What exactly is an assistant vice president at Barclays investment bank?

When is an 'assistant vice president' not a vice president at all, but more like an associate - or even an analyst? When he or she is at Barclays' investment bank.

At least, this is the conclusion we've come to after seeing several 'assistant vice presidents' (AVPs) leave Barclays and join other banks as mere associates.

Harriet Terry has just gone from AVP at Barclays to associate in the TMT at J.P. Morgan for example. And last month Conor Daly went from AVP at Barclays to associate at Goldman Sachs.

Are people accepting demotions just to get out of Barclays? Seemingly not. Barclays declined to comment on its job titles, but we have it on good authority that the British bank simply calls its associates and even its senior analysts, 'AVPs'.

While the hierarchy at other banks goes something like analyst, associate, vice president (VP) and managing director (MD), the hierarchy at Barclays goes more like analyst, AVP, VP, director and then MD.

In other words, at Barclays you jump straight from analyst to AVP (even though there also seem to be plenty of people calling themselves Barclays associates on LinkedIn).

This has all caused some confusion among juniors who are offered jobs at Barclays. It's also caused some confusion among recruiters who've worked to place juniors from Barclays into rival firms. "These AVPs only have two or three years' experience," says Andy Pringle at recruiters Circle Square. "Other banks won't hire them because they don't want to give them a VP role and there's a presumption that they won't want to take an associate role which will be perceived as a demotion."

For this reason, Pringle says he typically changes Barcays' job titles before sending in Barclays' CVs. "It's a problem. We really struggle to place people from Barclays unless we do this," he says.

(Photo credit: Ryan)