Matching real skills to real opportunities - putting capability to work

Blue Mango takes a skills-led view of work and opportunity in financial services. Instead of relying on job titles and sector-specific experience, we focus on the capabilities that actually drive performance and resilience.

This perspective allows organisations to see beyond conventional hiring criteria - and enables experienced professionals to contribute in ways that are often overlooked.

Blue Mango works with financial services companies that recognise the need to move towards skills-based recruitment and the limits of current hiring models in getting there.

We focus on helping organisations rethink how skills and capability are defined, recognised and matched to opportunity.

Our work explores:

  • How skills-based recruitment could widen access to experienced and overlooked capability

  • Where job-title-led models systematically exclude capable people

  • How more inclusive approaches could support, productivity, innovation, resilience and workforce sustainability

  • The role technology can play in enabling these shifts over time

The critical challenge: an ever-widening skills gap

Financial services faces a growing skills gap. Organisations report persistent difficulty accessing the capabilities they need - particularly in areas such as data, technology, cyber and product. At the same time large numbers of capable professionals are unable to access meaningful opportunity.

This is especially true for later-career professionals who are increasingly filtered out by role definitions that prioritise job titles and narrowly comparable experience.

That’s why we set up Blue Mango.

70%

of financial services roles have a proficiency gap

160,000

Workers estimated in the sector require upskilling

68%

specify lack of tech capabilities is inhibiting their ability to transform

78%

of UK Financial Services CEOs report skills shortages within their organisation

A skills-led approach to workforce capability

We make it easy for hiring managers and recruitment teams to find top talent outside of traditional search parameters, with an approach that prioritises skills over job titles and industry experience.

  • Skills-first talent mapping

    While others filter by job titles, we map the real capabilities driving performance. Our technology identifies the precise skills needed for each role - from technical expertise to critical behavioural skills like empathy and coaching. We then find exceptional people who have these capabilities, regardless of their industry background.

  • Smart skills matching

    With data showing that 70% of industry roles have proficiency gaps, guesswork simply isn't good enough. That’s why our advanced algorithms analyse hundreds of skill indicators to validate capabilities before hire, ensuring precise alignment between talent and role requirements. As a result, employers can benefit from higher performance, better retention, and material overall cost savings per successful hire.

  • Untapped talent access

    Through strategic partnerships with overlooked talent communities, we’re building exclusive access to high-capability professionals. From tech veterans to career transitioners, we connect businesses in the financial sector with diverse talent that brings fresh thinking and proven skills. With marginalised groups often outperforming in financial services hiring—yet being underrepresented in applications—we're proving that talent can often come from areas that are frequently overlooked.

About

Blue Mango was founded by Chris Turpin, a former financial services executive with long experience working within regulated institutions and alongside industry bodies focused on skills, workforce development and inclusion.

Through a combination of executive roles and more recent advisory work with technology-enabled social impact initiatives, a consistent pattern became clear: large numbers of capable professionals are overlooked for meaningful roles - not because of a lack of talent, but because prevailing hiring models struggle to recognise and value transferable skills.

Blue Mango exists as a working case study to explore this mismatch, and to consider how skills-led approaches could better align organisational need with human capability over time.