Winning the Fintech Talent Game

In fintech, momentum changes in a heartbeat - products pivot in weeks, markets twist overnight, and new regulations can appear before you’ve even finished your morning coffee. But through all this uncertainty, there’s one constant: your team will determine your success.

We’ve seen this first-hand at Evotym, supporting startups and scale-ups across Europe. From Fibe in Berlin to Un:Block and TechChill in Riga, Evotym founder Anastasia Zencika has been sharing proven strategies for hiring and onboarding top fintech talent.

We’re taking those stage insights beyond the conference halls and into your hands - so whether you’re building your first fintech team or expanding into new markets, you’ll have a clear roadmap.

1. Strategy Before Speed: Why Rushed Hiring Fails

A common trap in fintech recruitment is making hires purely as a quick fix for today’s pain points instead of investing in future growth.

Here’s a real-world scenario: you urgently need someone to “manage accounts,” so you bring in a junior hire to send invoices. Six months down the line, you discover what you truly needed was someone who could automate the entire invoicing process - a completely different role with a far greater long-term impact.

This happens because urgent needs often cloud strategic thinking. In a high-growth fintech environment, the work you hire for today may be outdated by the time that person is fully onboarded.

The mindset shift:

Always hire for the role that will still be relevant and impactful 12–24 months from now, not just the problem you’re facing today.

Action step: Before posting a job, map your growth plan. Identify which hires will accelerate your company toward future milestones, whether that’s launching in a new market, adopting new technology, or scaling customer acquisition, and prioritise those roles first.

2. Balancing Potential and Experience in Fintech Teams

In our experience, the strongest fintech teams are built like well-balanced portfolios - a mix of stable, proven assets and high-growth opportunities. That means blending seasoned professionals who’ve navigated regulatory storms with high-potential newcomers ready to challenge the status quo.

• Potential hires bring energy, adaptability, and a hunger to learn. They often excel in creative problem-solving and are more affordable, but they require structured mentoring, clear development paths, and patience to ramp up.
• Experienced hires deliver immediate impact, bring established networks, and can steer through complex regulatory and operational challenges. However, they come at a higher cost and may need support to embrace new ways of working.

Pro tip: Think of team design as strategic pairing. Surround experienced hires with ambitious juniors - the veterans provide direction and stability, while the newcomers bring fresh thinking and push for innovation. This balance not only fuels growth but also creates a culture of continuous learning.

3. Crafting Job Descriptions That Attract the Right Talent

Fintech is far too competitive to rely on recycled, copy-paste job descriptions. Generic listings only attract generic candidates - and in this industry, a single wrong hire can set back product launches or slow market expansion.

A standout job description should work like a precision-crafted pitch - selling the opportunity to the right people while making it clear to the wrong ones that this isn’t their match. The goal is to attract top-tier fintech talent instantly, while saving time by filtering out those who won’t excel in your environment. Here’s how:

1. Lead with a challenge, not a title - describe the unique problem this role will solve in your business, e.g., scaling payment operations while staying ahead of compliance demands.
2. List must-have skills - include both technical capabilities and fintech-specific experience relevant to your product or market.
3. Share values and culture - outline the behaviours, decision-making style, and resilience level needed to thrive in your environment.
4. Define success - clarify the outcomes, metrics, and timelines that will show this person is making an impact.

When you define the role with precision and context, you improve the quality of your fintech recruitment pipeline, speed up the selection process, and save hours screening irrelevant applications.

4. Where to Find Top Fintech Talent

The best candidates often aren’t actively applying for jobs, which is why effective fintech recruitment demands a multi-channel, proactive approach. This is not just theory - we’ve explored it in detail in our blog post How Fintech Founders Can Attract Top Talent, where we break down tactics that have helped fintech companies secure standout hires.

Here’s the short version:

• Your personal network - reconnect with trusted connections, former colleagues, and industry contacts who already know your standards.
• Referrals from mentors and investors - tap into their insider networks; these introductions often bypass the competitive hiring market entirely.
• Direct outreach on LinkedIn - craft personalised messages that reference the candidate’s work and show genuine interest.
• Industry-specific recruiters - partner with niche agencies like Evotym, who already maintain deep fintech talent pipelines.

These channels work best in combination. For example, a strong referral backed by a targeted LinkedIn message can accelerate trust and interest. Pro tip: Before you start searching, ask yourself: “Who already knows the person we’re looking for?”

5. How to Identify High-Impact Fintech Talent

Once you’ve got a shortlist, the real challenge begins: choosing the candidate who will make the biggest impact. At Evotym, we go beyond surface-level skills and use a structured evaluation checklist - because in fintech, the wrong cultural or motivational fit can cost more than a technical gap.

Here’s what we look for:

• Energy - do they have the resilience, focus, and determination to excel in a demanding fintech environment?
• Curiosity - are they genuinely interested in your product, asking insightful questions, and showing they’ve done their homework?
• Track record - have they delivered measurable, repeatable results in similar or challenging contexts?
• Resilience - do they handle challenges with problem-solving and persistence, or do they job-hop when it gets tough?
• Cultural fit - would you trust them to collaborate effectively with your team and clients, whether in intense strategy sessions, tight project deadlines, or complex negotiations?

By scoring each candidate against these traits, we make decisions based on evidence, not gut feeling - and avoid the costly mistake of hiring someone who looks good on paper but falters in reality.

6. Red Flags to Watch Out For

• Negativity about previous employers or clients - often a sign they may bring a similar attitude into your team.
• Overuse of “I” instead of “we” - signalling a lack of collaboration skills and difficulty integrating into team environments.
• Generic answers showing lack of preparation - indicating they haven’t invested effort in understanding your business or the role.
• Job-hopping without clear reasons - can point to low commitment, poor adaptability, or inability to work through challenges.

These red flags don’t always mean you should reject a candidate outright, but they should trigger deeper questioning. Look into the context, listen for patterns, and trust your instincts - if something feels off now, it’s likely to escalate once they’re on board.

7. Onboarding for Success: The First 90 Days

Hiring isn’t the finish line - it’s the starting point where performance, integration, and culture alignment begin. A well-designed onboarding process turns a great hire into a high-impact team member faster and with less friction.

Best practices for onboarding fintech talent:

1. Share a clear vision - connect them to your mission, culture, and the 5-year roadmap so they see the bigger picture from day one.
2. Be honest about current challenges - transparency builds trust and helps new hires prepare for what’s ahead.
3. Set measurable success metrics - define what “great” looks like and how it will be tracked.
4. Let them create a 30-60-90 day plan - encourage ownership by having them map out how they’ll deliver results.
5. Hold regular check-ins - keep feedback flowing both ways, making adjustments early and strengthening the relationship.
6. Introduce them to key stakeholders - ensure they know who to go to for support, knowledge, and collaboration.

When onboarding is intentional, it accelerates learning, reduces early churn, and ensures your fintech hires start delivering value quickly.

Fintech recruitment done right is a strategic investment - not a rushed task.
When you hire with a clear plan, balance potential with experience, and onboard intentionally, you create a team that not only solves today’s problems but builds tomorrow’s opportunities.

And if you’re ready to skip the trial-and-error and go straight to results, connect with Evotym - we’ve been helping fintech companies build dream teams for over a decade.