Not every banker is confident about finding a new job
Our bonus & job market expectation report asked a lot of questions, from straightforward bonus estimations to job insecurity to likelihood of looking for a new job. One of the more esoteric questions we asked was about confidence – specifically, the confidence a banker had in finding a new job if they left their current one.
Bearing in mind that 10 is the hardest finding a new job can be (so everyone should want to be a 1), the results are… surprising.
For one, middle office people are all over the place. Operations and risk people are especially pessimistic – with operations the most pessimistic that responded to our survey – whilst compliance people are by some margin the most positive that we surveyed.
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The lack of confidence shown by quants is also concerning. Finance is often spoken about as trending more and more toward systematic trading and process automation – two things that leave technologists and quants very safe compared to their rivals (often in the middle office). Quants, however, might be in too high a supply to benefit from that trend – or feel like it’s difficult to move to a new team.
Technologists being more optimistic about finding a new job is even more surprising, perhaps. Tech layoffs have been pretty brutal over the last year – from FAANG and Twitter to banks such as Santander.
It shouldn’t be surprising to know that there was a large overlap between respondents who felt secure in their jobs and those who thought they would find a new job quite easily. The logic is sound; you’re secure in your job for the same reason you’d find a new one easily. Oddly, however, there is less of an overlap with bonus expectations.
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