Job vacancy: 3rd year M&A associates, New York

The editorial team of eFinancialCareers analyses a current job advertisement that looks significant or intriguing:

During the market downturn in the past three years big investment banks laid off huge numbers of analysts and junior associates, leaving their M&A departments as inverted pyramids, chiefly staffed with senior dealmakers.

The only hiring was of rainmakers able to bring in badly needed business. Now that corporate finance business is slowly returning banks are starting to staff up again to replace those decimated middle ranks, said Alex Alcott, a manager at the New York recruitment firm Finance Professionals.

The firm is advertising on behalf of a leading investment bank which is looking for a number of people for its health care, financial institutions and large-cap coverage groups. Those hoping to fill these positions - and earn an annual total package of around $250,000 - must have experience at a bulge-bracket bank.

Alcott said: 'Ideally, the candidates will have taken an MBA, gone through the analyst training programme and done two to three years' internship as an associate.'

According to the advert, the jobs involve both pitching and execution work, generating ideas and client development as well as supervising a team of analysts. 'The client needs people who can manage both up and down,' said Alcott.

That means the associates must not only manage the analysts working for them, but also the numerous managing directors above who want a piece of them, he said. 'There are so few sen-ior associates left.'

The jobs will be New York-based - associates will be chiefly working on domestic deals, although those in the large-cap group may be involved in cross-border work.

In assessing candidates, Alcott is looking at the quality of the banks they come from, the quality of deals they have worked on and their size. 'Someone with chiefly small-cap experience can't go into a large-cap coverage group,' he said.

That is not to say that the client won't consider bulge-bracket casualties who did some time in mid-market firms during the downturn. 'In certain cases, they might have a shot,' he said. 'They have to be able to show what they've been doing.'

In fact, said Alcott, some banks have been rehiring some of those laid off in the last wave of job cuts - particularly those who had already survived several rounds of redundancies and who were only reluctantly let go.

Although bankers with bulge-bracket experience are always in some demand, there is not yet a huge rush to hire at this level, said Alcott. Nonetheless, guaranteed bonuses are not out of the question, and if market activity continues to increase the currently offered 150% bonus on a base of $90-$100,000 may well improve.

'A few places are now looking for people,' he said. 'Post-bonuses, in mid-March to April, we expect to see a lot more movement and activity.'