UK
The financial services job market is improving. The summer months proved a watershed; after two quarters of solid revenues and profits, banks are daring to recruit. By all accounts, 2010 will be big. But it won’t be big enough to undo the damage that’s been done since 2008.
This is because, as we’ve pointed out previously, banks have eliminated many, many more jobs than they’ve so far created.
Headcount at Goldman, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse increased in the third quarter, but JPMorgan continued to cut staff. Net, at least another 2,800 jobs have gone from investment banks in the first nine months of the year. UBS may have added 434 people this year, but it’s eliminated 7,000 since the first quarter of 2008.
The upshot is an increasingly desperate cohort of former bankers who are frozen out of the market and struggling to get back in. One recruiter who works with junior candidates across front office positions had 1,000 emails from candidates after he returned from the Christmas break in 2008. Last weekend alone, he received 300.
At the same time, banks are being increasingly choosy about who they take on.
There are still a lot of people on the market, but these are not necessarily the ones in demand. Everyone’s chasing top rated candidates, and generally speaking these are the ones that weren’t let go,” says Julia Tustian at recruitment firm Shepherd Little. “If banks are only hiring one or two people for a team, they are being very selective .”
This is confirmed by the recruiter with the 300 emails: “The job to candidate ratio has improved, but client expectations are very high,” he says.
Patience is virtuous
Nevertheless, some people are still getting jobs. Michael Moran, managing director of career coaching and outplacement company Fairplace, says the redundant bankers he assists typically move into new and comparable positions within 12-13 weeks. Morgan McKinley’s recent ‘employment monitor,’ suggests (mostly back and middle office) candidates are finding roles within seven weeks.
If you’ve been frozen out of the market for longer than this, there’s no magic bullet. The key to getting back in is generally seen as networking, thereby sidestepping both recruiters and HR. One career coach says the long term investment banking unemployed are being treated abominably by both: “It’s appalling and heartbreaking. High performing, long serving people are being treated with profound insensitivity by young HR people who are putting them into pigeon holes.”
Too many in the first place, think coal mining in the West Midlands 30 year ago or autoworkers in Detroit. I guess you need to think where your talents can be best applied otherwise or where your other interests might lie. You should have transferable skills.
No point waiting around for jobs that won’t/shouldn’t come back.
I’m sure the public is behind us Investment Bankers. Hahaha.
Classic.
“High performing, long serving people” Translation = middle aged. Reminds me of a documentary I saw, where people are executed when they reach 30! Truly shocking…
I cannot anymore read your useless articles.
As an ex-tarder, i advise all you in trading & sales try to do sth real and creative in your career.
You care only abt your bonuses, without understanding most of you how the real economy works.
For one more time this fake liquidity covers the huge problems of the world system. The next disaster is close and then you ll start crying again!!
If u want to make real money, go out and face the competition instead of hiding back of your desks!!
Most of you cannot even run a mini-market because your mind always focus on speculation…nothing else!!!
ummm Geo maybe start by learning the English language? :-)
So I guess at 57 with a life time of experience I have to give up sorry but one day I hope there may be an opportunity even if it means in a post room somewhere.
Bless the agencies who dont give a thought to the older or even younger experience because lets hope they are where we are now, sooner the better.
agree with point ref “candidates to real jobs ratio”
Advertised jobs are being applied to by huge numbers of people, many of whom have some very relevant skillsets.it can be fairly upsetting to be a part of it. My advice…if you are in a role.keep your head down as there are a plethora of people who could/would take it for significantly less than you
Geo, your point might be valid, but your target seems to be Sarah. Why not aim your fire at those beastly ‘tarders’…
Plenty of candidates out there who still don’t get it.
If you loose you job in financial services at ANY time between 2008 – 2010/11 you will have a real fight to get back to same level that you exited on.
@ Egghead – I don’t think Sarah was born yesterday….she knows exactly what you boys are trying to do here. Nice try though.
