UK
Banking job market deteriorating further
11 June 2008
Recruitment firm Morgan McKinley has released its May report on the state of the market for banking jobs, and things appear to be getting worse. New job vacancies were down 17% in May '08 compared to May '07, and were down 8% between April '08 and May '08.
Morgan McKinley says its findings may overplay the extent of the month on month deterioration because May included two bank holidays and April didn’t.
But the head of financial services recruitment at a rival firm says Morgan McKinley’s snapshot is deceptively optimistic: “Job volumes are holding up, but what’s more telling is the number of actual placements that are being made. A lot of companies are putting out jobs just to suss out the market and see what they can get, but those jobs are not necessarily being filled.”
In finance and risk, both of which are still relatively buoyant, she says actual placements are down 25-50% on last year. In other sectors the decline is likely to be more dramatic.
There are some positives in Morgan McKinley’s negative report. The number of new candidates coming onto the market fell 19% between April and May, suggesting redundancies slowed last month.
I think the observation regarding the "Phantom jobs" is accurate. This is a curious strategy that will only damage the talent pool in the medium term. Candidates will (have) quickly sussed those organisations that are engaged in this dishonest practice and will avoid them in the future, it will take some time to repair reputations lost through an exercise to collect CVs - what is the point? Not to mention the HH, they will avoid those Banks bearing false gifts - why work for no reward ? We are on the point of the IB recruiting market going downhill beyond the point of short term recovery. Candidates are leaving the Banking industry and false jobs only accelerate this. Not only that, but candidates are finding that the salary/ work balance equation outside the IB industry is not that bad. The industry failed to adequately reward outside the Front Office for years and other industries were able to catch up (especially IT contract rates). We are now almost guarunteed a skills shortage when the market recovers and this means salary inflation. When will this Industry learn to think more than three months in advance ??
Wizard of EC1 11 Jun 2008
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