Unrealistic bonus expectations and the recruitment tsunami of 2011

Financial services recruiters are starting to get excited. The source of their excitement goes a little like this: the 2010 bonus round is going to be challenging, candidates still have deeply unrealistic bonus expectations. Following widespread bonus disappointment people will move. Movement will create opportunities for recruiters to fill roles.

According to the Centre for Economics and Business Research, there are 315,000 people working in City-style jobs in London. Bonus dissatisfaction could drive turnover to 20%, creating 63,000 jobs to be filled.

"This year's bonus round is very problematic," says the head of markets hiring at one City search firm. "Following a bad Q3, some places are missing an entire quarter of revenues. The pressure is on to cross-subsidise the bonus pool of poorly performing business areas, but some platforms just don't have the money."

"As people haven't been paid particularly well for the last two years, they'll be keen to move this year if they're disappointed," confirms a partner at another search firm. "As usual, the top guys will be paid very well and there will be a big gap between them and the average performers - those are the people who will be taking bids from another bank."

Not everyone's convinced that a wave of hiring is approaching, however. "The market's so mixed that it's going to be difficult for people to move to an unequivocally better house or for more money elsewhere," says the head of recruitment at one international bank. "Unless you're moving for a specific promotion, it's hard to see the upside in changing roles."

"It all comes down to the reasonableness of candidates," concludes the markets headhunter. "If they haven't computed that if they don't produce the revenues then they won't get paid, it will be a problem.

"Unfortunately this is often the case with bankers," he adds.