This is really depressing
More like beastly ‘recruiters’
Geo… You should really sort your life out!!!
“If you loose you job in financial services at ANY time between 2008 – 2010/11 you will have a real fight to get back to same level that you exited on.”
Most people are realistic enough to take a sideways/backwards step in this climate, particularly if they have been out of work for a while. This is not much use if, like me, you are ‘overqualified’ for every role you apply for.
“Reminds me of a documentary I saw, where people are executed when they reach 30! ”
You’re thinking of Logan’s Run. I’m happy to confirm its science fiction, not a documentary. And tip of the day, if you’re getting old, retrain as a financial advisor/’wealth manager’, those sort of customers like sensible looking people with grey hair.
You will find it very difficult to find a job unless you can spell. No one has ‘loosed’ their jobs around here. Losers.
Have to agree with the last paragraph. With 10+ years trading experience and $100mio pnl, I’ve had 25yr old would-be-recruiters tell me I’m out of the market too long (I left in 2008) and HR question my “motivation”. Had thought headhunters would broaden my exposure to the market but have since given up on that and am focusing on networking. I think this cycle has been particularly tough – too many good people let go in a broad industry contraction – not the usual bottom 10%.
@Sarah… we got this really!!..change topic please…2010 better than 2009 but not as good as……also i have noticed some reciclying articles among eFC sites recently ( AU / French)…hard time for everybody i guess.??
@spelling B & company….who cares about point out the spelling all the time…the main point is express a concept even if the english is not perfect as mine for example…can you write in a different language as good as a lot of foreigners people writing here??? don’t think so…
@Davros: Logan’s Run was fiction? I feel such a goose! But The Sixth Sense, that _definitely_ happened…
@William: if Sarah knows exactly what I’m trying to do here, I wish she’d tell me. I just thought Geo’s comment: “I cannot anymore read your useless articles,” was a little harsh.
May be I should be a porn star. Thats a trade that finds its feet always in the right place, get paid for having a good time. with viagra on my side I can do a 12hr shift
what about technology crowd?
“High performing, long serving people are being treated with profound insensitivity by young HR people who are putting them into pigeon holes.”
You are in a pigeon hole. You’re old.
God, I bet you’re as old as my Dad, and we all know how useless he is, can’t even change the batteries in a remote control, how on earth can he cope with these new fangled computer ideas.
“I cannot anymore read your useless articles.
As an ex-tarder, i advise all you in trading & sales try to do sth real and creative in your career.
You care only abt your bonuses, without understanding most of you how the real economy works.
For one more time this fake liquidity covers the huge problems of the world system. The next disaster is close and then you ll start crying again!!
If u want to make real money, go out and face the competition instead of hiding back of your desks!!
Most of you cannot even run a mini-market because your mind always focus on speculation…nothing else!!!”
You’d score some major points in Scrabble with that jumble of words.
@ silverfox
Totally agree. No one wants an old boy wandering round the trading floor in his slippers complaining its too cold
Yes it is frustrating. I am 60, with 40 years of international finance experience, my last position being the CFO of a small West Yorkshire company, which could not raise working capital, and prior to that 17 years with a large Middle Eastern central Bank.
I have applied for so many positions, and yes I am realistic, in that I have applied in the range of 20,000 to 150,000 ( my last base was 125,000+). I have worked in the UK, US, and the Middle East, but unfortunately, having spent 17 years in the Middle East, networking in the UK is much more difficult for me.
I realy do think that it is my age, as I do have the experience, and I do keep looking on a daily basis. BUT, yes it is very demoralising, and at times I do wonder ( being human) what I should do next ?
Any suggestions greatly appreciated.
Regards
abu_dhabi@hotmail.co.uk
First poster Rob’s right. The finance sector was born of a bubble and people flooded in. It was the same in the IT sector and ‘Y2K’ where everyone and his dog ‘got into IT’. When bubbles burst there will be fallout.
