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As investment banks look to move parts of their UK operations to the Continent after Brexit, there’s one huge task that they’re beginning to hire for – technology.

HSBC has just brought in Henrik Petersson as a managing director and Brexit programme director. He spent the past two years as a managing partner at PlanExecute, which consults with organisations on change, HR and transformation projects. Previously, he was chief information officer for strategy and architecture at Standard Bank in Johannesburg.

Headhunters suggest that large financial services organisations are now in the market for senior professionals to lead the technology risk management projects related to Brexit. Fidelity Investments recently moved Fleur Hodgkinson, a programme director in its propositions group, into the role of programme director for Brexit and regulatory change. Headhunters suggest that BNY Mellon is also hiring in this area.

“If you’re an MD working in risk management, expect a call,” says one IT headhunter. “Some of these jobs are in London, but a lot are also in Frankfurt, which is a hard sell.”

“It’s a bit like the Y2K projects at the turn of the century,” says Paul Bennie, managing director of IT headhunters Bennie MacLean. “It’s not a job you’re going to be doing the job in perpetuity, so what comes next?”

Investment banks rolling out contingency plans to move jobs out of the UK after Brexit. Current estimates put that figure at 9,000, but these are not all front office employees. As Deutsche Bank’s chief regulatory officer Sylvie Matherat said earlier this month – the bank could shift 4,000 jobs out of London, and client facing staff are matched on a ratio of 1:1 by risk management employees. Then there’s compliance, technology and back office functions.

Unravelling investment banks’ sprawling technology infrastructure that crosses asset classes and geographies is no easy task.

“If a bank decides to move one part of its trading business to Continental Europe, it opens a whole can of worms for technology,” says Bennie. “Banks need to think of the regulatory impact, the risk implications, whether they need to shut one part of the system down or migrate another. It’s a huge task.”

The result, says Bennie, is that banks are turning to either senior technologists who have worked on cross-asset class technology systems, or people who worked on large transformation projects on a consultancy basis.

“They’re not going to hire, say, a former CIO of equities. They need to be able to see the whole picture,” he says.

Banks are hiring at the top of the tree for these Brexit roles, but are also bringing in business analysts and project managers. Predominantly, these are contract roles, and banks are currently offering between £600-700 a day for these roles.

There are examples of former senior banking professionals setting themselves up for lucrative Brexit-related consultancy gigs. James Read, the former head of asset management compliance for EMEA at Macquarie, left in August and has set up his own firm called Brexit Compliance.

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So you’re thinking of getting a job in artificial intelligence (AI) in financial services? Good luck with that. Even the big banks employ next to no one in their AI teams.

Speaking at today’s AI Summit in London, Berkan Sesen, VP and global data analytics at Citi said his team comprises two people, or maybe three. That’s three people in an organization that employs 231,000 people in total and 10,000+ in its institutional clients (ICG) group.

Sesen’s small team is tasked with the application of machine learning to marketing making, particularly for CDS trades. He joined Citi as an algorithmic trading quant in 2013, but his system has yet to be implemented. “It’s still not in production but will happen soon,” he told attendees this morning. “We are living in a transformational period in terms of machine intelligence.”

And if you still want to get into AI? Expertise in speech recognition will help. Sesen said AI systems used in finance are increasingly reliant on the Markov model, a stochastic model typically employed in speech recognition programmes and used to represent randomly changing systems. “Hedge funds, systematic trading houses and banks all use Markov,” Sesen said.

Sesen himself started out as a specialist in biomedicine, working for the NHS after completing a PhD in artificial intelligence and medical informatics at Oxford University. From there, he jumped in finance at Citi.

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What do technologists need to know to position themselves for a career at Goldman Sachs? There are many potential paths to take, but it pays off to stay nimble and ready to apply your skill set where it is most needed.

Case in point, Miruna Stratan joined Goldman Sachs after earning a degree in communications and electrical engineering at Bucharest Polytechnic University in Romania and a graduate degree in telecommunications from the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey.

During Stratan’s 18-year career at Goldman, she has worn many hats, overseeing the development of new infrastructure across the firm, including the bank’s external cloud access platform, cloud desktop and remote-access function. In addition, she serves on several internal committees and external advisory councils that focus on cloud technologies.

“The evolution of cloud security solutions, particularly related to software and infrastructure, have had an immense effect on our industry, and I think in the next few years this will continue to be a key area of focus,” Stratan said.

“These security initiatives, in addition to platform-as-a-service offerings, will enable firms across the sector to build an accessible data platform in the public cloud,” she said.

Most recently, Stratan served as the chief technology officer of workplace platforms while also holding product development and management roles. Prior to that, she was responsible for global network architecture and design and global network products development.

“Over the course of my career, I developed an expertise in technology infrastructure engineering by working on data-center products across both the compute storage and networking space,” Stratan said.

“Through this work, I helped drive the firm’s global data-center architecture and strategy, and also managed our vendor relationships in this sector,” she said.

“I began my career at Goldman Sachs developing technology solutions for the firm’s banking business, before specializing in technology infrastructure.”

Career turning points

To continue earning promotions to move up the ladder, it helps to earn accolades. To do so, you will have to get past bumps in the road and overcome challenges along the way.

