US
As we’ve pointed out on previous occasions, it’s not been a great start to the year for IT contractors working in investment banking, with firms’ new-found predilection for permanent recruitment meaning interim hiring has fallen by the wayside.
However, new figures from pre-employment monitoring firm Powerchex suggest they may have experienced a dramatic reversal of fortunes in June, with new job offers surging by 320% month-on-month and by 340% for the comparable period in 2009.
Alexandra Kelly, managing director of the firm, says this swell in demand is due to the release of new IT projects within investment banks, which may have been put on hold until it was clear what changes would be rolled out by the new government in the aftermath of the general election.
Powerchex’s figures obviously cannot be viewed as an absolute authority on all contractor job offers, but it has over 400 financial services clients which makes it a decent barometer of sentiment.
Its optimism is also shared by the latest quarterly report by IT in finance recruiters The JM Group, which suggests contractor rates have increased by nearly 20% in specialist areas due to counter offers.
Paul Elworthy, director, IT, banking and finance at Hudson – which does its own pre-employment screening – agrees that there’s more contractor hiring currently, but is sceptical that the increase has been so dramatic.
“We’re seeing more roles for business analysts and project managers across multiple business areas, as well as healthy demand within FX and commodities for application development positions,” he says. “However, permanent recruitment remains strong.”
So, assuming that contractor recruitment definitely is on the up, what might the reasons be?
It could simply be that, having indulged in an initial bought of permanent hiring due to new projects this year, investment banks have now identified finite roles that should be handled on a contract basis. It could even be that firms have exceeded their permanent headcount allocation, but still need more people on board.
Still, after a lukewarm crop of second quarter results from the US bulge bracket banks and a less confident outlook for the remainder of the year, cynics might suggest that appetite for permanent recruitment has been dampened, and contractors once again appear the more flexible option.
Hey IT contractor hiring in Investment banks can only go up – considering how it dropped so substantially during the crunch it’s picking up again – that’s how people management usually works isn’t it…? Contractors are the first out the door when the sh*t hits the fan?