Steve Baker
Head of Recruitment
Why did you choose to join Icon?
I decided to join Icon as an opportunity arose to help build and shape the recruitment function for an organisation that sounded, fun, exciting and entering a period of fast growth. The role was quite unique in comparison to most as there was a real blank canvas to create company wide strategy and process while still managing the candidate engagement side of things that I love so much. Icon are big believers in their people and as long as you have the tenacity to thrive they’ll give you a helping hand a along the way and watch your vision come to life.
What do you do at Icon?
As Icon’s Head of Recruitment I am responsible for the hiring of our great people across all areas of the business. For most, I’ll be the first point of contact at Icon and will see hopefuls through the various rounds of interview before ultimately offering and onboarding them into the company.
What is your favourite part about working at Icon?
THE FOOD! Only kidding…. The people more than anything. We’re a well-oiled machine and everyone has mutual respect for each other. Team spirit and morale in the office is always high and we group together as often as we can to celebrate success, discuss our future and most importantly, enjoy each other’s company. The food and endless treats are really good too…
Why did you choose to join Icon?
Having worked for very large FIs and IT solution vendors, who repeatedly went through the same set of challenges due to legacy issues and lack of innovation, I believed it was time to make the shift from the Jurassic world to the digital one. I wanted to work at a place where my contributions could make a visible difference while staying in sync with the evolving FinTech landscape. Being a niche player in payments and enterprise architecture, I saw Icon as a place where I could leverage my existing payments knowledge and learn from some of the best minds in the industry. My decision to join Icon bore fruit when they decided to build a completely new instant payments processing platform with cutting edge technology and chose “me” as the first analyst in the new team to provide crucial SME knowledge and business analysis.
What drives you in your work?
It wouldn’t be an understatement to say Icon has some of the best people from the payments and IT industry. Working with such colleagues is a highly enriching learning experience as it brings the best out of me. In pure IT terms this is equivalent to the ‘Continuous Integration & Continuous Delivery (CI/CD)’ process i.e. one day I am learning about a new instant payments schemes and regulations, the very next day I am actually guiding clients on how to support these new features through their payments platforms. It is this opportunity to shape some of the conversations happening in the FinTech work is what drives me to work.
What is your favourite part about working at Icon?
My favourite part of being at Icon is the challenge of working in a variety of roles across different geographies and clients. I have been engaging with clients all the way from South America to Europe to Southeast Asia.
What do you enjoy when you are not working?
I am a big fan of travel & photography. Also, being from Asia, I really love late night drives to the corner food stall. These days my favourite pastime is to spend time with my infant daughter, who I think is a born Yogini, as she has been the most effective person at teaching me patience and focus.