Posted in: Market Watch, On: September 26th, 2011

Harriet Gittins – Projects Consultant

Market Trends – Contract
The Commodities markets have seen a lot of change throughout the recent market turmoil sparking increased interest within financial institutions. Recent speculation on physical commodities, Gold, Copper etc has overtaken interest in crude and gas due to high returns on the futures markets.
Renewable energy investments have been the primary interest with government backed schemes increasing fund speculation and energy finance initiatives seeing retail banks secure £1bn before 2015. This has led to an influx of energy technology hiring across the board creating high tech trading systems and market data flows for multi-national energy corporations.
There is a lot of hiring in Equity prime / finance with many big banks all hiring heavily in this area – mainly being driven by regulatory changes.

Market Trends – Permanent
Job security has become a more prominent reason for employees to either stay where they are or move from a contract position into a permanent role.
There has a been an increase in security risk related roles right across the board; this has increased salaries and demand for these individuals has reached outside of industry to get the talent.
There continues to be small pockets of recruitment within niche areas of the business off the back of heavy investment by the business and regulatory projects these areas include Risk, Equity Derivatives, Automated Trading and etrading (particularly FX).
Candidates will need to be prepared for longer recruitment processes, as on average we have identified that the processes now take at least 6-8 weeks from initial interview to offer compared with 4 – 6 weeks this time last year