Stop Hiring the Same People

What makes someone right for a role? For years, hiring across financial services and technology has often centred on direct experience. Has someone worked in this industry before? Have they held the same title? Do they already understand the market, product or technology?

But experience does not always arrive in the form businesses expect.

In this episode of FinTech’s DEI Discussions, host Nadia is joined by Vanessa Neal, Head of Product Compliance at Elavon Europe, for a conversation about inclusion, transferable skills, career development and the value of bringing different experiences into financial technology.

Vanessa’s own career reflects much of what the conversation explores. Her background was originally in science and microbiology, rather than banking. She entered banking in her early thirties and went on to work across customer service, sales and product management before moving further into governance. What connected those different stages was not one specific area of industry knowledge, but a willingness to ask questions, understand problems and keep learning.

That journey provides the starting point for a wider discussion about how businesses recognise talent. Vanessa and Nadia explore why transferable skills can open doors to new careers, why curiosity can be difficult to teach, how different industry experience can challenge established thinking and what leaders can do to create opportunities for people who may otherwise be overlooked.

For FinTech recruitment and hiring more broadly, it raises an important question. Are businesses looking closely enough at what somebody can bring, rather than simply where they have already been?

Workplace Inclusion Starts with Making Sure Everyone Has a Voice

For Vanessa, workplace inclusion is closely connected to making sure everybody has a voice.

Working across different countries, levels and backgrounds means recognising that people will not all communicate, contribute or respond in exactly the same way. Vanessa explains that she does not want to see somebody simply as a role or grade. She wants to see the person and make sure they have the opportunity to contribute.

That matters because the loudest person in a room will not necessarily be the person with the most valuable perspective. Some people will confidently raise their hand, challenge an idea or ask a question. Others may be listening closely but feel less comfortable speaking.

Vanessa points to those quieter voices as potentially holding the idea that can change the direction of a conversation. Creating an inclusive workplace therefore cannot simply mean inviting different people into the room. It also means creating the conditions in which they can participate once they are there.

This is particularly important across organisations operating internationally. Vanessa discusses the need to remember that different countries and cultures may approach things differently. The way one person prefers to communicate or work cannot automatically be assumed to work for everybody.

Her approach is also practical. When travelling to different countries, she values spending time speaking with people face to face and building relationships. Those connections can make it easier for someone to approach her later and say they are interested in an opportunity but do not feel confident putting themselves forward.

Sometimes inclusion means helping somebody find their voice. Sometimes it means putting a hand up for them until they are ready to do it themselves.

Career Development Means Giving People the Opportunity to Learn

One of the simplest observations in the episode is also one of its most important. Everybody starts out knowing nothing.

Vanessa talks openly about being willing to say when she does not know something. In meetings where acronyms or specialist language are being used, she is prepared to stop the conversation and ask for an explanation.

That willingness matters for workplace culture because there may be several other people in the same meeting who also do not understand but do not feel comfortable saying so.

For Vanessa, equality can therefore involve making sure people have access to the same knowledge so they have the opportunity to become as good as they can be.

It is an important point for career development in financial services. People cannot be expected to arrive knowing everything, particularly when they are entering a new area, moving between functions or making a career pivot. Knowledge develops through questions, exposure and experience.

A culture in which people feel they need to already know the answer can make learning harder. A culture where somebody can comfortably say “I don’t know” creates far more room for development.

This also connects directly to FinTech careers. As businesses consider candidates from different backgrounds, the question is not simply whether somebody possesses every piece of knowledge on day one. It is whether they have the underlying ability and attitude to learn what they do not yet know.

Collaboration and Inclusive Leadership Can Turn Ideas into Change

Vanessa also discusses the colleague champions initiative she has been involved with for around six years. At the time of the conversation, the team included 16 people across Europe and North America, bringing together people from different areas, backgrounds and cultures.

The value of that diversity becomes visible when people begin sharing ideas.

One person might raise something that develops into a much larger initiative. Another might have already attempted to solve a problem that somebody elsewhere is now encountering. Instead of teams repeatedly trying the same things independently, collaboration allows people to learn from each other and move change forward more quickly.

Vanessa gives a simple example of how seemingly small improvements can scale. Saving five minutes on a process may not sound significant in isolation, but saving five minutes for 500 people every day becomes much more meaningful.

More importantly, the initiative creates opportunities for people themselves.

Vanessa describes team members speaking on leadership calls, presenting during all-hands meetings and driving initiatives that they might previously only have commented on from the sidelines. Rather than somebody else taking their idea forward, they are given the autonomy to lead it themselves.

