A new type of hiring war is being fought in Asia as banks put their retrenching days behind them. But it’s not a mass market, genY-chasing rush to recruit; it’s more a slow struggle to snare the skills of senior bankers.

Let’s survey the battleground in six simple steps…

Stage one: Hiring has slowly picked up since Q2 as a degree of confidence returns to the market, but recruitment is focused on getting top talent for senior and/or critical roles. Banks want people who can hit the ground running and bring in the money from day one.

Stage two: They are unlikely to find these high-performing, revenue-generating, experienced candidates amongst the ranks of the unemployed. So banks are trying to take talent from each other.

Stage three: Firms that are the victims of this attempted poaching can’t afford to turn a blind eye to it. Banks cut to the bone in 2008 and in Q1 this year, so the staff they’ve kept on are seen as critical to their business.

Stage four: The growing desire to poach (stage two) is thus being pitted against the need to retain (stage three) to create a highly-charged employment market in the upper echelons of banking.

Stage five: As a result, hiring banks are beginning to boost their salaries for new senior recruits, with increments of 20 to 40 per cent now on the table.

Stage six: And, as we recently reported, their rivals are increasingly hitting back with generous counter offers in a bid to stop a brain drain. Recent pay hikes for existing employees at banks like Merrill Lynch and UBS are also pre-emptive strikes against poaching. And Goldman Sach’s early (and highly publicised) announcement about bumper potential bonuses in 2010 has “retention” written all over it.

It’s not exactly a new employment boom, but any fight is better than no fight. Right?