Financial IT recruitment activity in the New York area is expected to pick up by autumn 2003, reports jobs agency NationStaff, with business lines assuming greater responsibility for hiring technical staff.
Better than three in four of the 75 respondents to a NationStaff survey of recruitment intentions felt the job haemorrhaging in financial services will end in the third quarter and not in 2004 as many anticipated. Most of the increased activity will take place in fixed income and compliance, says NationStaff, and companies will continue to keep a tight lid on salary increases, stock options and bonuses.
Perhaps more significantly, the poll - which canvassed IT managers, business managers, and senior human resource managers at major brokerage houses and investment firms in the tri-state New York region - found that business groups are now assuming the hiring responsibility from IT managers.
Ed Guy, managing partner of NationStaff, says the results indicate a shift in the balance of power on Wall Street. "In a profit stressed environment, the business lines that are making money are using their clout to take the lion’s share of IT resources both in terms of human and technical capital," he says. "There has been an effort to outsource and have a bigger say as to which projects get done and how they are getting completed."