As jobseekers soar, a recruitment agency says it's unable to help 85% of the applicants who send in their CVs
Much as financial services recruitment firms would like to place every single individual hopeful candidate who comes to them for help, they're having to be increasingly selective about who they work with.
Yesterday, recruitment firm Astbury Marsden estimated that the number of new financial services vacancies in London fell 11% month on month in July, whilst the number of new candidates rose 32%.
Today, Astbury Marsden COO Mark Cameron told us: "We get thousands of CVs every month and of those we probably only work with 15%.
"We will pick and choose who we put in front of clients," Cameron informed us.
Arguably this is inevitable: recruiters exist to sift out good candidates for their clients, but it also illustrates precisely how hard it is to get noticed nowadays.
On the other hand, contractors are booming
While it's becoming harder to get a permanent position in a bank, it's becoming easier to get a contract role in the back and middle office.
Cameron said Astbury Marsden's contractor numbers have doubled over the past 12-18 months. And the head of another recruitment firm gravely informs us that quite a few of the permanent roles they're getting have already been assigned to favoured contractors.
"There hasn't been a big drop off in terms of new jobs, but there are some underlying issues," he confides. "Some line managers want to move their favourite contractors into permanent employment, but they are often obliged to advertise the role externally to see if they can find someone cheaper."
The implication would therefore appear to be that you need to try contracting if you want to get new permanent employment soon.
Maybe.
However, Jo Phillips, manager in the banking and financial services division at Badenoch & Clark says this is not true at all and that most of the clients she works with go to "great pains" to try and find an internal candidate before advertising for people externally.
Excitingly, Phillips also maintained that things are improving: "We've seen a pick up in hiring activity this week. It's a few weeks into the school holidays and some decision makers are back in the office."
