Offer-shopping hits BFSI firms’ tech hiring plans

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

BFSI) sector are looking to hire technology professionals who specialise in niche skills to steer their accelerated digitisation drive, candidates with high-end tech expertise are ‘offer-shopping’, leading to several companies struggling with a low offer acceptance rate. The average offer acceptance rate in skills such as full stack engineers, data engineers, UI/UX designers, AI/ML, data scientist & analytics, cloud architecture, product and lead engineers is still at a low level with 30 out of every 100 candidates interviewed trashing the offer letters and the compensation package they are given by prospective financial services hirers, according to executive search consultants such as Ciel HR Services and Native.

This is leading to a delay in the hiring process — by 2-3 months when a senior-level candidate drops off after accepting the offer letter. “Tech professionals are resisting shifting to the BFSI sector due to compensation disparities despite increasing demand,” Ciel HR Services chief executive Aditya Narayan Mishra said.

“They are unwilling to sacrifice their competitive salaries in the new age sector for the relative stability offered by the BFSI sector,” he added. Shalinee Udmale, director – technology, digital and analytics at Native, said: “Major challenges faced in the financial services market barring a handful of the Tier-I firms are fulfilling the core technology mid-to-senior roles due to candidate’s current compensations and the expectations.” According to her, many of the new age platforms and tech companies (in consumer, products, etc.,) are wooing candidates with 40-100% of higher salaries, in addition to stock options.