Are banks letting go of the MBAs they only hired last year?
This may be spurious tittle tattle and wanton hearsay, but we're hearing that some banks just might be dumping a few of the MBAs they recruited as recently as 2010.
"I've seen 10 or 11 CVs from associates recently," says the head of one markets headhunting boutique. "At least a couple of them were from people who'd joined big US firms in equity sales. Last year was a pretty big year for MBA hiring and I guess banks are deciding the revenues aren't there."
Is this true?
A careers consultant at one London business school says he hasn't seen any sign of it. However, as we noted yesterday, 60% of Credit Suisse's redundancies in European investment banking appear to be below director level, suggesting MBAs might be among those suffering.
If you have the misfortune to be let go without much experience, life can be tough.
The headhunter said it's hard to know what to do with recently recruited MBAs who've been ditched: "It's tough to place that kind of story. They'll just have to apply again through the associate programme I guess."
We spoke to an MBA who was let from Lehman in 2008, only a few weeks after moving into financial services. To MBAs who are let go now, he offered the following advice:
1) Feel fortunate - In 2008 the market was awash with the CVs of senior people who had far more experience than a newly hired MBA. That's less the case today and should make it easier to find a new job.
2) Think about boutiques - In 2008, newly hired MBAs who lost their jobs from bulge bracket banks moved to boutiques, stayed there for 6 months or so and tried to get back into big banks again. Some succeeded.
3) See this as a chance to do something completely different - Maybe you shouldn't be in banking, maybe you should be doing something else. There are other industries out there. Long term, being made redundant could prove a good thing [our contact moved into clean tech and is retrospectively pleased he got out of finance.]
