In my latest post, I gave an overview of the 4 qualities that are imperatives for high-performing Financial Services and Data Management professionals to possess to drive continuous value for our customers. This post covers why excellent communication skills are at the top of the list.
We highly prioritize providing employees with excellent written and verbal communication skills. Whether the resource is a financial analyst, a software developer, or a scrum master — if you don’t demonstrate excellent communications during the interview process, that’s a major red flag. Our clients appreciate and highly value team members with communications skills in high-pressure situations, and we show our clients an added level of respect by demonstrating our commitment to them by recognizing that if you can’t effectively and rapidly communicate, share, and build upon ideas, then your impact will be significantly reduced.
We assess communication skills during the recruiting process by asking complex, multipart questions and listening carefully to whether the candidate understands the questions and whether they could effectively repeat or reframe the question.
For an infrastructure engineer, we might ask candidates to explain the different types of Linux, how they’re used, and the various trade-offs for which one to use. For a software developer, we might ask candidates to break down the different types of MVCs they’ve used, for what purposes, and which they preferred. For a financial investment analyst we might ask them to explain approaches to risk management for a hypothetical portfolio of assets. For a SharePoint/Azure lead we might ask them to describe the process and challenges of migrating to SharePoint Online. In these instances, we’re not looking for the “right” or perfect answer. We’re looking to see how they respond and communicate to a layered series of questions.
We’ll also ask them to demonstrate understanding and communication skills by asking them to answer some of the questions as if they’re describing the answer to a peer, and others we ask them to explain and answer it as if the audience is in 5th grade. This ensures that they will be able to communicate ideas and concepts to a wide variety of stakeholders.
At the end of the day, communications are a huge part of any employee’s job. It’s our job to use the interview process as an opportunity to look beyond a candidate’s resume and work history to see how well — or not — they communicate ideas and expertise.
If you need help attracting high-performing Financial Services and Data Management talent in an increasingly tight labor market, consider DMG’s strategic staffing services. Feel free to schedule a free consultation to determine whether our services match your needs.