Buy-side Firms Show Biggest Recruitment Growth

By Author: Addie Smith
Total Articles: 6
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Investment management firms - and large hedge funds in particular - have showed the most significant increases in hiring activity within financial services, according to the latest Market Update from recruitment specialists Robert Walters.

More buy-side jobs have become available as organisations have focused on hiring for newly-created roles and growing their teams.

While hiring within investment banks remained more stable by comparison, pay for contractors rose by up to ?100 per day due to talent shortages in the sector.

Andrew Hanson, Director of Financial Services Recruitment at Robert Walters, says:

"Recruitment within banking was steady at the beginning of 2011, with job volumes lower than during the same period in 2010. The majority of new vacancies have been the result of replacement hires, with less urgency from firms to grow and expand teams at the rate we saw during quarter one last year.

"However, overall recruitment volumes within the investment management sector increased in quarter one with firms hiring for newly-created roles at all levels. In particular, large hedge funds have ...
... announced aggressive growth plans and are generally looking to capitalise on the weaker performance of smaller funds. Professionals in the sector with broad product knowledge, particularly across OTC derivatives, have been in high demand. Interestingly, the type of roles recruited have become more cross-product and unfunctionalised in nature, and this has attracted people from banking to these jobs."

Nick Dunnett, Contract Recruitment Director at Robert Walters, comments:

"Due to the tightening of tier one (highly skilled migrant) visa criteria, contract recruitment within financial services had been characterised by a shortage of high-quality professionals looking for roles and rising pay rates. These increases typically ranged from around ?20 to ?50 per day at junior and lower middle levels to ?100 per day at more senior levels. These rises have led some finance professionals to seriously consider sacrificing the security and bonus earning potential of permanent jobs for the higher basic pay offered by contracting."

About Robert Walters - Robert Walters Plc is one of the world's largest professional recruitment consultancies, with the largest recruitment team focusing on sales and marketing jobs in Singapore.