Wall Street Ramp Up Talent Ahead Of Others
Publicly traded firms are looking for a few good men and women again.
And they're looking for these kinds of people: exotic financial investment traders and risk managers.
The hiring return is not spectacular. The effect will show in government financial performance reports only in the next few months. Right now, it has yet to show up in current government performance data, and actually, the most recent jobs report showed even a dip in the number of financial services workers. Right now, there are still more jobs that are cut than new hires.
Headhunter companies, though, confirm that demand for unique talent is again rising, and that companies are offering attractive pay and benefits to attract key performance people.
According to eFinancialCareers.com, employers recently posted job openings for over 1,500 jobs, an increase of 34% percent from 2009 and the 4th consecutive straight monthly increase.
The reason for hiring top talent this early? A comeback and profitable stock market plus a veritable torrent of bailout money have allowed the US's biggest banks to return to virtual profitability and begin replacing their dried out personnel.
Recovery precursor
This rehiring spree could be an indicator of better employment news to come.
In the first three months of 2010, U.S. financial firms announced 3,880 new hires, a 13% increase in 2008. Actually, the figures may be higher because not all companies publicly announce every new hire.
Compared to two years ago, financial services companies have downsized about 415,000 jobs in 2007 and 2008 as a reaction to their losing billions of dollars in bad decisions. In fact, Citigroup Inc. fired 75,000 jobs alone. The number of financial job cuts fell to 51,000 in 2009.
New York state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli has said job cuts in the financial services sector could cost about $6.5 billion in lost tax revenue for New York.
Not surprisingly, some of the most strident recruiters lately have been banks hit hard by the crisis, Citigroup and Bank of America Corp. to name a few. As part of their bailout deal, those companies were prohibited from paying executives high salaries and bonuses. Ever since they've repaid the funds, they're now free to hire competitively again.
"They're back in the game," said David Schmidt, a senior consultant on executive pay at James F. Reda & Associates.
Citigroup spokeswoman Danielle Romero-Apsilos said "recruiting the best talent has always been a priority" for the bank, which also declined to give specific numbers on hiring.
Bonus boost
Because of increased demand for talent, Wall Street bonuses have increased 17% to $20.3 billion in 2009.
In a eFinancialCareers survey of 850 financial workers, 92% of respondents got bonuses for 2009, an increase of 79% from 2008. But the payout wasn't even. Nearly 50% saw their bonuses double. For the rest, bonuses stayed steady or was cut by a further 50%.
"Compensation is up across the board, but you're seeing a bigger spread between those who are performing well and those who aren't," said Constance Melrose, head of eFinancialCareers.com North America.
Even with the return of Wall Street financial firms, job hunting still won't be easy.
Competition is fierce. And firms are taking their pick of the best, choosing experts in money-making areas like trading of distressed debt, derivatives and bonds.
"The people getting jobs now are the ones with specialized skill sets," said Jeff Vistithpanich, principal at Johnson & Associates. "The philosophy (at banks) is, 'Let's replace three people with one highly skilled person.'"
There's also a strong demand in Wall Street for risk managers. In reaction to the crisis, risk managers are in charge of monitoring banks' daily activities to make sure companies don't stray too much out of the game plan, a routine task many large firms were accused of neglecting in the prelude to the credit crisis.
"Risk management has certainly gotten much more important," said Lipstein of Boyden Global Executive Search. "We're seeing those positions being created in the upper echelon of Wall Street firms. They want to avoid what happened before."
by: Huey Harden
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