How to Hire for Roles That Don't Exist Yet (But Soon Will)

How to Hire for Roles That Don't Exist Yet

It was three days ago that a CEO friend texted me at 10pm: "Just lost my Head of Quantum Computing to a competitor. Need to replace ASAP." I couldn't help laughing. Three years ago, his company didn't even have that role. Five years ago, hardly anyone did.

The breakneck evolution of the fintech landscape means I'm increasingly helping clients recruit for positions they can barely articulate. The job specs arrive half-baked, the compensation benchmarks non-existent, and the candidate profiles speculative at best.

Companies waiting for perfect clarity before hiring will always be playing catch-up. The most successful firms I work with are recruiting not just for today's needs, but for tomorrow's unknowns.

The real challenge: how do you hire for roles that don't properly exist yet, and identify people who'll thrive in positions we're still inventing?

Stop Fixating on Job Titles

I've watched countless hiring managers get tangled in terminology. They want a "Director of Tokenisation" or "VP of Embedded Finance" because that's what their competitors have. But job titles are lagging indicators. By the time a role has a standardised title, the innovation has already happened.

Look at the fintech firms currently dominating London. They didn't succeed by recruiting standard roles - they identified capability gaps and hired people who could fill them, regardless of what their business cards said.

A client I placed a "Digital Assets Strategist" with last month told me they'd originally planned to hire a traditional payments specialist. But after our discussions about where their industry was heading, they realised they needed someone who understood both traditional finance and decentralised models. The job title came last, not first.

Focus on Problems, Not Positions

Start by identifying the problems your organisation will need to solve in 12-18 months. Not today's fires - the challenges on the horizon.

The best recruitment briefs I receive aren't based on existing job descriptions. They outline business challenges: "We need someone who can help us navigate regulatory changes around AI in financial services" or "We're looking for someone who can build bridges between our data science team and financial controllers."

Problem-focused recruitment forces you to think about capabilities rather than credentials. It stops you from simply copying what worked in the past.

The Transferable Skills Revolution

The fintech candidates most in demand on my books right now aren't specialists in narrow fields - they're versatilists with strong foundations and adaptive capabilities.

When placing developers at London startups, I'm seeing a clear pattern: the engineers who thrive aren't necessarily those with perfect skill matches today, but those who demonstrate learning velocity.

Just last week, I placed a backend developer with limited fintech experience into a leading crypto infrastructure company. The hiring manager initially wanted someone with specific blockchain experience, but after meeting this candidate - who demonstrated exceptional problem-solving skills and had taught himself three new programming languages in the past year - they adjusted their requirements.

Six months from now, specific technical skills will have evolved anyway. The ability to acquire new knowledge trumps point-in-time expertise.

The Skills That Actually Matter

After placing hundreds of candidates in evolving tech roles, I've identified patterns in what makes someone successful in positions that are still being defined:

• Learning agility - How quickly can they acquire new knowledge and apply it?
• Systems thinking - Can they see how different parts interconnect?
• Comfort with ambiguity - Do they panic or thrive when the roadmap is unclear?
• Critical reasoning - Can they separate signal from noise in complex situations?
• Collaborative problem-solving - Do they build on others' ideas or work in isolation?

These meta-skills aren't typically featured prominently on CVs. You need to design interview processes that reveal them.

Rethinking Assessment

The standard interview process is woefully inadequate for identifying people who'll succeed in emerging roles. Competency questions based on past experiences tell you about yesterday, not tomorrow.

I've had the most success with clients who use scenario-based assessments. Rather than asking "Tell me about a time when...", they present candidates with situations they haven't encountered before and assess their thinking process.

One fintech client asks candidates to respond to a scenario where a new regulation suddenly impacts their business model. There's no right answer - they're looking at how candidates structure their thinking, what questions they ask, and how they'd mobilise resources.

Another uses collaborative problem-solving exercises where candidates work with existing team members on challenges the company expects to face in the next year.

These approaches reveal adaptive capabilities that traditional interviews simply can't.

Building Assessment Partnerships

Your best assets in identifying talent for future roles are the people already navigating the bleeding edge of your industry. I always recommend clients involve their most forward-thinking team members in recruitment.

A recent client brought their Head of Innovation into interviews for what was ostensibly a traditional compliance role. Why? Because they knew regulatory technology was evolving so rapidly that they needed someone who could collaborate on new approaches, not just implement existing ones.

This partnership approach creates richer assessment contexts and helps bridge the gap between current capabilities and future needs.

Creating Magnetism in Uncertainty

The best candidates for emerging roles have options. Lots of them. If you're recruiting for positions that don't fully exist yet, you need to create gravity that pulls exceptional talent toward you.

The firms I see winning these candidates offer three things:

1. A compelling direction - Not rigid role definitions, but a clear sense of the problems they're solving and why they matter
2. Growth infrastructure - Demonstrable commitment to learning and development
3. Decision space - The autonomy to shape the role as it evolves

I recently worked with a candidate who turned down a £20K higher offer because the role I presented offered the chance to build something from the ground up. The money mattered, but the opportunity to define an emerging function mattered more.

The companies that consistently attract versatile talent make uncertainty feel like opportunity, not chaos.

Stop Hiring for "Culture Fit"

If you're building capabilities for the future, the worst thing you can do is replicate your current culture. I see too many clients unconsciously filtering for familiarity rather than potential.

Future-focused organisations hire for culture addition, not culture fit. They actively seek perspectives and experiences that challenge their existing approaches.

A client who's now leading the embedded finance space deliberately hired people from outside traditional banking for their payments innovation team. These "outsiders" asked questions that insiders wouldn't, challenging assumptions that were limiting innovation.

This doesn't mean ignoring values alignment - shared purpose and ethics matter enormously. But it does mean recognising that sameness is the enemy of adaptation.

Starting Before You're Ready

The reality of recruitment in 2026 is that perfect candidates for emerging roles don't exist. The job market simply hasn't had time to produce people with extensive experience in fields that are still developing.

The most successful companies I work with have stopped waiting for perfect matches. Instead, they identify high-potential individuals with adjacent skills and create deliberate development paths.

One fintech client has created a six-month "capability bridge" programme for promising hires who lack specific experience. They pair new recruits with experienced team members, provide structured learning opportunities, and gradually transition responsibilities as competence grows.

This approach requires patience and investment, but it creates a sustainable talent pipeline rather than a perpetual recruitment gap.

The Next Horizon

If your organisation is serious about future-proofing its workforce, recruitment is only one piece of the puzzle. The most forward-thinking companies are reimagining their entire talent approach.

I'm seeing increased adoption of capability academies, internal talent marketplaces, and skill-based progression paths. These structures create environments where adaptability is rewarded and development is continuous.

The London-based fintechs showing the strongest growth are treating talent as a dynamic system rather than a series of fixed positions. They're creating fluid role boundaries, measuring skill acquisition across the organisation, and building learning into everyday work.

But that's a conversation for another article.

Hiring for roles that don't exist yet is about building an approach to talent that embraces uncertainty. It means selecting for potential rather than perfection, and creating environments where that potential develops into capabilities that don't yet exist.

Tomorrow's key roles won't be filled by people who perfectly match yesterday's profiles. They'll be filled by people with the fundamental capacities to adapt, learn, and create as the landscape evolves.

If nobody on your team is thinking about this, that's the first role worth creating.

---

Amara Okafor specialises in placing software engineers and product managers in London's fintech sector. Her data-driven approach to recruitment helps companies build technical teams that drive innovation. Connect with her through The OHub to discuss your hiring strategy for emerging roles.