KPMG’s Laura White discusses the tech consultancy roles on offer at the company and the hard and soft skills she looks for in candidates.
In spite of tech layoffs at some of the industry’s giants, there are still plenty of other companies and industries that are crying out for talent with knowledge of the tech sphere, including the finance and banking sector.
KPMG has a technology consulting practice and is often seeking technology leaders and consultants who can advise clients on their needs based on cutting-edge technology.
With this in mind, SiliconRepublic.com asked Laura White about what kind of tech roles the company is looking to fill, the skills they need and how KPMG attracts talent.
What are the kind of roles you hire for within the tech space?
Our technology consulting practice has doubled in the last three years and will continue to expand throughout 2023 with a variety of career opportunities available.
We are hiring data architects, who are creating and implementing long-term data strategies for customers, including data remediation, management, and governance policies as well as actionable business intelligence, digital and cloud technology consultants, who are developing and delivering cloud and digital strategies, roadmaps and transformation plans, technology project managers with experience in solution/business design, service management, risk and controls, applications and change management, and senior technology delivery managers.
What kind of candidates are you looking for?
There are a range of technical skillsets that we are looking for, including digital, cloud, blockchain, strategy and architecture, scaling agile, transformation delivery, and automation.
We want people to have a product mindset and we look for not only technical skills, but also how a person uses them.
The rapidly changing landscape within technology means that we need our employees to continuously keep up with developments in this area and have a willingness to try new methods.
The additional soft skills that we look for employees to combine with their technical skillset would include communication skills, stakeholder management, team work and an ability to solve complex problems.
A huge addition to our consulting practice over the last two years is the addition of Platform X, our digital innovation centre. It is one of 32 interconnected global innovation hubs within KPMG and it has become a phenomenal creative environment where our employees get to experience the best of their technical skills and soft skills combined.
With the ongoing tech skills shortage, how does KPMG attract talent?
In order for KPMG Ireland to continue to attract the best talent in the marketplace, it firstly requires a strong business partnership between our in-house recruitment team and our hiring managers across technology consulting to create and agree on an innovative recruitment strategy that can transcend across both niche and high-volume job vacancies.
This is a layered methodology that includes people-friendly job ads focusing on what we can offer candidates rather than what need from them, [such as] guest lecturer appearances/career fairs across relative technology disciplines, lots of innovative employer branding activity on social media including ‘day in the life’ videos of our employees, client testimonials, [and] Q&A videos on LinkedIn between the hiring managers and our in-house recruiters to provide further detail about our job vacancies at KPMG.
Headhunting is another skill used across many firms, particularly during a skills shortage. Through our strong relationships with our hiring managers, our recruitment team are able to have detailed discussions with our target audience about what they can expect from a career with KPMG. We offer informal conversations with hiring managers before they choose to commit to a formal interview.
What recruitment trends do leaders need to think about this year?
Although it has always been a focal point of my career within recruitment, the importance of employer branding has really come to the forefront over the last two years.
[This was] both during the pandemic and throughout the initial global wave of what was called ‘the great resignation’, when people were spending more time critically evaluating prospective employers online in order to obtain increased fulfilment in their career choices.
Throughout 2023, leaders will need to continue to focus on maintaining a strong culture that they can highlight externally and demonstrate internally.
KPMG has always had so much to offer in this space, whether it be our varied client experience, our focus on career progression, our collaboration across a number of important inclusion and diversity initiatives and continuing to enhance our hybrid working model that encourages people to truly connect and collaborate, be it in the office or at home.
Companies who have an in-house recruitment team should also focus on utilising this team as an extended business partner of their wider business.
Throughout my career in KPMG, I have been lucky that I have always been asked to sit at the boardroom table with our consulting senior directors and partners to not only collaborate on hiring strategies, but to equally listen and learn about the wider operational agenda.
The benefit of this knowledge sharing is that it equips the recruitment team to react to not only who they need to hire now, but who they may need to hire in six to 12 months’ time, allowing them to talent pool prospective new hires and therefore reduce their time to hire when asked to hire at short notice.
In return, hiring managers know that they have a collaborative partnership with their resourcing team in which they can depend on each other for market insights and a combined goal of further growing their respective practice area.
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