The $350k financial services jobs where candidates are horribly coy
If you're looking for a job where there are nearly no other viable candidates,and you can roll off the street and earn a comfortable six figure package, you probably shouldn't be looking in financial services. All jobs in financial services tend be oversubscribed (just ask Goldman Sachs, which had 202,000 intern applications last year and an acceptance rate of 1.4%). But some are more oversubscribed than others.
Our own eFinancialCareers data for applications per job on this site suggests candidates understandably flock to the highest paying and most prestigious roles in the industry. Hedge fund and private equity jobs receive the highest number of applications per role, with 25 people and 17 people chasing each role in either sector respectively. Pay is the draw. Search firm Heidrick & Struggles says that even comparative juniors in private equity funds can earn well over $500k when carried interest is factored in. Our salary and bonus survey puts average pay for hedge fund analysts at $283k and for portfolio managers at $758k.
At the other end of the scale, far fewer people are keen to get into jobs in operations jobs in financial services, possibly because mean compensation there was just $130k last year. Technology in finance jobs are also persistently under subscribed, despite paying an average of $197k for a 48-hour week. Surprisingly, perhaps, FX jobs are unpopular too. There are fewer than five candidates chasing each role in these sectors so far this year.
The really big news in 2022, though, is the growing number of jobs in a few key front office sectors and the comparative absence of candidates who might want to fill them. The number of investment banking and M&A jobs on eFinancialCareers is up over 130% this year, and although we still have 10+ candidates chasing each one, that's a big drop from the 20 or so candidates who were chasing our M&A opportunities last year. It goes without saying that M&A pay rose dramatically in the past 12 months: first year associates with three years' experience in investment banks can easily earn $380k in New York nowadays, while 28-year-old junior VPs are now on £395k in London. Strangely, that doesn't seem enough.
Photo by Jeremy Bezanger on Unsplash
Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com in the first instance. Whatsapp/Signal/Telegram also available (Telegram: @SarahButcher)
Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: all our comments are moderated by human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. Eventually it will – unless it’s offensive or libelous (in which case it won’t.)
