Does Your Fintech Recruiter Need to Be Based in the City They Are Recruiting In?
When a capital markets technology or data provider is hiring internationally, it is perhaps natural for them to assume that the recruitment firm helping should also be physically based where they are hiring.
If you are hiring in New York, perhaps you think you need a New York recruiter. If you are building a team in London, perhaps you need a London recruiter. The same assumption can be made about Singapore, Hong Kong, Chicago, Paris, Frankfurt, Dubai or any other major financial centre.
At first glance, that sounds logical. But in a highly specialised market such as capital markets technology, the more important question is not:
“Where is the recruiter based?”
It is:
“How well do they know our market, and how strong is their access to the people we want to hire?”
Those are very different questions.
Sector proximity matters more than physical proximity
Capital markets and investment technology is a specialist ecosystem. The candidate universe is not simply “technology people in New York”, “salespeople in London” or “client service professionals in Singapore”. It spans highly specific areas including trading technology, market data, investment research, portfolio management, risk, compliance, post-trade, digital assets, fund accounting, data management and many other specialist disciplines.
At Excelsior Search, our focus is deliberately narrow: we recruit only for capital markets and investment technology providers. That specialism means we understand not just job titles, but the vendor landscape behind them.
Over many years we have mapped our market globally, including the international office locations of the vendor community. So, when a client needs to hire in New York, London, Chicago, Paris, Singapore, Sydney or elsewhere, we are not starting with a blank sheet of paper.
We already understand which companies are relevant, where their teams are located, which adjacent businesses may contain transferable talent, and where to start looking for the strongest potential candidates.
That target-market knowledge can be considerably more valuable than simply having an office in the same city.
Knowing who to target is only half the job
Take a senior sales hire.
There may be hundreds of profiles containing terms such as “Enterprise Sales”, “FinTech”, “Financial Services”, “Capital Markets” or “SaaS”. But those labels tell you surprisingly little.
Does the candidate sell to asset managers, hedge funds, investment banks, wealth managers or private markets firms? Do they sell trading technology, data, portfolio analytics, risk systems or investment workflow solutions? Who are their buyers? Have they sold an established market-leading product, or successfully introduced an unknown technology into a competitive market?
These distinctions come from sector knowledge, not geography.
And specialism matters just as much when approaching candidates. Knowing this industry means understanding what motivates the people within it, how to position an opportunity appropriately, and how to sell a client’s proposition in a way that is likely to resonate with someone who may not be actively looking for another job.
The strongest candidates are rarely persuaded by a generic job description. They want to know what the technology does, why it is better than its competitors, where the company sits in the market, who its customers are, why it is growing, and why the opportunity could be a good career move.
A specialist recruiter should be able to have that conversation credibly on behalf of their client.
The network may already be in the city
There is also an important distinction between being physically located in a market and actually having relationships within it.
Our headquarters may be in Europe, but our professional network is international. Over more than 25 years specialising in this sector, we have developed relationships with executives, sales professionals, product specialists, technologists and industry leaders across the world’s major financial centres.
We have successfully recruited across the Americas, EMEA and APAC, with placements made in 25 cities across 17 countries, including New York, Boston, San Francisco, Chicago, Toronto, London, Paris, Frankfurt, Zurich, Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore and Sydney.
So when a client asks us to recruit internationally, in most cases we are not attempting to create a network in that location from scratch.
The relationships already exist.
And specialist networks become more valuable over time.
A salesperson we first spoke to or placed ten or fifteen years ago may now be a Chief Revenue Officer. A candidate may become a hiring manager, and a hiring manager may later become a candidate. Each local relationship can generate further introductions and referrals across the industry.
As one recent example, I reached out to a salesperson in New York and she replied to my email saying:
“I recall working closely with you years ago on an AlphaSense opportunity.”
I replied that it was 10 years ago, to which she responded:
“Was it 10 years??? Well, you made a positive and lasting impression!!”
That is what a genuinely established network looks like: not simply knowing people in a market, but having built enough trust and credibility over time to still be remembered a decade later, even when I am in London and she is in New York.
Does the physical location of the recruiter change candidate engagement?
This is another question worth considering.
If I phone a candidate in New York, from the candidate’s perspective does it materially change the conversation whether I am calling from a New York suburb or from London?
Not really.
The same applies to video meetings, LinkedIn, email and the other channels through which modern search is conducted.
The candidate still needs to trust the recruiter, and the recruiter still needs to understand their career. The recruiter still needs to assess the candidate’s fit, communicate the opportunity intelligently, identify their motivations and create enough interest for that person to consider a conversation with the client.
Candidate engagement is driven by credibility, understanding and relationships, not the physical distance between two desks.
That is particularly true in capital markets technology, an industry that is inherently international. Companies, customers, management teams and candidates routinely operate across multiple financial centres.
What if the location itself is new?
Even where we are recruiting in a city or country for the first time, that does not mean we are starting from scratch.
Our sector expertise means we already understand the relevant vendor universe, the types of companies to target, the candidate profiles likely to be transferable and the terminology needed to engage them credibly. We then apply the same structured search processes we use in every market: target mapping, proactive headhunting, detailed qualification and candidate engagement.
After all, every location we have successfully recruited in was a new location once.
The ability to execute comes from having a repeatable search methodology, deep sector knowledge and the ability to identify and engage the right people, not simply from being located in in or having recruited in that postcode before.
What if both recruiters are specialists?
Of course, the comparison is not always between an international specialist and a local generalist.
A company may be considering two recruitment firms that both genuinely specialise in the same sector, with one located in the city where the hire is being made and the other elsewhere.
In that situation, being local is a differentiator. But is it the most important one?
A more meaningful comparison is the depth of each firm’s sector experience as it relates to the hiring company, its knowledge of the target-company universe, relationships with relevant candidates, access to passive talent, ability to engage those candidates, quality of the search process and track record of delivery.
Two recruiters can both describe themselves as specialists while having very different levels of market knowledge, network depth and candidate relationships.
So the question should not simply be:
“Which recruiter is physically closest to where we are hiring?”
It should be:
“Which recruiter gives us the strongest access to the people we actually want to hire?”
The questions that matter more than location
Geographical location is easy to evaluate because it is visible, but it does not necessarily tell you how close a recruiter really is to the right talent market.
A recruiter can be thousands of miles away physically while being extremely close to that market professionally.
The better questions are:
Do they understand our area of the market?
Do they know the companies we should be targeting?
Do they already have relationships with the people we want to hire?
Do they know how to find the people they don’t already know?
Can they engage passive candidates and credibly sell our opportunity?
And can they convert that market access into successful hires?
Because when recruiting within a highly specialised international industry, the most important location is not where the recruiter sits.
It is where their knowledge, expertise, relationships and network sit.
And if those are already firmly established in the market where you need to hire, the recruiter’s postcode becomes considerably less important.
Author: Shawn Rutter, Founder, Excelsior Search
https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawnrutter/
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Hiring in a new city or international market?
The success of a search is not determined by where your recruiter’s desk happens to be. It comes down to whether they understand your sector, know the relevant companies and talent pools, and can engage the right people.
With deep specialism in capital markets and investment technology, a global vendor market mapped across the major financial centres, and an established international network built over more than 25 years, Excelsior Search helps clients identify, approach and attract high-calibre talent across the Americas, EMEA and APAC.
If you are planning an international hire or expanding into a new market, get in touch to discuss the talent landscape and how we can help.