If you lost your banking gig in 2008 or even beginning of 2009, it is time to face the truth and bite the bullet: you will probably NEVER work in the industry again. The tragedy for most of these outcasts is that they have no portable skills that can be applied to other vocations. Wheeling and speculation is all they know and worse, they are addicted to the highs that only financial markets can bring. Frankly, most bankers are useless outside the cozy confines of an investment bank. It is tough to imagine anyone who ever pulled down 6 grand a year made homeless but it will soon happen and the news will be sad.
Well Mr abu_dhabi, I guess you have a number of choices.
firstly, stay at home and bake cakes.
secondly, keep looking for work whilst staying at home etc
thirdly, think about doing something “for charity” ie to get you out the house and away from the cake baking.
fourthly, apply for all the Argos, M&S, christmassy part time jobs (you won’t get them cos there’s thousands of other untrained people going for them) and bake cakes whilst waiting.
fifthly, abandon all hope, acknowledge you won’t get another job and “retire”.
oh, and you won’t get any unemployment benefit after 6 months cos you’ve too much in savings/your wife works/you’ve no children.
Relax and be happy.
Reading all this is making me realise how hopeless this country now is – we’ve masses of talent with many years of experience (and don’t tell me experience is a disadvantage which is the usual line!) and we’re instead giving jobs to arrogant idiots who have absolutely no idea how to deal with hard times .
I’m heartened by the comments about how apallingly ‘older’ (I’m in my 40′s) candidates and those who have been out for a long time (my employer closed for business early in the crisis so nothing to do with me or profitability of my busienss area) as I’ve been told so much and for so long how useless I am and how my experience is irrelevant and my Cv is awful that I’ve begun to believe it. my suspicion is that this line is taken by people who are either so deluded as to believe they are infallible or by people who are so scared the same awful fate might happen to them that they have to make it into the fault of those who are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Life is pretty random and hopefully some of those who have done severe damage to the morale of those who have been unlucky will one day experience the wrecking of their entire lives too. Then see what they say ?
I’d like to know more about the profile of the redundant bankers that M Moran assists and sees typically move into new and comparable positions within 12-13 weeks ? I think outplacement companies start to dneigrate and ‘problemise’ those that don’t get new jobs quickly so that they can say it’s the candidates’ faults – hence continuing to burnish the outplacment company’s record of ‘success’. Well, we’re all in the business of marketing but when it begins to seriously damage the morale and lives of those who are already in a difficult situation, it becomes morally questionable.
@Egghead: Documentary? Do you mean Logan’s Run?!
“Patience is virtuous”? Is this ‘Sarah’ actually on planet earth or on her ‘commission based’ Earth bias? Funny how she seems to focus on the prime brokerage market hey? The head hunters do not look for those that are ‘OVER QUALIFIED’, irrespective of the systems used, technological and practical enterprises.
Does that recruiter provide you with feed back ( good or ill?)
Does that recruiter provide you with how you can best embellish your CV for the role that you are seeking?
Does that recruiter at least try and establish you back in the market?
All the above answers are probably no.
That is when all of you need to do a benchmarking excerise upon ‘RECRUITERS’ because they are useless at the end of the day are only after commission.
@Nick – Funny. I didn’t notice myself focusing on the prime brokerage market.
“Patience is virtuous”? Is this ‘Sarah’ actually on planet earth or on her ‘commission based’ Earth bias? Funny how she seems to focus on the prime brokerage market hey? The head hunters do not look for those that are ‘OVER QUALIFIED’, irrespective of the systems used, technological and practical enterprises.
Does the recruiter provide you with feed back ( good or ill?) – No.
Does the recruiter provide you with how you can best embellish your CV for the role that you are seeking? No.
Does that recruiter at least try and establish you back in the market?
All the above answers are probably no.
The so called recruiters / head hunters don’t give a toss unless there is substanial money in it for them – so best go to comapnies directly and get out the middle man who does you no favours.
@Essjay – I strongly suspect you of being Nick in disguise.