Where to Find Fintech Talent: A Guide to Sourcing Channels

"Honest advice from someone who runs a recruitment agency: don't start with us." – Anastasia Zencika, Founder & CEO of Evotym.

It's an unusual thing for an agency to say, and it happens to be true. Before you reach out anywhere, the fastest and most reliable pipeline for a senior fintech hire is almost always closer than you think. Agencies have their place, and it's usually further down the list than most people running a search assume.

Get Clear on the Problem Before You Look Anywhere

A good hire starts before the search itself, with a clear answer to what the role actually needs to solve.

Before reaching out to anyone, get specific about what's truly non-negotiable for this hire versus what's simply nice to have. We've written before about what actually makes a fintech role worth defining well. A vague brief slows down every channel on this list. A sharp one speeds up all of them.

The 5 Places to Look, in Order

Once the brief is clear, these are the channels worth working through, roughly in this order.

1. You and Your Network

Start with who you already know. "As a founder, you already know which companies perform well, where strong people come from, who you look up to, and who you don't," Anastasia says. That knowledge is one of your biggest assets. The people around you are usually the fastest pipeline available, and you already know how they work, well beyond what a CV can tell you.

If your network in fintech is still thin, that's fine. It just means this step will be shorter, and steps 2 through 5 matter more for you.

2. Mentors and Investors

A warm introduction from someone you trust skips the open market entirely. One warm referral from a mentor or investor can move faster than 50 cold outreach messages, because it comes with built-in credibility on both sides.

3. LinkedIn

LinkedIn is only half the story here. Posting a job and waiting is not the same as direct, personalized outreach to a specific person you've identified as a strong fit. The second approach is the one that actually works for senior roles.

4. Job Portals

Job portals are useful for volume. They're far less useful for senior, specialist, or niche fintech roles, where the right person usually isn't actively browsing listings.LinkedIn's own research, based on a survey of 18,000 professionals across 26 countries, found that roughly 70% of employed people aren't actively job hunting at any given time.

In our experience at Evotym, the more senior the role, the smaller the pool of people you'll find through a posting alone. A posting reaches the people who are actively looking. It rarely reaches the person you actually want.

5. Recruitment Companies

This is where an agency comes in, and it should come in with a specific focus. Once you get here, go industry-specific. Most companies charge roughly the same fee. What a specialist adds on top of that fee is depth: a warm network already built around fintech, and enough pattern recognition from filling similar roles to genuinely consult you along the way.

A few practical questions separate a real specialist from a generalist wearing an industry label: How many similar roles have they closed in the past year? Can they name specific companies they've placed candidates at, in your exact niche? Do they already have live conversations with people in this space, or would they be starting cold, same as you?

Why the Order Matters

"The further down this list you go, the more time it takes," Anastasia says. The logic is trust. A referral from someone you already trust needs no verification, so it moves fast. A cold application from a job portal starts from zero, so it takes longer to reach the same place.

This lines up with what we see at Evotym. According to data, published in CoinsPaid Media's 2025 hiring research, 60 to 70% of successful fintech hires happen through network introductions and direct outreach, well before a role is ever posted publicly. It's exactly why those relationships are worth building and maintaining before a role opens, a point we've also made in our post on building fintech teams without reactive hiring.

Start at the Top

Recruitment companies are still worth using, and they work best as a focused, targeted step brought in at the right point in the process. Hiring teams who are clear on the problem, and who work through their own network and warm introductions first, tend to fill roles faster and with less friction, whether or not an agency ends up involved at all.

If you've worked through your network, your mentors, and a focused LinkedIn search, and the role is still open, that's usually the point where an industry-specific search adds real value. At Evotym, we specialize in fintech, payments, and crypto hiring across Europe, and we know this market well enough to move fast once you bring us in.

Get in touch when you're ready.