That is an important aspect of inclusive leadership. Development does not happen only through formal training or promotions. It can happen when someone is trusted with an idea, given visibility and allowed to take ownership.

It also creates a safer environment for challenge. Vanessa wants people to be able to tell her when they disagree and suggest another way of doing something. When people see their feedback being listened to, they can become more comfortable using their voice elsewhere too.

Transferable Skills Can Open New FinTech Careers

Transferable skills form one of the central themes of Vanessa and Nadia’s conversation.

As Nadia points out, businesses talk frequently about transferable skills, but people are not necessarily equipped to identify those skills in themselves or demonstrate them when attempting a career pivot.

Vanessa’s own career is one example. She moved from science into banking without initially understanding the industry. But another example she shares makes the argument particularly clear.

Vanessa discusses her sister, who had worked in retail for a large high-street supermarket rather than banking. When a manager was recruiting for a role, Vanessa recognised that the requirements were not solely about banking knowledge. They included communication, taking initiative, stakeholder management, organisation and running projects.

She knew someone outside the business who possessed those abilities.

Her sister ultimately moved into the role and later progressed further within the organisation. Vanessa believes that different background also brought something valuable with it. Her sister had not simply thought about the customer from inside financial services. She had been the customer.

That distinction captures why transferable skills and diverse experience matter to FinTech hiring.

Someone may not have worked in banking, payments or another area of financial technology before, but that does not mean their previous experience is irrelevant. Communication, judgement, problem-solving, stakeholder management and the ability to respond when something goes wrong can travel between industries.

The challenge for employers is learning how to recognise them.

Inclusive Hiring Should Look at How Candidates Solve Problems

Vanessa argues that some of the capabilities businesses need are harder to teach than industry knowledge.

She specifically highlights curiosity, problem-solving and stakeholder management. By comparison, somebody can learn how a payment moves from one place to another.

That does not mean specialist experience has no value. The point is that hiring decisions can become too narrow when industry experience is treated as the only meaningful evidence that someone can succeed.

Vanessa suggests changing the questions being asked during interviews. Rather than only asking candidates to describe a problem they have solved within banking, businesses can ask them to explain a problem they have solved, full stop.

The distinction is small, but the pool of experience it opens up is much wider.

For FinTech recruitment, this has implications for how organisations define requirements at the beginning of a search. If every criterion is based on where a candidate has previously worked, employers may miss people who possess the underlying capabilities needed to perform the role.

Vanessa also reflects on her own move into product management. She had not previously worked as a product manager, but somebody recognised the skills she already had and gave her the opportunity to demonstrate what she could do.

Her view is that if someone moves into a role they can already do completely inside out, it may not provide the stretch they need.

Career progression often requires entering territory that is not entirely familiar.

FinTech Recruitment Can Recognise Different Forms of Experience

Nadia brings the conversation directly into recruitment by reflecting on what she hears during role briefings with hiring managers.

She has seen increased emphasis on qualities such as curiosity, attitude and judgement. At the same time, familiar preferences can return when a search becomes more specific. A hiring manager may value those wider attributes but still conclude that somebody with direct capital markets experience, for example, would have an easier onboarding process.

Vanessa understands the reasoning. Someone who already knows the industry may get up to speed faster during the first few months.

But she also asks what happens after that initial period.

A person entering from outside the business or industry may take longer to understand certain processes, but that lack of familiarity can itself create value. They are more likely to ask why something works the way it does.

That question can expose gaps that people who have been immersed in the same environment for years no longer notice.

“We’ve always done it that way” can become a powerful barrier to change. Bringing in somebody who does not already accept those assumptions can force a team to examine them again.

For financial technology businesses trying to innovate, that different perspective can be significant.

Diverse Experience Can Support Innovation in Financial Technology

Vanessa makes the connection between different experience and innovation particularly clearly.

If organisations continually bring the same types of people into the same business, she asks, where does innovation come from?

New people bring new ideas. People from other industries bring knowledge shaped by different environments. Graduates and interns ask questions that more experienced employees might no longer think to ask.

Vanessa describes the questions coming from graduates and interns as phenomenal because they think differently.

This becomes particularly relevant as technology and customer expectations continue changing. Vanessa references AI as one force that will change the way people think and work, while also discussing the evolution of payments and the different expectations younger generations bring.

Businesses therefore need people who can contribute to what comes next, not only people who understand what came before.

That is one reason different industry experience should not automatically be viewed as a disadvantage in FinTech careers. A candidate may need additional time to learn the specifics of a new market, but they may also arrive with ideas, behaviours and perspectives that would be difficult to generate by continually recruiting from the same talent pool.

