‘Dramatic’ increase in financial services recruitment

Thu, 15 Oct 2009

There has been a dramatic increase in recruitment activity in the financial services sector in September, according to findings from pre-employment screening firm Powerchex.

The research shows that investment management firms in September had a 51% month‐on‐month increase in employment offers on August. Hedge funds recorded a 30% increase on last month and have increased recruitment levels by over 200% since June.

According to the Powerchex, the third quarter has seen a steady increase in recruitment activity across all industry sectors, with the exception of stockbrokers.

Offers to IT contractors within the sector have increased by 77% on Q2, while

investment management and insurance firms increased recruitment by 5% and 3% respectively.

Alexandra Kelly, managing director of Powerchex, says: “September is always a

busy month for recruitment professionals because it marks the beginning of many of the large graduates programmes. In this sense, the recruitment figures for September are often a cyclical anomaly; we will have to examine the figures over the next few months to see if there is any continuation.”