Five roles facing a skills shortage

Could it be that over the course of the last 12 months, the City employment market has come full circle and is now facing a skills shortage?

Certainly, that's the suggestion of recruiters Astbury Marsden, which has concluded that the number of skilled candidates available for an increasing tide of new job vacancies is decreasing, and aggressive poaching practices are on the horizon.

However, before you expect a barrage of calls from headhunters or arrange a meeting with your boss to demand a pay rise, it's worth considering that this new-found popularity isn't across the board.

Based on numerous conversations with financial services recruiters, we've concluded that the following roles are particularly difficult to fill:

1. Change management

Regardless of the improved outlook for the financial services sector, there's no denying that many firms are still in a state of flux, and professionals who can guide them towards their desired future state are very much in demand.

"We've seen an increase in change management roles since the start of the year. Now, firms are looking to recruit at a senior management level," says Steve Leeson, operations director at Morgan McKinley.

"There's a huge surge in demand for project managers and business analysts who can manage process improvement in the post-integration world," adds Mark Cameron, chief operating officer at Astbury Marsden.

2. Product control

As we've alluded to before, accountants are enjoying revival of fortunes in the City. Product controllers are most in demand, and those with experience of exotic products are being vigorously courted by investment banks, suggests Paul Jagdev, consultant in the senior finance team at Joslin Rowe.

"Banks are looking for product controllers with exotics experience, whether that's within equities, fixed income or credit," he says. "Over the last two years, there's been a bit of a false economy, with banks assuming there were a large number of candidates on the market. In actual fact, good candidates are being well looked after and it's a real challenge recruiting for these roles."

3. Risk

Inevitably, considering the number of banks hiring for risk and the ongoing demand for their services, risk managers are in short supply. However, the job requirements are becoming more complex, which makes the talent pool even shallower.

Banks are looking for people who can overhaul risk architecture and contribute to the change agenda, and therefore requires a risk professional with programme management experience. Credit risk managers with a strong understanding of market risk are also highly sought after, suggests Adrian Marples, director in the risk practice at Kinsey Allen.

"Every firm is looking to upgrade, or poach from their competitors," he says. "Inevitably, this has placed upward pressure on salaries, which have risen anyway, so firms are having to offer an uplift on an uplift. Banks are generally raising salaries between 10-30% so any new employer would need to offer an improvement on that."

4. Operations

After paring back their operations teams in 2009, investment banks are again looking to bolster their back office.

A number of functions, including collateral management, derivatives processing, and project management and business analyst roles around improving trade flow procedures are particularly active. However, asset servicing remains one of the most challenging roles to recruit for, suggests Sally Martin, associate director, operations at Robert Walters.

"A combination of heavily reduced graduate intakes, candidates who switched sectors following redundancies and increased levels of recruitment recently means that mid to senior analyst level hires within asset servicing are suffering something of a skills shortage," she says.

5.FICC

Banks' FICC performance so far this year has been mixed. If we run with the analogy of FICC being something of an investment banking party over the last year, some firms (Citi, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, BarCap) are about to call a cab home, while others (JPMorgan, Goldman, BofA Merrill, UBS) appear to be cracking open another bottle of champers. Morgan Stanley is really going for it.

Regardless, job opportunities are still relatively plentiful, suggests Piers Benbow of Eden Search.

"There's still a lot of FICC hiring to be done, we're heading into two of the busiest months of the year," he says. "With newer entrants and a more level playing field for some of the historically peripheral banks, there's an ever greater demand for a finite pool of talent."