eFinancialCareers

2008 is over from a recruitment point of view. December is going to be a very dead month. I get the feeling that there is a general mood of exhaustion in the market and that many people are going to wait until the fresh new year before reassessing things. I did an ugly calculation this week. I divided the amount of cash I now have readily available by my monthly... Read more

I got a chilling reminder this week of just how competitive things are in the job market at the moment. Although I’m in a short-term position, I’m still applying for roles that are better suited to my long-term career aims. A headhunter sent me a job spec for a role in the structured credit risk team of a bank. It matched my skill set and experience very closely, and... Read more

The first few days back in an office felt extremely odd. After virtually six months of doing whatever I fancied, it feels strange to be tied to someone else's timetable. The role I find myself in is a bit more eat-what-you-kill than I’d been led to believe. It will probably provide a fairly volatile income, but at least it means I’m focusing on financial things again. The business is a new... Read more

A new era in the banking industry started this week. Globally, banks have been pumped full of government funds. Nationalisation is flavour of the month. What will government involvement or ownership mean for the banks? For banks with large investment banking arms, I would imagine the new owners will be keen to distance themselves from the kind of headlong risk-taking that has taken so much of the blame for the current... Read more

My quote of the week this week goes to Christian Noyer, the governor of the Bank of France, who stated that “there is no drama in front of us”. This leaves me thinking that either Mr Noyer has an exceptionally high drama threshold, or that he has lost all perception of what is going on in the world. The travelling credit crisis circus arrived this week in Europe. It seems... Read more

The last time the UK entered a recession I was sitting my GSCEs and the biggest threat to my lifestyle was poorly timed acne. Things this time are very different. Although it remains true that acne would be an unwelcome surprise, I am now facing challenges that have been entirely absent for much of my adult life. For the last few weeks, I’ve commented on a market in free... Read more

It’s all over. The end of the once-great investment banking industry came last week. The two remaining giants, Goldman and Morgan Stanley, were forced to accept a change of status; and Merrill and Lehman respectively merged with rivals and went bust. The speed with which the landscape has altered has been jaw dropping. Emerging from the rubble is a universal banking world. And even at these early stages, the foundations... Read more

I returned from holiday over the weekend to find the landscape of the investment banking business ravaged. Household names in the industry have disappeared overnight; others have thrown themselves together to try and stay alive. It appears that the credit crunch has mutated into financial Armageddon. For the first time since I lost my job in April, I a felt a cold clammy panic sweep across me. The industry that, for... Read more

Alistair Darling came out last week and said the UK was in the grip of the biggest downturn in 60 years. Mr Darling must wish he had been somewhere else the day Gordon Brown dropped in to offer him the job of Chancellor. His appointment in June 2007 coincided nicely with the start of the global financial chaos: talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The... Read more

I am getting very rusty. Four months of not having to think very hard has left me mentally blunted. This became very obvious in an interview the other day. I was being quizzed on my structured credit knowledge, and facts and figures that three months ago I could recite in my sleep seemed to have seeped out of my brain. I was like a tired old boxer unable... Read more

The summer holidays are drifting towards a close, with two weeks left of August before the beaches of Southern Europe empty and bankers and investors return to their desks. Their mood could determine the longevity of the credit crunch. For those of us forced to watch from the sidelines this summer, the direction the market takes over the last four months of the year could be vital for careers in... Read more

For anyone out there who considers this column a purveyor of doom and gloom, the time has come to point out there are also a lot of upsides to being out of the market. Take the personal benefits: I can now get up at a civilised hour, live life at my own pace, come and go as I please, and shave twice a month. Redundancy can also have huge professional... Read more

The week away has done me some good. I feel refreshed, relaxed and even a little bit tanned after spending some time away from London. A blissful state one might think. However, a quick glance at the calendar this morning shattered my feeling of goodwill. Next week is August and I have been out of work since April. What the hell have I been doing? This is genuine panic. As... Read more

I have decided I need to get away from it all, to see a new horizon and get a fresh angle on things. It sounds ridiculous I know, I haven’t entered an office for over three months, but I am beginning to feel boxed in. It has got to the point where I have investigated so many avenues in search of a new job that things have begun to blur... Read more

I have taken my foot off the gas. Those of you who are more aggressively job hunting would tut at my lax attitude of the last few weeks. A couple of days at Wimbledon, one day of cricket at the Oval, and several days spent lying in the park with my wife and baby daughter all point to a worrying slowing in pace. I woke this morning to an ash... Read more

It's funny how not working changes your relationships with people. Despite the fact that I am financially sound, at least for the medium term, reactions of even close friends seem to have subtly altered. I’m not sure if it's the way I'm acting or whether I’m simply becoming sensitive as part of some post-redundancy rejection complex, but there definitely seems to be a difference. Take yesterday, for example. I played 18... Read more

3:30pm Friday afternoon I got my first 'Dear John' call; apparently I haven’t got the skill set they’re looking for at this time. Normally this wouldn’t have been a reason for concern, but with an ever-shrinking pool of roles out there, elimination felt a little like Posh Spice being informed she can’t sing (or dance). The sad fact is that having got my CV out there with headhunters, some of... Read more