The long-term value of a hire cannot always be measured by the speed of their first few weeks.

Workplace Culture Needs to Make Curiosity Safe

Hiring curious people is only useful if the workplace allows them to remain curious.

Towards the end of the conversation, Nadia brings the discussion back to psychological safety and the importance of creating an environment where people genuinely feel comfortable asking why something is done in a certain way.

It is not enough to tell employees to challenge established thinking if the culture makes challenging uncomfortable.

This links several of the episode’s themes together. Transferable skills can bring new people into an organisation. Different experience can bring fresh thinking. Curiosity can uncover better ways of working. But all of that depends on whether people feel able to contribute.

The responsibility does not sit only with senior leadership. As Nadia notes, everyone contributes to the environment around them.

For inclusive leadership, that means paying attention not only to who is hired but to what happens afterwards. Are new employees encouraged to question processes? Can junior colleagues speak openly? Are quieter people given space? Does admitting that you do not know something feel acceptable?

Without those conditions, organisations can recruit for diversity of experience while still losing much of the value that diversity was supposed to create.

Talent Development Starts with Understanding What Motivates People

When asked what more she would like to see from people listening, Vanessa focuses on understanding what motivates the people around them.

She makes an important distinction between asking somebody what they want to do in the future and understanding what actually motivates them.

Leaders can also look more widely when opportunities arise. Rather than automatically going to the person who has helped before or is already known for a particular task, Vanessa encourages leaders to look further into their teams and consider who might want the opportunity.

Who could be given a chance to make a difference?

She also encourages leaders to make introductions across different areas of a business. An employee’s next career step may not sit within their current team. If a leader understands what that person wants to achieve, part of supporting their development may be connecting them with somebody elsewhere.

That approach challenges a narrow view of talent management. Developing people does not necessarily mean keeping them in the same function and moving them upwards. It can mean helping them discover where their abilities are best used.

It also recognises that not everybody feels comfortable promoting themselves.

Sometimes leaders need to put people forward, create visibility and stretch their teams beyond what individuals might have volunteered to do themselves.

What Does This Mean for FinTech Hiring and Financial Services Careers?

The message running through Vanessa and Nadia’s conversation is not that experience should be ignored. It is that experience needs to be understood more broadly.

A career in retail can develop stakeholder management, communication and problem-solving skills that transfer into financial services. Someone entering a new industry can notice assumptions that established employees have stopped questioning. A colleague without the confidence to put themselves forward may still be capable of leading an initiative if somebody gives them the opportunity.

For employers, this creates a reason to look beyond an exact match on a CV.

For candidates considering career pivots, it also highlights the importance of understanding the skills underneath previous job titles. The question is not only “What have I done?” but “What problems have I solved, how have I worked with people and what can I bring into a different environment?”

Within FinTech recruitment, those questions matter as organisations compete for people who can adapt, learn and contribute to changing markets.

Hiring for transferable skills does not require businesses to abandon technical knowledge or relevant experience. It asks them to think more carefully about which capabilities genuinely need to exist on day one and which can be developed.

That difference can determine whether a business keeps searching within the same familiar talent pool or opens the door to people with different perspectives.

Building More Inclusive FinTech Careers by Looking Beyond the CV

Vanessa’s conversation with Nadia ultimately comes back to opportunity.

Her own journey did not follow a straight line into financial technology. The examples she shares throughout the episode show careers developing because somebody recognised skills beyond a job title, because a leader created an opportunity, or because someone was willing to ask a question.

For organisations, looking beyond the CV means being more curious about talent.

It means recognising that two candidates can have very different backgrounds while possessing equally valuable experience. It means understanding that direct industry knowledge can make onboarding easier without automatically making somebody the strongest long-term hire. And it means creating a workplace where the different perspectives businesses recruit are actually heard once people arrive.

For Harrington Starr, as a specialist FinTech recruitment business working across the financial technology ecosystem, these conversations are closely connected to the way the industry thinks about talent, hiring and career progression. The skills financial technology businesses need continue to evolve, making it increasingly important to understand not only where someone has worked before, but what they can contribute next.

That is also why inclusion cannot stop at recruitment.

People need opportunities to learn, to speak, to challenge and to lead. They need managers who understand what motivates them and colleagues who are prepared to make introductions and open doors. Most importantly, they need environments where asking a question is treated as curiosity rather than a lack of knowledge.

As Vanessa’s experience demonstrates, careers do not always follow the route people expect. Sometimes the person capable of bringing a valuable new perspective is the person whose CV looks different from everyone else’s.

The opportunity for FinTech hiring is to recognise that difference as potential rather than a reason to look away.