Recruitment staff in high demand

With most banks in hiring mode, they are instead searching for recruitment experts to bring in extra staff legitimately.

Lucinda Armitage, a consultant at Redwood Search, a search firm specialising in finding human resources staff for banks, said the pool of available talent is woefully small. "There hasn't been much need for in-house recruiters in recent years and it's a question of digging them out. In many cases, we're looking at people from outside the banking industry."

Raj Munde, managing director of Carter James, another firm covering human resources appointments, said most large banks are looking for two or three senior recruiters. "Every bank is looking for graduate recruiters. They can't get enough of them. But because graduate hiring has been low, not many people have the right skills," said Munde.

Demand for recruitment expertise reflects banks' aggressive hiring strategies. Barclays Capital expects to add thousands of staff at all levels in the next three years, while HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland and Bear Stearns also have ambitious plans in Europe.

Banks' graduate hiring needs have risen dramatically, often by as much as 50% from last year. Some have decided to increase the number of graduate recruits who will join this year, even though application deadlines were last November.

A graduate recruiter at one US bank in London said: "I'm very busy. We've been asked to go back to the market and look for extra people. Usually, this is a quiet time before the interns come in the summer."

Graduate recruiters are scarce because many were made redundant or left the industry when banks' needs for graduates plummeted in 2001. Some, such as Jackie Moylan, a former head of graduate recruitment at ING, are now doing something entirely different. Moylan is working as an interior designer for a property developer outside London. Others, such as Heidi Plant, former head of graduate recruitment at UBS, are working for headhunting firms. Others have set up their own companies.

Plant, who works for search firm Odgers Ray and Berndtson, helping banks find in-house recruiters, said her decision to get out of graduate recruitment was the result of having a baby instead of despondency at the trickle of graduate hires. She said: "Travelling around Europe to attend milk round presentations is a great job, as long as you don't have young children waiting for you at home."

Nevertheless, she has received several telephone calls from rival recruitment firms trying to tempt her to take one of the graduate recruitment roles currently available.

Plant said the skills that make a good graduate recruiter can be difficult to find. "They organise events which can involve hundreds of students and a lot of alcohol, and they need to ensure things remain professional. They also need to interface with the business and convince senior bankers to give up their time to attend recruitment events."

Because of the shortage of potential graduate recruiters, Plant said clients complain the same small list of names is presented to them whenever they hire in this area.

Susan Parsons, a former graduate recruiter at ABN Amro and now a self-employed consultant working on graduate recruitment for Linklaters, the law firm, said she has picked up the telephone to recruiters trying to entice her back to banking. "A couple of people have already called me this week. But I left because I wanted to do something other than restructuring departments. Even if they offer me lots of money I won't be tempted back full time."

Another refugee from banking is Terence Perrin, former head of graduate recruitment at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein. Perrin left the bank last year and is now working in an interim position helping recruit graduates for the National Health Service. He said: "Graduate recruitment is such a specialist area that you cannot easily move into it from other human resources roles. You need to be particularly tough when it comes to identifying applicants, because places are so oversubscribed."

Perrin said he might return to banking recruitment in the future, but is happy working in the voluntary and public sectors.

Companies that provide their own recruitment experts to work alongside banks' existing staff are benefiting.

Keith Robinson, managing director of Origin HR, said banks' demand for the company's services has increased substantially since January. Origin employs 16 staff who assist in-house recruiters at firms such as Deutsche Bank, Lehman Brothers and State Street.

Robinson said the company is looking to hire more to cope with burgeoning demand. "Human resources departments are smaller than before. They have been cut back and now that volume recruiting has returned, banks need our help."

In the absence of recruiters, plying unsuspecting bankers with alcohol could be the only option.

One London broker said last year he signed a contract to join another firm while he was drunk in a pub. He is being sued for 200,000 (€302,000) for attempting to renege on the commitment.