TRANCHED: Don't bank on the dole

I meet a friend for a beer at the weekend who recently lost his role in an IB. He decided to sign-on for the first time in his life and joined the back of the queue at his local Job Centre Plus. He described a healthy line of City-folk filling in forms and answering awkward questions, some of whom looked visibly shaken by the whole experience.

From my own experience of signing-on over the summer, the system appears out of touch with the scope of this recession. It's set up to try and weed out those who aren't authentically trying to find a job, rather than to offer support to those actively trying to get back into the market, either in their old line of work or through self-reinvention.

When I first went in to give my details, the friendly guy interviewing me candidly told me that he didn't see many investment banking jobs come through the Job Centre. In the last few days even government ministers have admitted that the system may not work for highly trained and skilled professionals.

The reality is, that if you have been let go by an investment bank, it is up to you to forge your next step. And that next step may well involve a far smaller organisation than the one you've come from.

Think small

All over the City, the old realities are swept aside. Bankers with no place to go are trying to re-invent themselves in all sorts of shapes and sizes. The places they end up often comprise no more than a few displaced traders and structurers with an idea of trying to make it as a fund, desperately trying to raise capital in a shrinking market.

Those with a more mixed skill set are reinventing themselves as consultants, offering short term relief to those still in the investment banks with problems to solve and no one left to solve them. All are fighting over the scraps coming out of investment banks.

There will be people for whom this fresh start will be a path to success. The two man band working out of a tiny vacant office may be the next big thing. However for every one or two that are successful, there will be many others that aren't.

Despite all that has gone on, I'm still positive. If I'd been offered the opportunity to work for start-up consultancy two years ago, the opportunity cost would have been huge. The landscape has totally changed. Therefore, the opportunities out there are limitless. New businesses will spring up all over the place and people will come and go freely because the old structure has totally evaporated,

When I was hired by the start-up consultancy I now work for, I was informed that, unlike the arcane world of investment banking, consultants had to be nimble and prepared to accept and implement change.

In the last two weeks, its head (who didn't own the firm), has been sacked for attempting to sell it to a potential suitor, another colleague has been asked to leave, and another has returned to banking via a CDO tidy-up squad. Change? They weren't kidding. But it beats signing-on for 60.50 a week.