GUEST COMMENT: Six hot areas for the fourth quarter
Hiring will happen in the fourth quarter. From our vantage point, we see several areas experiencing robust activity. They include:
1) Change management
Demand remains high within the change management sector with competition for talent increasing throughout the year. Multi-year transformation and integration programmes have remained the driving force behind demand. Compulsory regulatory changes, particularly around liquidity and risk management, have also driven demand. We expect this to continue into quarter four.
2) Product control
We are seeing greater demand for product knowledge as senior banking executives strive to understand how and where they are making or losing money. We have also noticed that the traditional product control role has changed and there is now more of a focus on expense and cost base rather than revenue - professionals in this role are now feeding back commercial information to the business in a way more typically seen in decision support and business manager positions. There is also a desire to understand where scarce resources are being allocated and how efficiently the front office is using the balance sheet.
3) Wealth management
The wealth management sector continues to be a strong hirer, particularly in the investment consulting/advisory space. Firms are recruiting investment professionals into this area to oversee the portfolio construction and asset allocation process for private clients.
4) Compliance and AML
Compliance and AML are hot recruitment areas - unsurprising given the state of the global markets for the last two years. A number of firms have completely restructured their compliance functions and most have increased headcount across advisory, monitoring and surveillance. The market is now almost candidate-short, particularly across control room, senior money laundering roles, and product advisory. We expect demand to continue to be high in quarter four and, beyond that, into 2011.
5) Anti-bribery professionals
Although technically part of compliance, anti-bribery and corruption is a key recruitment area for our clients. Many are looking for anti-bribery 'experts' or candidates with FCPA experience. We anticipate this to remain a hot area for the remainder of the year.
6) Analytical skillsets in retail banking
During quarter three, we experienced strong demand from the retail and commercial banking sectors for business-focussed analytical skill sets. We expect this to continue into Q4 with banks increasingly focusing on their cost bases and commercial MI to drive growth and consolidation.
