City of London employers have recovered their nerve following the Cyprus crisis, with the number of new jobs rising 19% in the last month says Astbury Marsden, a financial services recruitment firm. Just over 2,600 new roles were created during April 2013, following a sharp dip in March when the number of new roles plunged by 15% compared to the previous month.
The number of new City roles created per month now stands at its highest since October 2012, with month on month increases also recorded in January (213%) and February (3%). Mark Cameron, Chief Operating Officer at Astbury Marsden, says: “After a reasonably optimistic start to the year, recruitment at many City firms slowed in March as the market waited to see how bad the Cyprus crisis was going to get.”
Astbury Marsden points out that City staff also seem to be cautious about switching employer. In April, candidate numbers were up just 1% on March with a pool of 4,560 potential candidates during April, down by 24% on the same time last year. There are now 1.75 qualified candidates per new role, down from the 12 month average of 2. Mark Cameron adds: “Spring is traditionally peak hiring season in the City as candidates look for new roles after their bonus has been paid. However, we are not seeing quite the same amount of interest from prospective candidates as had been the case in previous years.”
Mark Cameron adds: “Spring is traditionally peak hiring season in the City as candidates look for new roles after their bonus has been paid. However, we are not seeing quite the same amount of interest from prospective candidates as had been the case in previous years.”
Astbury Marsden explain that regulation is still driving recruitment in the City, as banks focus on trimming their businesses back to their most profitable areas in order to manage new capital requirements. Says Mark Cameron: “the banks have a lot of work to do on realigning their businesses back to the most profitable core areas, so we are still seeing a lot of interest in strategists and for skills associated with managing organisational change.”
“A natural consequence of the high-level planning that is going on is that a lot of the other hiring activity is ‘maintenance’ work – finding replacements or acquiring individual high flyers. We don’t expect to see more aggressive hiring resume until banks have clear plans as to which areas they are going to target for growth.”