Financial-services hiring is weighted towards higher-skilled, regulated roles, and that shapes how long each hire realistically takes. In the financial-services sector, recruitment was generally for Regulatory Qualification Framework (RQF) 6+ roles, rather than RQF 3 to 5 GOV.UK - Temporary Shortage List: Stage 2 report.
That matters because the level of a role drives its timeline. RQF 6+ broadly maps to degree-level and above, so the people you need tend to be experienced, in demand and often already employed. When you set a time to hire from that evidence, you plan for a market where the right person is harder to reach, not for a quick, high-volume fill.
Start with the roles actually in front of you. Because financial-services recruitment skews to RQF 6+ roles rather than RQF 3 to 5, your pipeline is likely to feature specialists: analysts, compliance and risk professionals, qualified accountants and regulated advisers GOV.UK - Temporary Shortage List: Stage 2 report.
These dynamics change how you plan. Higher-skilled roles mean longer sourcing, more thorough assessment and more competition for each person. So rather than lifting a single sector-wide average, build your target from the live evidence of the specific roles you're filling and the level they sit at.
Set your time to hire from evidence, not habit. Map each role to its qualification level, look at how the regulated market is behaving for that role today, then set stage-by-stage targets: time to shortlist, time to first interview, time to offer. When one stage slips, you can see exactly where and fix it.
Treat time to hire as a living figure. Review it against each completed hire, update your stage targets as the market shifts, and let the evidence from real roles keep your plan honest.
We built Reed.ai to help you act on that evidence fast. We search a database of 15 million candidates, rank a shortlist in under 30 seconds, contact matched candidates in under a minute and can book an interview in under three minutes. Our recruitment agent manages recruitment end to end for 8% on a successful hire, with no monthly fee and no upfront cost. Try us on your next finance role and see how quickly a strong shortlist takes shape.
