy, empowerment, collaboration, inclusive attitudes…) then this way of shortlisting talent will have to change. The difficulty is that all humans have these intrinsic traits at varying levels so on those alone how will we differentiate one application from another?

Tools such as ChatGPT now give millions of people access to enhanced written text so it is obvious that employer and employee alike will produce job descriptions and CVs with these tools.  Whilst this is a good thing, how will applicants distinguish themselves from others if an AI has written a job description for the employer and conversely an AI is used to create an application for that role? If both sides of the process are AI produced with a mirrored focus on generic skills, that we all have to some degree, then the task of a talent team or recruiter to recognise quality and potential is going to be paramount.  

There is an overarching goal in recruitment – bringing people together to work for a company to achieve its purpose whatever that may be.  At the end of the day, people will be the ones to hire other people, procurement functions will buy services from people, candidates will always refer other candidates and cohesive teams no matter the size add more value than individuals alone.  With diversity of people comes diversity of thought and representation. 

Using AI to improve all of that will need a good understanding of… yes… people. To that end AI should only enhance, never replace the human aspect of recruitment.  The role of Talent Management and Recruitment professionals is going to become nuanced. #AI #AIinrecruitment

Over the past few years, the financial services sector has undergone a complex regulatory evolution. Even past the usual flow of regulation change and shifting reporting standards, there are two key trends driving this change, and which put firms at risk of falling behind if not grappled with effectively.

The first trend is the ever-growing investor, customer and regulatory demand for financial services and products which are ESG-compliance. Throughout the entire lifecycle of a financial product or service, its environmental impact now requires assessing and where possible reducing. Any social benefits, meanwhile, need identifying and enhancing.

Additionally, the FCA’s Consumer Duty obligations will require higher and clearer standards of consumer protection across financial services, placing the consumer at the centre of financial services offerings. This builds on and leverages previous regulation, e.g. Assessment of Value, further obligating firms to focus on being clear and fair to investors.

The transparency requirements associated with both the ESG and consumer protection regulatory changes are both necessary steps in ‘de-mystifying’ the financial services industry to the increasing numbers of new, and existing consumers – and are also key stepping stones to ensuring consumers have adequate information on which to base their financial decisions. In many cases though, they can require systemic change to do right, and for larger firms in particular, involve the gathering and processing of vast quantities of data.

The role of digital transformation companies, such as Fimatix, must increasingly be to support companies – both in the financial services industry and beyond – to navigate the increasingly complex regulatory demands which they face. The focus of our work must be to provide these firms with the tools and services that will allow them to respond flexibly and robustly across their operations to the introduction of new regulations and standards for responsible and transparent business.

As firms increasingly look to expand internationally to diverse their customer base on a global scale, the challenges posed by multi-jurisdictional regulation underline just how vitally important digital transformation has become to firms’ commercial viability, growth and long-term success.

For those of us who work in fintech, the security of systems and data is our highest priority. Gone are the days where uptime and systems’ availability were the critical measures. In today’s highly interconnected world, where significant new threats emerge daily and the use of machine learning is accelerating rapidly, the price of online freedom is constant vigilance.

At Fimatix, we are constantly striving to improve our information security posture, while maintaining accessibility to data across the customer lifecycle, a growing concern for key-decision makers in the fintech space.

We already hold several industry security certifications which, important as they are, we regard as nothing more than a recognition of the policies, controls and behaviours we apply across the whole business.

We expect our key partners and suppliers to conform to the most rigorous information security standards too, and when these organisations go further to proactively encourage best practice, we readily embrace their recommendations and control frameworks as a product-led business.

By way of example, our Prodigy Product Lifecycle Management and Governance tool was developed and is hosted on the Salesforce.com platform.

Salesforce has very exacting information security and development standards and requires that we regularly submit our code for their independent assessment.

This is no box ticking exercise. It is a thorough forensic review to ensure we have adopted coding best practices and that we include sufficient test code coverage, as well as checks for potential security vulnerabilities or performance problems.

The Salesforce review is both interactive and iterative, and involves us having to respond to challenges and questions raised on technical design decisions and, occasionally, having to amend our code to meet the very latest security requirements.

On completion of this process, getting the email from Salesforce that announces that Prodigy has passed the latest Security review is always very welcome.

Another example of a partner organisation working to improve the industry’s security posture is the excellent work that the SWIFT banking system has done in developing and evolving their Customer Security Programme (CSP).

The CSP is designed to help SWIFT members, such as Idea Group – recently acquired to become a Fimatix company – who ensure that their defences against cyberattacks are up to date and effective, and in so doing, to protect the integrity of the wider financial network.

Developed within the CSP, the Customer Security Controls Framework (CSCF) consists of a comprehensive set of mandatory and advisory security controls. These controls evolve over time to combat emerging threats and to advocate implementation of new cybersecurity developments.

SWIFT requires that all member firms adhere to the CSCF and that they annually attest their level of compliance with these important controls. From 2021 onwards, to further increase the rigour of the CSCF, SWIFT insisted that the security attestation is subject to independent assessment.

Last year, Idea Group commissioned Guidehouse to provide this independent review of controls and were able to submit the annual attestation following Guidehouse’s sign off that these were implemented and effective.

As Fimatix looks to sustain its strong growth trajectory in the fintech sector over the last year, we will continue to review and refine our information security posture, working closely with our partners and suppliers, to keep our cyberattack defences as robust as possible.

Social Value is now firmly on the agenda. The Government launched a new Policy, categorising Social Value into 5 themes which, from early 2021, are built into all Government procurement. CIPS talks about public sector procurement “looking beyond the price of each contract at what the collective benefit to a community is”.

