Recent redundancies and a slump in hiring suggest that the downturn is beginning to bite in the back office. The fate of your career in operations currently depends on which part of the bank you are supporting.

“We’ve seen a lot of layoffs in operations, with more candidates coming onto the market in the last few weeks as banks make cuts to non-revenue-generating roles,” says Rob Guilbert, a consultant at recruiters Michael Page.

Job opportunities in operations are linked to how the corresponding section of the front office is performing. Sectors where revenue is badly affected by the global financial turmoil have had to trim their support staff.

“For example, OTC derivatives volumes have been significantly affected and most investment banks are downsizing their OTC operations, so it is unlikely there will be growth in this sector over the next six months,” says Liz Mellor, senior operations consultant, Morgan McKinley.

And the bad ops news doesn’t stop there. “The credit crunch has impacted prime broking and equity finance businesses, so demand for stock loan and prime broking operations/client services candidates is expected to slow,” says Mellor.

But some sectors are showing signs of hope. Mellor explains: “Exchange traded derivatives have fared reasonably well despite the current economic climate and so, where trading volumes have remained consistent, opportunities still exist for strong operations candidates.”

Guilbert says the domestic banks have more back-office roles available than their international counterparts, but they prefer to fill them internally, so advertised vacancies are declining.

Mellor adds that while recruitment has slowed in the Big Four banks, their support functions are usually less market-facing and often have wider remits than those within investment banks. “Therefore, some domestic retail banks have continued to hire operations professionals, particularly within areas such as superannuation and insurance, which have been less exposed to the turbulent financial markets,” she says.

According to Guilbert, the market is flooded with good ops candidates who’ve been laid off through no fault of their own and have good skill sets. In the current market, candidates are happy to accept the same salary, or even a small cut. “They are more flexible and don’t want to be ruled out on the basis of cost any more,” he adds.