Q&A with Tara Ricks, managing director of Joslin Rowe

Joslin Rowe, which largely focuses on jobs in the back and middle office within the financial sector, claims to have had an extremely busy start to the year, with investment banks frantically recruiting again after a quiet 2009.

We spoke to its managing director, Tara Ricks (pictured below), to discuss recruitment trends and the outlook for the remainder of 2010.

Where do you see the most active areas of recruitment currently?

This year has seen a huge upsurge across a broad range of sectors, to the point where permanent and contract vacancies are up by 400% year-on-year. This may sound impressive, but it's yet to reach levels seen in 2007.

The biggest area of demand we're seeing is for qualified accountants in financial services, particularly around product control. Other active sectors include asset servicing and trade support. Anything around risk management - credit, market and operational - is also particularly active.

Risk has been an active area of recruitment for some time now. Are you seeing any pressure on salaries?

There's still not open cheque book approach, but premiums are coming in and we're seeing much more aggressive buybacks, which is a relatively new phenomenon. Pay is definitely creeping up and it will be interesting to see whether the policy of offering guarantees - which has gained pace in the front office - will extend to hot areas like risk.

On the operations front, would you agree that a large proportion of the jobs being created are currently outside of London?

Absolutely. Over the last couple of years large swathes of the operations community have moved outside of the City to places like Glasgow and Birmingham.

When we initially helped a large US investment bank move its operations functions to Glasgow, we had to recruit from retail banks and look to the graduate market because that second generation of workers didn't exist in these hubs and candidates were reluctant to move from the City.

It can still be a challenge to attract people to these regions, but more people are now making lifestyle and career choices rather than simply making monetary decisions.

There were deep cuts in investment banks' operations divisions in 2009. Has it been relatively easy to find candidates now that they're hiring again?

Sadly not. So many people lost their jobs in 2009, but many in operations choose to leave the industry, either permanently or for a year or two - in which case we'll see that influx of candidates coming back again soon. It remains as difficult to recruit now as it ever was, and it's even swaying across to becoming a candidate-driven market again now.

Do you believe that the current buoyant levels of recruitment will continue into the second half of 2010?

The first half of 2010 has been about playing catch-up after a year of aggressive restructuring and downsizing in 2008-09 within most financial service organisations.

While candidates are likely to be more concerned about bonus accrual in the second half, which could make recruitment more of a challenge, the current indications we're getting from our clients is that hiring will continue to be buoyant in the second half.