The 5 themes are:

1. Covid Recovery
2. Tackling Economic Inequality
3. Fighting Climate Change
4. Equal Opportunity
5. Wellbeing

These themes are important, but I want to talk more broadly about approach, thinking, attitude and behaviour, because this is about culture. 

We need to ask, where does each theme sit in the hierarchy of strategic and operational thinking? When approaching a Government bid, do you consider it a box-ticking compliance exercise, or think more about the opportunities the bid gives to achieve tangible policy outcomes?

The reality is that by now it’s probably a bit of both. But the tide is changing quickly.

A year ago, it may have been enough to “wrap what you are already doing in a Social Value context”, as someone said to me. Now, however, the expectation of Government buyers is increasingly to see proactive and intentful behaviour demonstrated by examples of how businesses are committed to Social Value.

So, the challenge is clear. A business needs to have Social Value at its core; enshrined in its values and encouraged in its thinking and behaviour. Social Value must be cultural.

The rise of the “B Corp” companies is testament to this sea change in company culture which is gathering pace across the globe, as are the swathes of potential employees who seek these businesses out when deciding where to work. Our CEO wrote about the rise of Digital Artisans in his recent blog on the future of work.

There is something every size of company can do to build Social Value into their DNA. At Fimatix, as part of a whole host of initiatives, we encourage our people to volunteer and give special leave to support this. We mentor, we’ve created apprentice roles and we invest our skills, time and talent supporting programmes such as The Big Exchange. 

One of our proudest achievements so far was becoming Carbon Negative at the turn of this year. Signing up to the Carbon Net Zero initiative was easy, but being more intentful, was something our people felt passionately about. So whilst we’ve bought carbon credits to make an immediate positive difference, we also agreed a set of activities and targets which will continue to change our behaviour, reducing the need for off-setting in the first place.

We’re justifiably proud of all of this, but there is more to do as we continue our journey from reactive, to responsive, to proactive, intentful behavioural maturity. And we don’t stop there, encouraging our people to take this thinking into their home lives too, as being involved in driving Social Value is a virtuous circle; it’s good for wellbeing and helps build not just healthy, happy businesses, but healthy, happy communities too. 

So, as Social Value matures it’s beginning to differentiate between “tick box” compliance and cultural embedding. And this culture is about how we behave, starting as individuals, because we all have the power to ‘be the change we want to see in the world.’

In the UK and in organisations around the world, we are seeing a widespread return to the office after months spent working remotely during the pandemic. For many of us, this has been a welcome relief. Back to normality, to being busy, and working more closely alongside others as we seek to drive innovation and productivity.

For some, however, the return to in-person work has meant a re-evaluation of unfulfilling careers. As the Telegraph reported, according to the Office for National Statistics, job moves hit a record high of 988,000 in the final three months of 2021, driven by worker resignations – a dynamic that many are now referring to as ‘the great resignation’. And, as highlighted by Anna Thomas, Director of the Institute for the Future of Work, good work is core to health, community cohesion, and is the foundation of the modern moral economy.

Within this context employees are increasingly asking: ‘What’s the point of what I do?’ Does it add value to society, or bring personal fulfilment? Does the drudgery of a long, grey commute to engage in repetitive, unstimulating work make any sense in a fast-paced, dynamic world?

In short, more and more people are asking if their work is meaningful?

The question of what gives work meaning has long been of intrigue to business leaders, and it is now more relevant than ever. Can we define it as simply as quality of work over quantity, or is there a deeper source of meaning to be identified and pinned down?

A compelling assessment comes via this Entrepreneur magazine article. It references 5 key characteristics: skill variety, task significance, task identity, autonomy, and feedback. All features that allow us to express our humanity, and all the antithesis of much of our work in an industrialised society.

It’s why I believe a shift in how we work is crucial – away from a system that treats employees, in some ways, as individual steps in a process and back towards the high-skilled, full-process work that defined the artisans of the past.

At Fimatix we are already trying to implement this. Our teams often see projects through from the discovery to implementation – melding creativity with output and productivity, and specialism with significance and size. We want to empower our high-skilled digital team members, as well as our clients, to feel a sense of ownership and meaning over their work, as they create solutions, digital transformation, and new products. The digital artisans of the future. In endeavouring to become more agile, through our approach to the Adaptive Organisation as outlined by my colleague Jeremy Renwick in this paper, we have placed people-centric work as the keystone of increased productivity.

Just as the studios of the great renaissance artists would employ a team of specialists to create their masterpieces, so we aim to fulfil the conceived outcome by directing, coaching, driving quality and correcting where necessary, albeit with the difference in that we only take credit as a team, and not through the figurehead of individuals (as Michelangelo or Raphael did for example).

And as CEO of a company looking to adopt this philosophy, it is my role to design and re-design the organisation, by ensuring that people realise their potential, with delegation keeping the team in line with user needs, the right strategic conversations occurring across the topics of empowerment, accountability, innovation and ethos, and that our identity and values bring about increasing diversity.

We’ve narrowed this to 6 core values:

• Empowerment – to trust each other to deliver.
• Curiosity – to ask questions.
• Focus – to prioritise the needs of our communities.
• Respect – to speak openly and transparently.
• Courage – to take on new challenges.
• Commitment – to do what we say we’ll do.

We believe by living these values, and by approaching our work as agile, modern digital artisans, we can make our work meaningful, add value to our clients and to society. It is an approach we are beginning to see around us, and something I hope will take a profound hold on working life as all of us look to ensure meaning is at the heart of the future of work.