"Financial services recruiters with no work should blame themselves, not the market"
I've worked in financial services recruitment in London for two decades, and I've seen both ups and downs. This year, I hear a lot of people complaining about the extent of the downturn but personally I have not seen it.
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I run teams of recruiters working across the buy-side and sell-side and we have had an incredibly busy few months. This is not a terrible market, trust me! - If it was, we wouldn't be speaking to candidates in three to four different processes, who are receiving three or four different offers.
What's going on, then, with all the recruiters complaining about how "quiet" and how "bad" things are? While I acknowledge, there are a few quiet areas, I thinking the problem fundamentally lies with the recruiters themselves.
Financial services recruitment has been buoyant for so long that people have either forgotten or never learned how to develop new business. A lot of recruitment firms are also carrying too much weight, having over-hired in the good times. It's time for some of that to be shed. 2025 is going to be an interesting year!
Marta Elvira is a pseudonym
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