During a period of transition in Europe and the UK, banks’ overall hiring strategy is under the microscope. Different reports suggest that Brexit means reducing staff numbers in the UK, while others suggest the status quo is to be maintained.
Macroeconomic shocks, such as Brexit, are certainly impacting where banks increase or decrease their hiring numbers, but ultimately, if candidates have specialist skills in highly-coveted areas, these shocks do not matter. High-profile bankers have stated publicly that less-coveted roles will need to decrease by significant numbers as certain technology, such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning offerings, begins to assume the roles of individuals.
In our recent research, we looked at how the hiring profile in banks will change as a result of public cloud projects. Banks will require individuals across a few specific teams – IT, compliance and legal – that understand cloud infrastructures.
It’s no secret that, a few years ago, personal computing allowed business users to take control back from the IT team as part of the “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) boom. Now, it seems cloud computing is doing something similar. The implicit trade-off here is that an IT department, which has a considerable influence in banks, controlling a sizable fraction of the workforce and budget, will need to adjust to a new working model, developing teams with a broader skillset.
Specifically, the traditional datacentre manager role is set to change, as banks need more commercially-savvy employees who can work with cloud vendors: those that understand pricing models, compliance demands and the needs of each line of business to ensure applications are tenanted to the right place. Over half of our interviewees stated that datacentre managers, network managers, system maintenance and installers will not be needed. If traditional infrastructure specialists are willing to adapt their skills, they are likely to move to new roles within a bank, such as DevOps and Information Security. If not, you will see the cloud vendors acquiring these candidates from the banks to help manage the bigger customer accounts.
So what does this mean for the C-Suite? Find out more in our report.
