Why don't banks in London bother with applications from Indian candidates?

It's not a particularly politically correct question, but it's a reasonable one to ask - recruiters in London tell us they get thousands of applications from candidates on the subcontinent, but almost always disregard them.

If you're an Indian applicant, this is clearly annoying - especially as many banks have off-shored elements of research and pitchbook construction to Mumbai, meaning that moving to London or New York, where most deal teams are still based, may seem the logical next step in a career.

Now someone has raised the issue in our Answers area, saying:

I am an equity research analyst working in India (Holding UK Tier1 Work Visa). However, when I apply for jobs in UK, I never hear from the recruiters.

We asked recruiters and banks why Indian candidates appear to be discriminated against when applying for front office roles. Rightly or wrongly, this is what they said:

1) Recruiters say banks don't expect them to put forward candidates from India

"Banks use recruiters and headhunters so that they can find candidates they wouldn't be able to get themselves," says the director of one recruitment firm. "A lot of Indian candidates apply direct to banks, so it's not appropriate that we should be offering candidates banks can find themselves."

2) Recruiters say Indian candidates have the wrong kind of experience

"Work that's done in India is less business critical than the work that takes place in London," says the recruitment director. "If you've been working in India you will therefore have been doing work that's less important and may not have the experience needed to work in London."

3) Banks use filtering questions to eliminate overseas candidates

In theory, it should be easier to apply directly to employers if you're an Indian candidate. But even this may not be possible.

"Most senior recruiters in banks never get to see applications from Indian candidates," says the recently ex-head of recruitment at one large European bank. "There are killer questions throughout the application process which will weed them out - we'd ask whether people had a right to work in the UK, whether they had specific technical experience, or two years' post graduate work experience. A lot of Indian candidates got filtered out."

4) Work permits

The big issue in the UK, is however, work permits. Since 2008, the UK work permit regime has been tightened substantially and immigrant numbers have been capped. There are various exceptions to this - if you earn more than 150k you will fall outside the cap.

Equally, if you earn more than 40k and you've been working overseas for a bank for more than 12 months, you can transfer internally to London without immigration being an issue.

"It's no secret that this government is taking steps to reduce net migration," says Jonathan Goldsworthy, a lawyer at Bird and Bird.. "If you're working at an Indian branch of a particular bank, you could potentially come to the UK under the intra-company transfer scheme, which is outside the immigration cap," he adds.