Financial Sector

Only one in ten out-of-work older people and disabled people get help to find work each year (Learning and Work Institute, 2023)

Problem – Applying for jobs is an inexact science:

To begin with, discovering suitable opportunities is difficult due to the multitude of job search platforms competing for your attention. Moreover, there is often a scarcity of matches based on your previous job title, which might have been arbitrarily created without adhering to any standardised job classification system. This raises the question of why there are so many diverse job titles for the same role; does your job title really describe what you do? Maybe you don’t know what you want to do. Or you want to do something different. You might not be able to do the job you’ve always done. Even if you can find a desirable job opening, the application process itself becomes time-consuming and repetitive. Even after investing significant effort, it can feel like you haven’t adequately showcased your skills and suitability. On average, each application requires over two hours to complete, with a waiting period of at least two weeks before hearing any response. If you haven’t been matched to the right vacancy or failed to effectively sell yourself, all the time and effort spent becomes futile. Consequently, you find yourself repeating this process over and over again.

Recent stats show that it takes about 100-200+ applications to receive one job offer!  In a further breakdown, you have an 8.3% chance of getting a job interview from a single job application.  That means it takes over 10 applications to get one interview and around 15 interviews to get one job offer (How Many Applications Does It Take To Get A Job?, Movement to Work, Feb 2022).

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How Skillsminer can help:

Structure your skills into actionable career pathways: Skillsminer’s revolutionary chatbot captures critical information consistently and extracts meaning from your experiences. It has been specifically designed to map individuals to the right opportunities and expedite their ability to quickly and effectively apply for jobs. 

In less than 5 minutes we ascertain hundreds of skills, each one of them a commodity to both you and an employer, some of which you may not have been conscious of. We also profile the softer skills that are crucial in many values-based organisations. 

And we don’t stop with just the insight of skills. We then map those skills to a personally curated menu based on 1,000,000 jobs, 3,000 occupations, 15,000 qualifications, 40,000 online courses and 50,000 video resources. These incorporate promoted jobs and opportunities that are created by other parties in the ecosystem such as recruiters and education providers. Our Application As sistant generates powerful content to be exported into a CV, resume, covering letter, or online application in under 10 minutes. 

With this range of tools at your disposal you can upskill, find and apply for jobs 9 times quicker than traditional methods.

Skillsminer provides a one stop career guidance tool that identifies the skills that enable YOU to be successful in your career.

According to a survey conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in 2021, 72% of financial institutions worldwide reported difficulties in attracting and retaining skilled talent. Additionally, according to Experian CTO James Cameron Williams 1.2 million people are unbanked in the UK whilst 20 million people are underbanked. 

Problem – Recruiting is a long, costly and inefficient process:

Recruitment is a time-consuming, expensive, and inefficient undertaking. It involves obtaining the necessary authorisation, crafting job descriptions, seeking approval for those descriptions, paying for advertising, reviewing each application, shortlisting candidates, conducting interviews, extending job offers, and, if all goes well, securing an acceptance. Additionally, there’s the operational aspect of identifying skills gaps and providing training to new hires until they become productive. This entire process can span a year or more in certain fields. The sluggishness – which averages 41 days from approval to offer – and resource intensiveness – which averages 45 minutes per application – may lead some organisations to delegate the task to external recruiters, who, in turn, typically charge a fee of 20% of the salary as compensation for their services.

On an average online job posting, 1,000 individuals will see the job post, 200 will begin the application process, 100 will complete the application, 75 of those 100 resumes will be screened out by either an Applicant Tracking System or by a recruiter, 25 resumes will be seen by the hiring manager, 4 to 6 will be invited for an interview, 1 to 3 of them will be invited back for final interview, 1 will be offered that job and 80 percent of those receiving an offer will accept it (How Many Applications Does It Take To Get A Job?, Movement to Work, Feb 2022).

Solution – Proactive skill-based recruitment:

Skillsminer’s recruitment software takes the heavy lifting out of finding talent, by tackling the most time consuming aspects of the recruitment process: Under 3% of applications on average are actually seen by a hiring manager, so passive recruitment is not efficient or effective. We proactively identify hidden talent based on skills, not just a job title. By tagging one of three thousand unique occupations we produce default skills, style and interest profiles for prospective recruits to match against. These can be tweaked to meet your exact requirements and then Skillsminer does the rest. We find the closest candidates to match your exact requirements. That provides you with the assurance that any new recruit will have the right stuff required to succeed.

