Mark Brincat

HR tech company, SHL, provide its customers with talent acquisition and talent management to create a skilled, motivated and energised workforce.

With technology at the core of the company, Mark Brincat, the company’s Chief Technology Officer, was brought to SHL to spearhead innovation to enable SHL transformation into a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform. 

In his role, Brincat manages a global team that spreads across the US, UK and India. Reflecting on his career from an engineer in Malta to CTO for SHL, Brincat says: “I started my career as an engineer in Malta and continued pushing myself, moving through the ranks from engineer to architect to heading up enterprise architecture for the UK border agency. And then I moved into media where I had roles with the BBC, the Telegraph, and eventually being the CTO at The Economist. Three years ago, I decided to [make] the move from media into HR tech and that's how I got my role at SHL.”

Moving from his home country of Malta over to the UK to pursue his career in technology, Brincat explained this move was part of his personal growth journey: “In Malta, I worked on some really complex projects, one of which was the redesign of the Malta’s income tax system. After that, I wanted to explore and push myself, I moved into the UK in 2001. It was kind of an experiment in a way, an experiment that lasted now 20 odd years.”

Having worked in several different leadership roles across different industries, Brincat has had the time to develop his own methods to guide a team to ensure they work effectively. 

Describing his leadership style as authentic and pace-setting, Brincat says: “I do value emotional intelligence (EQ), but alongside the EQ is taking accountability for the team, driving accountability. I consider myself honest and open, I like leading by example.”

Although his role at SHL has given him the opportunity to manage the largest team in his career, the unflappable CTO explained this did not faze him and he looks to build the next level of leadership around himself to further support the company driving change and transformation.

“In all my roles, I always looked at the critical capabilities I needed to have behind me as part of my leadership team to help me execute,” he says.

Brincat added: “In each organisation, it's been slightly different, it will be different because it’s surrounded by the context of what you're trying to change.”

This ability to adapt to new industries has been a strength of Brincat's. Working across multiple industries meant, Brincat explains, he had to work out how to “apply my technical background, but within different business frameworks.”

“That was a journey for me to be able to transform. I think now I have a much deeper appreciation as to how to understand the drivers and the motivations that are behind an execution. So, I don't purely focus on the technology enablement, but actually the business change and the market change that we want to apply,” he continues.

As he progresses in his career, Brincat is determined to continually better himself to support SHL as they transition to a SaaS platform. “I want to further develop the ability to help identify the right candidates with the right potential and identify those hidden gems within your organisation to help you transform,” he explains.

Brincat concludes: “If I look at myself and the skills I want to develop in the next few years, it is more towards business skills. It's more towards continuing the growth in that product angle and really understanding the subscription economy and the whole operationalisation of solutions going to market.”

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