Banking bounces back

Whatever other difficulties the banking sector may still be facing, the good news is that hirings in the sector are growing again. Graham Simons looks at what that means for recruiters

Almost a year on from the autumn collapse of major banking institutions, recruiters are seizing upon emerging green shoots with some banks replenishing staffing levels and others even recruiting for recovery.

So far, so good. But what are the implications for sectors other than financial services? And does this mark a return to pre-recession levels of recruitment?

Stephen Gifford, chief economist at accountancy firm Grant Thornton told Recruiter, “We have gone through the worst of the downturn and now we are in a period of stabilisation until the end of the year, before a recovery at the end of this year and beginning of next year.”

Indications are that banking and financial specialists themselves are not the only professionals benefitting from the banks’ recruitment drives. When bankers are working, other workers are required.

“There is a half million working directly in banking. You could quadruple that figure if you take into account the other sectors that rely on banking for their work, whether that is legal, accounting right down to office cleaning and sandwich shops around the corner,” says a spokesperson for the British Banking Association.

Testifying to the resurgence of green shoots is Sean Zimdahl, chief executive at IT recruiter, Aston Carter, who told Recruiter that a number of their clients had recently stepped up the release of roles for filling. Emma McNamara, director at digital marketing staffing firm Propel says banking has fuelled an increased flow of vacant digital roles.

Steve King, director at Kings Pemanent Recruitment, who specialises in estate agent and mortgage adviser recruitment, told Recruiter that since March he has seen placements significantly rise with the bulk of estate agents running with ‘half mast’ staffing, adding that there is only so long they can manage with staffing for a quiet market, while Cornelius Smart, divisional manager at Fashion & Retail Personnel, says the fashion recruitment specialist has witnessed high-end retailers back on the recruitment trail with an upturn in vacancies coming through

Perhaps the most telling indicator of growing confidence in the sector is a renewed demand for in-house resourcing professionals. Andrew Mountney, managing director at Aspen Partners, told Recruiter: “The financial services sector is clearly hiring again. As a market, there is capacity there, there are big institutions. They are hiring in-house recruiters again.” He went on to say that banks typically were refilling roles that they had previously made redundant instead of creating new ones.

Mountney adds that current hires are of a stategic nature. “It is senior hires, management level, head of recruitment. The hardest area to find a role is for the delivery recruiter right now. Those are people are finding roles on contract basis rather than perm. You are tending to see them at management level and heads of recruiting.”

Recent surveys underscore the news that recruitment in banking is moving again. Vacancies for newly qualified accountants increased by 28% between Q1 and Q2, according to research by financial services recruiter Joslin Rowe. During June, Monster’s Employment Index showed that the number of new job vacancies within London’s financial services industry jumped by 20% versus the previous month. Stockbrokers increased recruitment by 77% between the first and second quarters of 2009, according to data from pre-employment screening firm Powerchex.

Richard Hoar, director at banking and finance recruiter Goodman Masson, told Recruiter that trading has seen a return to form over the past three or four months.

The strategy behind these hires varies from bank to bank, Hoar says. “We do a lot of work with Barclays Capital. They have not really stopped hiring. They have been hiring most of last year and most of this year. They remain in a reasonably strong position. They have managed to avoid the clutches of the government and are continuing to grow. They are hiring across areas like commodities and fixed income.

But Hoar says some banks are recruiting to replenish an understaffed workforce, following redundancies made in Autumn’s banking meltdown.
“You have got people like Morgan Stanley who we deal with that are hiring people in audit and risk. That was more to do with the fact that they were under headcount last year and they could not get sign-off from New York.”

“They have complex market positions and they need to hire people that understand those. Their best people, the authors of those complex positions have gone and they need someone equally as good to fill the gap.”

John Philpott, chief economist at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) confirms that the financial sector will play a key role in the UK’s recovery. “It is important for our trade performance. We trade quite a lot in financial services,” he says.

However, Philpott warns, “Even though the finance sector will recover, it is unlikely to be as big as it has been over the past couple of decades.”

Grant Thornton’s Gifford points out that the importance of thefinancial services sector in the current recession cannot be overestimated. “With previous recessions, in the 1980s and 1990s, they were manufacturing led.This sector [financial services] is important in this recession, as the financial services sector created the crisis in the first place,” he says.

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