Hiring halts in Irish banks, but new opportunities could emerge
This isn't hugely surprising, considering the tanking share prices and talk of greater government stakes and radical restructuring within Irish banks in the wake of the bailout announcement, but what little appetite they had to recruit has faded.
As we've alluded to before, Irish banks have been quietly recruiting over the last 18 months, despite ostensibly still enforcing hiring freezes. These are predominantly contract roles for loan workout specialists, but certain key departures are also being replaced.
"Domestic banks haven't cancelled their plans entirely, but have effectively pressed the pause button," says one financial services headhunter in Dublin. "The decision-making process has ground to a halt."
This could, however, be less about the current crisis and more related to the fact that banks are fully staffed in this area, suggests Andrea Clarkson, manager - financial services at Morgan McKinley in Ireland.
"There is a definite reduction in the volume hiring activity in work out and restructuring across the banking sector as most financial institutions have their teams are now in place for these areas," she says. "The trend for longer term contracts from 12-24 months continues as many banks still have constraints on sign-off for permanent hires."
One potential upside
The FT has suggested a route the banks may be forced to take if, as suspected, greater government ownership emerges.
It says that the government could follow a similar strategy to that applied to Royal Bank of Scotland - splitting the balance sheets of Irish banks into core and non-core divisions and then forcing them to run down or sell off assets.
From an employment perspective, the fall-out from RBS has obviously been huge, but there have also been some opportunities created. Throughout the last two years, the bank has been recruiting swathes of business change managers, project managers and business analysts to oversee the restructuring process.
RBS is a much bigger project than either BoI and AIB combined, but there's still a good chance such roles will be created once this restructuring gets underway.
Irish banks have also been creating roles elsewhere, says Clarkson.
"The treasury operations of many of the domestic banks are looking for liquidity experts, as funding continues to be an issue globally," she says. "Tightening of regulations in the banking sector has attracted staff from other core areas of the banks and this has lead to a shortfall in some key areas like financial reporting - the demand continues therefore for qualified accountants with financial services background."