As profiles are generated via our chatbot it means data is consistent which sidesteps the problem of parsing where those with the bigger profiles or CVs will always score higher by subconsciously gaming the AI.

By providing instant access to active talent rather than waiting passively for reams of CV’s to land on your desk, by shorting the shortlisting procedure and reducing advertising fees Skillsminer saves you 60 hours and £2,500 per vacancy whilst providing you access to hidden talent with the right skills to succeed and improve your productivity.

Skillsminer enables YOU to maximise the value of hidden skills now and prepare you for the economy of the future.

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How Skillsminer can help:

Improved Performance and Productivity: A study conducted by Gallup found that organisations that select employees based on talent and match them to the right roles experience 44% higher productivity compared to their competitors.

Skillsminer helps identify employees’ talents and matches them to the right roles within the financial institution. When employees are assigned to positions that capitalise on their strengths and abilities, they are more likely to perform at a high level. 

Cost Savings: According to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the average cost per hire in the United States is approximately $4,129. 

Skillsminer’s proactive skills-based recruitment approach helps avoid potential mismatches between employees and their roles. By targeting candidates with the required skills, organisations can reduce recruitment cycles, minimise training needs, and avoid potential mismatches that can lead to turnover.

Reduced Time-to-Fill Positions: A study by the Aberdeen Group found that organisations with proactive recruitment strategies have an average time-to-fill 35% faster than those with reactive approaches.

Skillsminer simplifies the recruitment process by focusing on skills and competencies. By proactively seeking out candidates with specific skills, financial institutions can significantly reduce time-to-fill vacancies. 

A third (31%) of financial services and banking professionals are planning to leave the industry due to high pressure, according to a new report by digital accountancy platform LemonEdge.

Problem – Succession planning or talent mobility is impossible to quantify:

Understanding workforce data to effectively manoeuvre employees into different roles or projects is, in most cases, unmanageable. Firstly, there is rarely structured data on the quantifiable skills of employees or comparable data on the requirements of roles or projects. As a result, decisions are often made based on qualitative input such as the opinion of a line manager who will subjectively measure skills and attitude. Whilst this information is useful it seldom reflects the occupational skills, knowledge and competencies required of a specific role. And  faced with the risk that 85 million jobs could be displaced by a shift in the division of labour between humans and machines (Global Risks Report, World Economic Forum, 2023) this is a pressing issue that needs to be addressed. Another consequence of unintelligible workforce data is employee stagnation, employees incorrectly assigned to new roles or projects, or worst of all, employees will often move to the competition.

Solution – Evidence-based decisions on the productivity and future of your workforce:

Skillsminer enables you to profile every employee in your workforce and visualise their skills in detail. Following the 5 minute onboarding process they’ll have access to training resources or internal opportunities – all in one place. Strategically, Skillsminer can help you make the best decisions on how to deploy your workforce, recognise hidden talent for projects, identify high-performers for succession planning which will, in turn, reduce turnover and friction.

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How Skillsminer can help:

Retention and engagement: According to a Gallup survey conducted in 2021, only 36% of employees reported feeling engaged in their jobs. 

Skillsminer can help financial institutions identify the skills and competencies of their employees through automated analysis of their profiles to enable the organisation to create a talent map and identify high-performing individuals who have the potential to take on new roles or leadership positions.Providing opportunities for internal talent mobility helps to retain high-performing employees within the organisation. It gives them a sense of growth, development, and progression, which increases their engagement and satisfaction.

Succession planning: according to a survey conducted by the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) in 2021, only 54% of organisations have a formal succession plan in place. 

Skillsminer can facilitate the succession planning process by automatically matching employees’ skills and preferences with available opportunities within the organisation. It can notify employees about relevant openings, encouraging them to explore new roles and apply for positions they are suited to. This promotes a culture of growth and creates a transparent and accessible system for employees to pursue their career aspirations.

Employee development and growth: According to a study conducted by LinkedIn Learning, 94% of employees stated that they would stay longer at a company that invests in their professional development.

Skillsminer can help financial institutions track employees’ performance and provide feedback throughout their internal mobility journey. By monitoring employees’ progress, identifying areas for improvement, and providing timely feedback, organisations can ensure that employees are effectively developing their skills and achieving their career goals.

