During the past year, economic pressure on the tech industry left thousands of skilled people laid off: Amazon, Meta and Twitter alone laid off tens of thousands of people in the last half of the year, while fintechs like Chime, Varo, Upstart and Stripe let go of more than 10% of their workforce in 2022.
If this looks like a windfall of sorts for the many banks that have an ever-present need for technologists to help with cloud migration, artificial intelligence and data analytics projects, it is.
“What we are seeing in the last six months is that the market has changed quite a bit,” said Jordan Sternlieb, a senior partner at consulting firm West Monroe. “We saw lots of demand, lots of people throwing money around to get good tech talent. We’ve certainly seen that shift, given some of the right sizing that’s been done in that market. And I think it is really a real opportunity for banks to take advantage of that talent.”
But picking up folks from Big tech and fintechs is not their only, or even their main, strategy for recruiting innovative personnel. Global and national banks are also upskilling current employees, acquiring tech companies and continuing normal college and early-career talent recruiting.
What’s the current opportunity?
Layoffs across the tech sector could make scoring talent easier for banks than in recent years, during which they have seen high attrition and stiff competition.
Sternlieb said banks can benefit from acquiring people with Big tech experience as strategies like open banking, embedded finance and banking-as-a-service become more prevalent. He added that the past couple of years, it was harder for banks to compete due to compensation limits and clunkier technology.
“I truly think this is an opportunity with really qualified, good people in the marketplace for banks to really take advantage,” he said. “I see too often and throughout my career that banks just sit on the sidelines in these periods of uncertainty, but there’s really an opportunity here to be a little bit more assertive.”
Ken Meyer, chief information and experience officer of digital channels and innovation at Truist Financial, said the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank is always recruiting, but recognizes the current opportunity to pick up technologists. Customers’ expectations for technology continued to rise, regardless of economic uncertainty, he said.
Meyer said the bank has been able to tap into a different type of talent pool due to a combination of the tech industry layoffs and Truist moving into strategic tech initiatives. He added that Truist hasn’t just waited for people to get laid off, but is also trying to scoop employees by offering prospects of greater stability.
“I think that the opportunity is right now,” Meyer said. “We’ve picked up some talent that has great fintech or Big tech experience around things like blockchain and web3, and in some more emerging areas that we probably wouldn’t have been able to attract a couple of years ago.”
Meyer added that Truist has seen a decrease in attrition the last half of the year. Truist has more than 200 technology jobs listed on its website.
Jason Strle, chief information officer and head of enterprise functions technology at Wells Fargo, said he thinks the global bank’s technology is as modern as some major tech players, but offers stability and consistency for employees.
“We are a fintech,” Strle said. “I think the general population may not be fully aware of that, but the technology stack that we’re working with is going to rival a lot of the more traditional large tech players in the environment.”
Wells Fargo told American Banker that it’s currently hiring for more than 1,500 open US-based roles in its technology and digital sectors, mainly in software engineering, systems architecture, product management, user experience designers and AI/ML professionals.
How can banks attract tech talent?
Sternlieb said there are three parts of a bank’s value proposition to a potential employee: Contract, including compensation and benefits; experience, including the bank’s culture and career journeys; and emotion, including making sure the company’s mission aligns.
Joe Davey, a partner at West Monroe, said banks should look to appeal to a broader set of technologists, even if they don’t have banking or finance experience. He added that “soft benefits” are increasingly vital, such as how a company’s technology will impact society. Davey and Sternlieb both said it’s important to technologists that they work with modern architectures and technologies, as opposed to legacy systems.
Strle said operating on a major scale while moving quickly presents innovation opportunities for engineers at Wells Fargo. The bank has 40 million to 50 million customers who expect to have their banking needs met.
One example of innovation is Wells Fargo’s imminent self-serving virtual assistant called Fargo, which customers will be able to check balances and do many other basic banking tasks, Strle said. Fargo, which is slated to launch in the second quarter of 2023, uses natural language processing powered by Google Cloud’s Dialogflow. The platform will also be integrated with other cloud providers, Strle said.
Company culture has become increasingly important to employees, he said, and Wells Fargo offers group volunteering opportunities and community outreach programs.
“Grinding away on just code all the time, certainly that’s what we primarily are here for,” he said. That’s the value that we add, and I think that’s a lot of what engineers are looking for. But I think there’s also this emerging dimension through the pandemic where people are looking more at, ‘What is my employment actually meaning to me? What is it that I’m getting out of this?'”
Strle added that he thinks Wells Fargo’s compensation is in line with the market.
Meyer said Truist’s recent changes to its technology strategy, especially around modernizing architectures and capabilities, have been beneficial in recruiting talent. The bank has focused on strategic tech initiatives following the completion of the integration of BB&T and Suntrust Bank earlier this year.
Meyer said the company has also tweaked its technology-focused, early-career rotational program over the last two years. College undergraduate and graduate students spend an internship on two rotations in disciplines like app development, security, and infrastructure.
Meyer added that the confluence of modern technology and architecture with a people-focused mission is meaningful to folks. He said many people coming from startups and fintechs joined those companies because they wanted to make an impact.
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