Economic shocks are not the rare black swans they once were. In the past fifteen years alone, companies have weathered the global financial crisis, Brexit, the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, supply chain breakdowns, labour shortages, and sustained inflation. In such an environment, long-term strategic planning becomes harder, and business continuity depends more than ever on one defining characteristic: agility.
While agility often conjures images of product development sprints or shifting business models, it must also be a hiring priority. Building agile teams — those capable of adapting rapidly to change and uncertainty — is now essential to organisational resilience. In this context, recruitment professionals and senior leaders alike must shift their focus. Instead of hiring for stability, firms must hire for adaptability. Instead of ticking off static job requirements, they must look for dynamic potential.
This article explores how to embed agility into recruitment strategy, how to identify agile talent, and how organisations can future-proof their teams through adaptive leadership and resilient workforce structures.
The Business Case for Agility
Agility is not a buzzword. Research from McKinsey & Company found that agile organisations outperform their non-agile peers in both stability and dynamism, enabling better financial results and employee engagement (McKinsey, 2020). When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, firms that had invested in cross-functional teams, digital talent, and adaptive working models responded more effectively to the crisis. They redeployed staff quickly, shifted to remote service delivery, and maintained client trust under pressure.
Financial services firms in particular face a dual challenge. Not only must they respond to global economic volatility, but they must also do so under intense regulatory scrutiny. Risk, compliance, and technology requirements shift rapidly. Customer expectations are no longer fixed. Traditional hiring models — focused on deep specialisation and static job descriptions — no longer match the pace of change.
Agile hiring, therefore, becomes a strategic imperative. It is not just about finding the right person for today, but the right person for tomorrow’s challenges — even if those challenges are not yet known.
What Does an Agile Team Look Like?
An agile team is not simply one that works quickly. True agility refers to a team’s ability to adapt to external change, internal reorganisation, or emerging market conditions while maintaining performance and cohesion.
Characteristics of agile teams include:
Cross-functionality: Agile teams draw on multiple disciplines. In financial services, this could mean compliance professionals with technical knowledge, or investment managers with ESG expertise.
Psychological safety: A team culture where members feel comfortable voicing ideas, testing assumptions, and making mistakes without fear of penalty is essential. Google’s Project Aristotle highlighted psychological safety as the single most important factor in high-performing teams.
Continuous learning: Agile teams are open to feedback and commit to upskilling. This means prioritising curiosity and growth mindset during recruitment.
Empowered decision-making: Rather than waiting for top-down instructions, agile teams have the autonomy to act and respond to changes in real time.
These traits do not appear by chance. They must be embedded through hiring, onboarding, leadership modelling, and ongoing development.
Hiring for Potential, Not Just Credentials
In volatile markets, job descriptions can become outdated in months. Hiring purely for past experience risks short-sightedness. Agile hiring requires identifying individuals with the capacity to adapt, learn, and problem-solve in unfamiliar territory.
The shift is from credentials to capabilities.
Key attributes to assess include:
Learning agility: The ability to quickly acquire and apply new skills in changing contexts. According to Korn Ferry, learning agility is a top predictor of leadership success in uncertain environments.
Resilience: Candidates who have thrived in ambiguity, rebounded from failure, or navigated significant organisational change often demonstrate higher adaptability.
Collaboration and influence: In agile teams, influence without authority is key. Look for people who can work cross-functionally and communicate across silos.
Bias for action: Agile employees are not paralysed by imperfect information. They are comfortable making decisions quickly and adjusting course when needed.
Behavioural interviews, scenario-based assessments, and value-based hiring all help surface these qualities. Asking candidates to describe how they navigated a major setback or solved a problem outside their domain can be more revealing than querying technical proficiency.
Rethinking Job Descriptions and Structures
Agile hiring begins with agile job design. That means moving beyond rigid role definitions and opening up to more fluid, evolving responsibilities. Especially in finance, where regulation and technology are constantly shifting, firms need adaptable thinkers more than box-tickers.
