Hot Jobs? They're All About Cleanup

Wall Street may be shedding blood by the bucketful, but someone has to clean up the mess. That means the hottest positions in financial services will involve reshaping organizations, risk management, M&A, turnaround initiatives, workouts and financial engineering.

With that in mind, we present CTPartners' 14th annual list of Hot Executive Jobs. (This is the same CTPartners that recently shifted its own resources away from financial-industry searches.)

"New regulations will require compliance and legal experts. Consultants will help securities firms restructuring as banks deal with changing structures and policies. Corporate boards will assess their strategies and the right board structures to respond to frustrated shareholders and the new regulations coming out of Washington and the SEC," the firm believes.

The top jobs:

1. Restructuring Officer

2. Turnaround expert

3. Distressed Asset Manager

4. Workout specialist

5. Managing Partner, LBO

6. Financial Engineering Specialist

7. Bankruptcy Attorney

8. Head of Compliance

9. Merger and Acquisition Specialist

Meanwhile, despite the fact 2008 posted the lowest number of IPOs in a decade, private equity firms are still on the lookout for just the right talent. "Venture capital investment in 2009 will continue to hunt down great technologies, especially if they help solve the puzzle of monetizing the Internet, which is now used by 72.5 percent of the U.S. population," says Partner Simon Francis. "We're also likely to see more PIPE deals to recapitalize undervalued public companies, much like Warren Buffett's investments in Goldman and GE."

Francis says the hottest jobs in the sector are:

1. Operating Partner, portfolio companies

2. Infrastructure Specialist for start-ups in initiatives promoted by new administration

3. CEO, alternative energy start-up

4. Head of Consumer Direct

Operating partner jobs number in the hundreds and require a very rare skill set. The fact you're ex-Goldman Sachs won't land you this job, but knowing how to operate and transform a business by changing pricing, increasing market share and putting factories in the right place will. Says Francis says. "The typical operating partner hire is a tier-one MBA with a strategy consulting background or a world-class manufacturing background where you've see a lot of business."

There's also a huge amount of venture capital going into green tech initiatives, so if you've got a tech background, you can follow the money there.

To land a consumer direct position, you can come in through marketing or IT, Francis says, adding that if you're still in bricks-and-mortar retail, you need to ask yourself how much longer it's going to make sense to have 200 employees, a building and a parking lot just to sell televisions to consumers who now trust online shopkeepers.