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Stuart Gentle Publisher at Onrec

JM reveals it’s not all doom and gloom for IT workers in banking

Whilst the Investment Banking sector continues to be in a period of volatility, The JM Group has revealed it is not all doom and gloom for IT workers with a recent pick up in demand for permanent staff

Whilst the Investment Banking sector continues to be in a period of volatility, The JM Group has revealed it is not all doom and gloom for IT workers with a recent pick up in demand for permanent staff.

Over the last quarter the demand for permanent IT workers has increased by around 12.5%. This is in sharp contrast to the contract market where hiring has tailed off considerably in recent months.

Dave Pye, CEO of The JM Group, commented: “We believe it’s a positive sign that the banks are starting to hire permanent IT staff again and this is in spite of the fact that the Eurozone crisis is still hanging over us.”

JM is a niche provider of IT and business change specialists to clients in the consultancy, financial services and digital sectors. Entering its fourth decade of trading this year, JM’s clients include many of the UK’s biggest financial institutions.

Pye continued: “With the banks having undergone substantial cost reduction and redundancy programmes, we believe these new hires reflect their confidence that they’ve done enough to streamline their businesses for now.”

Cost reduction programmes and hiring freezes have become common place across the Investment Banking sector over the last few years. Analysis of seven investment banks by Financial News revealed headcount fell by 2.4%[1] across the US and Europe between the end of 2010 and the end of 2011.

Martin Rennison, Head of Investment Banking for IT at JM, commented: “We believe the banks have finally come to a point where they can no longer wait around anymore. The risk of not investing in new talent or new projects is now seen to outweigh the benefits of sitting tight in anticipation of what could happen, especially as they could be in for a very long wait.”

In contrast to permanent recruitment, the contract market has tailed off in the last few months with no steady flow of roles. Instead The JM Group are now seeing peaks and troughs of activity and to the frustration of candidates are finding that offers are frequently being put on hold.