To start:
Emphasise outcomes over tasks: Define roles based on what needs to be achieved, not only on how. This gives room for flexibility in methods and responsibilities.
Build talent mobility into structures: Allow employees to move laterally, take on temporary roles, or participate in cross-functional projects.
Use “T-shaped” skill profiles: Look for individuals with deep expertise in one area but broad knowledge across others. This enables collaboration and systems thinking.
In addition, internal talent marketplaces — where employees can express interest in short-term projects or stretch assignments — are growing in popularity. They allow companies to respond rapidly to shifting needs without always hiring externally, while also keeping current employees engaged and developing.
Adaptive Leadership: Creating the Right Conditions
Hiring agile talent is only one part of the equation. Leaders must also foster the right environment for that talent to thrive. In times of stress or disruption, employees will look to leadership for clarity, calm, and direction. Adaptive leadership — a concept developed by Ronald Heifetz — refers to the ability to mobilise people to tackle tough challenges and thrive in changing conditions.
Adaptive leaders demonstrate:
Emotional intelligence: They acknowledge uncertainty and manage their own response to stress.
Clarity of purpose: They connect shifting day-to-day tasks with larger goals and values.
Decentralised authority: They empower others to act and make decisions, rather than hoarding control.
Learning mindset: They actively seek feedback, experiment, and admit when a change in direction is needed.
Crucially, adaptive leaders model vulnerability and flexibility. By showing that it is acceptable to pivot, experiment, or acknowledge failure, they help set the tone for the broader team culture.
Firms that want to hire and retain agile talent must invest in leadership development that prioritises these capabilities. Traditional command-and-control management styles not only stifle innovation — they repel the very people agile firms need to attract.
Building a Culture That Supports Agility
Agile hiring does not work in isolation. It must be backed by a culture that supports flexibility, learning, and trust. The following elements are critical:
Feedback loops: Frequent, low-stakes feedback helps course-correct in real time and keeps teams aligned.
Transparent communication: In uncertain times, over-communicating purpose, direction, and expectations reduces confusion and empowers action.
Recognition and reward systems: Celebrating adaptability, experimentation, and learning sends the message that these are valued behaviours.
Inclusive culture: Diverse teams tend to be more creative and resilient. Building an inclusive hiring strategy widens the talent pool and fosters more innovative problem-solving.
At a structural level, policies must also support agility. That could include hybrid or flexible work models, continuous learning budgets, or agile performance management systems that prioritise development over static metrics.
Future-Proofing: Agility as an Ongoing Process
Hiring for agility is not a one-time fix. It is an ongoing commitment to building, developing, and evolving your workforce. As external conditions shift, so too must your internal capabilities. This requires:
Regular workforce planning: Assessing talent gaps and emerging skill needs annually or quarterly, not once every five years.
Scenario planning: Engaging talent leaders in strategic foresight exercises to identify possible futures and corresponding hiring priorities.
Talent analytics: Leveraging data to understand what roles, skills, and capabilities are adding the most value and which areas need investment.
Companies that embed agility into their hiring philosophy, leadership development, and organisational culture will be best positioned to navigate whatever the next shock brings — whether that is economic downturn, regulatory overhaul, or technological disruption.
The pace of change in today’s business world makes one thing clear: yesterday’s hiring strategy cannot solve tomorrow’s problems. Firms that want to survive and thrive must build teams that are not only skilled, but also agile, resilient, and forward-thinking.
This requires a mindset shift. It means hiring for potential, not only experience. It means structuring roles that evolve rather than ossify. It means leaders who empower rather than direct. And above all, it means creating an environment in which the ability to adapt is recognised as a core business asset.
Agile organisations do not merely respond to economic shocks — they anticipate them, learn from them, and come out stronger on the other side. The most effective way to build that kind of organisation is to begin with its people.
