Why technologists should still consider applying for a role at a mid-sized bank

In some ways, IT is being touted as a relatively resilient area to work in currently. Some big banks are still hiring (a little), but any reasonably-sized recruitment is being hampered by over-riding business concerns.

By contrast, however, the mid-sized and smaller banks are continuing to hire technologists at a steady rate and IT professionals are starting to welcome the opportunities they're offering.

Times are tough for recruiters servicing the large investment banks' tech teams. According to various recruitment sources, some banks have slowed new hires to four new IT professionals over the last three months, others have released one role since October, while in other cases the recruitment process have become so drawn out - around four weeks to receive sign off - that candidates have simply gone elsewhere in the meantime.

It's a different story at the smaller banks.

"The mid-sized companies are much more reactive in their hiring needs, and not hampered by the same budgetary restrictions as the bulge bracket banks," says Mark Warburton, director of IT in finance headhunters Pioneer Search. "A number of these firms are continuing to hire between to 5-10 people every month, which means they're able to pick up people coming out of the larger banks."

It's worth noting, however, that the mid-sized banks will never offer the same number of IT opportunities as the big-spending bulge bracket banks in the long term. In fact, in a bid to compete with larger firms' bespoke trading systems, many smaller players have been buying an increasing number of systems from IT vendors.

Nonetheless, despite their technology hiring plans being more "ad hoc" than the larger firms, opportunities continue to emerge.

"The one thing you can say about the mid-sized and smaller banks is that they're consistent in their hiring plans," says Ben Cowan, director at recruiters Astbury Marsden. "They will never hire hundreds of technologists for a multi-million pound project like the bulge brackets, but neither are they freezing recruitment or making redundancies."