Five facts on the state of Scottish financial services recruitment

By most accounts, Scotland's financial services recruitment market is back in decent shape. Huge recruitment sprees aren't in evidence, but the mass culling of recent years seems like a distant memory.

Recruitment firm Badenoch & Clark has just produced a Scottish market update, outlining where it sees the opportunities this year, and financial services firms' general appetite for hiring.

Here are some conclusions to ponder:

1) Auditors and tax professionals are hot property: Companies are striving for more transparency and "close financial management", which is creating more demand for audit managers and tax analysts, suggests Kay Senior, operations director, Scotland, at Badenoch and Clark.

2) The contract market could shrink: The larger banks in Scotland are cutting back, and this means that contractors could be among the first to go, suggests Senior. This would be an about turn for the banks, which have been utilising the flexibility of contractors to offset permanent headcount restrictions for some time now.

"Other major financial players are expected to create vacancies, which will pick up some of the shortfall," she says.

3) Project and programme managers are being snapped up: As we've mentioned previously, there's something of an onerous recruitment process taking place among certain financial services organisations due to permanent headcount restrictions and multi-management level sign off process.

This approach doesn't work for project or programme managers. "Those who spend too much time deliberating are losing out," says Senior.

4) Change managers are in demand, but with an HR focus: With Scotland's two largest banks undergoing major restructuring, change management has been the place to be for going on two years now. Finance, IT and risk have all been targets for a shake-up, but now HR is undergoing change.

"Those with a management consultancy background who have experience of managing multi-faceted international projects are particularly sought-after," says Senior.

5) Fighting financial crime is a growing area: The likes of information security and anti-money laundering have been providing job opportunities in Scotland for this year. The UK Bribery Act is driving recruitment further.

Badenoch & Clark suggest that from 1 July, when the law comes into force, financial crime, bribery and corruption specialists will all be in demand, as well as regulatory monitoring officers and "front office advisory specialists".