Overall, Skillsminer can play a crucial role in facilitating internal talent mobility, supporting employee development, and enhancing engagement and retention in the financial sector.

Over 7m people in the UK (one in seven, or around 14% of the adult population) fall into the definition of ‘financially excluded’, meaning they can’t be credit scored via traditional models, and could potentially struggle to access affordable and fair financial services (What Financial Inclusion Looks Like in the the UK, LexisNexis, 2022)

Problem – Career guidance outputs are incomplete and caseload sizes are limited:

Career Guidance is not limited to the National Career Service; similar roles exist in colleges, training providers, local government, housing associations, employability programmes and almost every employment support initiative. 

There are thousands of different occupations, each with unique skill requirements and individual jobseekers are even more inimitable. It is impossible for career guidance professionals to take so many nuanced variables into consideration and accurately calculate the right occupations for an individual. Instead, a “square peg in a round hole” situation develops where guidance is based on the limitations of the career guidance professionals’ knowledge of certain sectors and the labour market around them. This is, of course, incredibly valuable information but lacks the breadth of the big picture of universal occupational knowledge and the macro labour market intelligence required to make truly evidence-based decisions. A typical career guidance appointment lasts 60 minutes as the advisor has to interview and extract the details of an individual before any work can begin on action planning. Where subsequent appointments are required, for example, in relation to employability programme approaches the average is 45 mins where the majority of time is devoted to ascertaining activities since the last episode. 

This very resource intensive activity limits the size of caseloads and as a result many cohorts are unable to receive the support they require. For example, only one in ten out-of-work 50-64-year-olds and disabled people get help to find work each year (Learning and Work Institute, 2023).

Solution – Manage large caseloads, with greater insight and action planning collateral:

Skillsminer’s caseloading tool enables Career Coaches to view relevant acumen on every individual assigned to you and your organisation. Our technology has been developed to maximise the effectiveness of any organisation responsible for the upskilling and placement of individuals into work. A full user-based hierarchy ensures the right people see the right detail which allows them to make evidence-based decisions using aggregated organisational level information or granular action planning insight provided by the raft of data available.

Career Coaches understand the composition of skills, knowledge, competencies, culture and interests to help individuals make the best possible career choices. They can co-jobsearch with jobseekers or even do remote jobsearch for the hardest-to-help. They can create access to resources and interventions. Having access to this incredible knowledge ahead of each appointment saves up 40% every time as the data is readily available, thus enabling a larger caseload. Providing supported access to Skillsminer for individuals has been proven to increase job outcome rates by 8%. 

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How Skillsminer can help:

Relationship building: Customer-centric companies are 60% more profitable than companies that don’t focus on customers (Wealth Management Digitalization changes client advisory more than ever before, Deloitte, 2022). 

Financial institutions strive to build long-term relationships with their customers. By offering employment support, such as job search resources, career counselling, or networking opportunities, financial institutions can demonstrate their commitment to customer success beyond just financial products and services.Financial Institutions can even develop support programs centred around Skillsminer and provide light touch caseloading capabilities for their customer service teams. 

Risk management: There are over 1.3 million unemployed people in Great Britain (Great Britain Profile, Nomis, August 2023). 

Skillsminer can assist with risk management by offering a comprehensive employment support system that helps mitigate credit risk for financial institutions. In the case of unemployment, where individuals face difficulties in repaying loans or credit card debts, Skillsminer steps in to provide valuable resources and assistance to these customers. By connecting them with job opportunities and empowering them with the necessary skills and training, Skillsminer facilitates their re-entry into the job market, enabling them to regain financial stability.

Competitive advantage: 80% of customers say they are more likely to do business with a company if it offers personalised experiences (Epsilon, 2018). Additionally there are over a million unbanked individuals in the UK. 

In a competitive financial market, institutions differentiate themselves by providing value-added services. Offering employment support can be a unique selling point for financial institutions, attracting new customers and retaining existing ones.Skillsminer can help financial institutions gain a competitive advantage by offering comprehensive, supported employment support to their customers. By utilising Skillsminer’s Skills and Employability caseloading platform financial institutions can assist customers in enhancing their employability and finding relevant job opportunities. 

“I understand how and what my customers can do, what jobs are available to them and why. I can use this data to help them close skills gaps and to help local employers find the right candidates with great skills right on their doorstep.”

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Get in touch to see how Skillsminer can work for you and your business