eFinancialCareers

In the first article of her regular series, “From the Frontline”, our new columnist looks at how bankers are reacting to redundancy. She finds that while job opportunities are still restricted and rare, there is a small, but growing number of professionals who have recently secured new roles.

The author has worked in both the financial-services and recruitment sectors. A former banker, who now works as a headhunter, she has more than 10 years’ experience at leading firms in Asia.

Even when it is expected, redundancy always seems to come unexpectedly. Over the past few months, retrenchment has hit Singapore in waves - from the much publicised to the very sudden. In a few cases, employees have even been told to leave on only a day’s notice.

What makes the outlook especially bleak for recently retrenched financial services professionals is the absence of any off-setting factor - the fact that few, if any, organisations can absorb them, or act as an interim buffer to the crisis. It is this lack of other opportunities which is making certain skills sets seem obsolete.

Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide

I recently spoke to a senior global-markets sales professional who has been retrenched from Deutsche Bank in Singapore. His plight demonstrates that although talent is now available in abundance, some job functions are simply no longer needed and there are few alternatives for these professionals.

The ex-Deutsche banker says that even if securitisation is a dead market, there should have been other opportunities for him in functions like credit structuring, syndication etc. Alternatively, “going corporate” should have been an option.

But neither of these two avenues has worked out for him yet, and he’s been out of work for more than four months. Personal networks are what he is heavily relying on now.

Be it in banking or the corporate sector, employers are demanding specific experience for any new hires. The predominant criterion seems to be whether you have already “been there, done that.” Headhunters too have been finding it difficult to convince prospective employers on the transferability of skill sets from one function to the next.

Hope on the horizon?

All is not entirely grim. Talking about her immediate future plans, a recently retrenched senior trading analyst from a global investment bank says she is hopeful that her own networks will be able to do what headhunters have not (her recruitment consultant lost his job before he could find her one!). She is optimistic and says she will hold on at least until 2010 before she decides to drastically change industries.

Gradual evidence of a slight shift in sentiment is detectable in the financial services industry today. A number of retrenched professionals that I’ve spoken to recently think that the quality of interactions they are having with prospective employers is getting better, even compared to January this year. Their situation still isn't great, but at least a silver lining seems to be emerging.

And of course there are always the fairy tales. I know of a contract strategy-and-product specialist who was given an early notice, which was subsequently extended until March 2009. But then, in a quasi-fantastic turn of events, she was absorbed as a permanent employee of her large regional bank.

In another good news story, a private banker decided to quit his bank in January 2009 because he wanted to return to the UK. But instead of a trip home, he received a can’t-refuse offer at a 40% premium!

I have noticed an increase in tales like these and they don’t seem to be restricted to the “exceptions” category anymore. So while we might say that the face of the banking industry as we knew it has changed forever, the new face rising in its place might not be as doomed or as grey as we are made to believe.

What's your take on the plight of the unemployed job-seeker today? Let us know below.