“Over the last 18 years at Goldman Sachs, I’ve taken on several new lateral roles,” Stratan said. “These were difficult moves to make, because I had to prove to my new team members and managers that I was capable of delivering a strong work product time and again, even though I had been working at the firm in other capacities.

“While it’s difficult to be exposed to a different environment or be assigned to an existing project you have no background on, working on new technologies and teams ultimately served as some of my best learning experiences and allowed me to broaden my network internally,” she said.

In 2014, Stratan was named a Technology Fellow, a distinction that recognizes individuals across the firm who exhibit the strongest engineering and architectural talent. In 2015, she was promoted to managing director.

“It’s also been exciting to develop expertise in new, emerging technologies, and work directly with leading industry vendors, to improve not only the firm’s internal technology platforms, but also be able to influence important industry shifts to open infrastructure platforms and cloud security,” Stratan said.

“My work, alongside my team, has helped transform our business into a data-driven model through applied technology,” she said.

STEM star

Stratan’s father – a physicist – was one of her early role models. He encouraged her to study engineering because he was convinced that the computer and communications era was in its early stages and that there were tremendous opportunities in that space.

“When I first started with the firm, I expected that I would eventually become more of a business analyst rather than a technical expert,” Stratan said. “But, I was quite surprised by the depth of the technology stack, as well as by the ability to influence the business model through technical solutions, and therefore continued on this path as my career progressed.”

Techies need to be able to communicate effectively with non-techies

What are some lessons Stratan has learned over the years as it relates to career success?

“I’ve learned the importance of communication, from highlighting the great work you’ve done on a particular project to explaining the rationale behind taking a project in a new direction,” Stratan said.

“Communicating effectively allows you to strengthen your presence on a team, as other team members understand clearly what you’re working on, while also allowing you to share your vision and goals with others,” she said.

“While developing a great technical solution is key, communicating how you were able to do so is just as important.”

In job interviews, it’s important for candidates to show they have strong technical capabilities, but are also able to work effectively with others to develop innovative solutions, Stratan said.

In addition, she feels that curiosity and the ability to learn quickly are quite important.

“Asking candidates to describe how they solved a problem in their past jobs or internships is very eye-opening and indicates how they would likely perform in a new role,” Stratan said. “These questions allow you to go into deeper and deeper levels of detail to really understand how the candidate thinks.”

Build internal and external networks

Stratan echoed advice for female bankers from fellow Goldman MD Alison Mass: If you want to make it to the top, act like you deserve to be there. Also, seek out strong mentors.

“As a woman technologist I felt intimidated early on in my career – at times I was one of the only women in the room,” Stratan said. “It’s important to build your network both internally and externally to identify mentors and sponsors that will support you and offer guidance, giving you the confidence to excel in your career and overcame the initial intimidation I first experienced.”

Stratan encourages woman technologists to participate in external initiatives that they find rewarding. For example, she has attended and spoken at the Grace Hopper Conference, which is one of the largest technical conferences for women in computing. She has also taken part in Lesbians Who Code conferences, which brings together members and allies of the LGBT community that are passionate about technology.

“Participating in these external initiatives allows me to broaden my network and learn about new industry trends, which I then share with my team,” Stratan said.

View the complete 2017 Ideal Employer Global Rankings
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Photo courtesy of Goldman Sachs
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If you want to escape the storm surrounding equity research, it helps to be highly-ranked and to cover a sector that’s in demand.

Tech analysts remain highly sought-after and Jefferies is the latest bank to poach a senior researcher. It’s just hired Brent Thill, a senior tech analyst at UBS, as a managing director and head of internet research based across its San Francisco and New York offices.

Thill also led UBS’s software research team in the U.S, which was ranked number one by Institutional Investor magazine.

Jefferies has been hiring, in both the U.S. and London, and research has been a big focus – both in the senior ranks and among juniors. However, it also has some gaps to fill.

Brad Zelnick, who spent three years as a managing director in software research at Jefferies in New York, jumped to Credit Suisse in April.

Top analysts who cover software and internet companies remain in demand despite the general reduction in equity research headcount. But they’re also being hired by the companies they cover.

Earlier this month, Edward Hill-Wood, managing director and head of European internet research at Morgan Stanley, left the bank to join media firm Naspers as head of investor relations.

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If you want to move out of investment banking and into private equity, you might also want to investigate Swedish private equity group EQT partners. It appears to be hiring from banks in London, for positions in the City and in Stockholm.

EQT’s recent recruits include Kerstin Fürntrath, a former analyst on Deutsche Bank’s leveraged debt capital markets team, and Jessica Ahlén, a former investment banking analyst at Goldman Sachs. Fürntrath joins in the UK, Ahlén in Sweden. Both joined this month.

As is increasingly the case, both women quit banking very soon after joining. Fürntrath was at Deutsche for a mere 10 months. Ahlén was at Goldman a mere 13 months, although both were summer analysts at the respective banks prior to joining full time.

From an ’employer branding’ perspective, EQT has plenty going for it. The fund specialises in sustainable and responsible investing and aims, for example, to become one of the leading investors in biosolids waste management solutions, thereby satisfying young employees’ need for “purpose”. With €22bn invested and €35bn in raised capital, it also has plenty of money and 290 investment advisory employees worldwide.

EQT also has an office in New York City, which it hired for last August and September, bringing on Jonathan Herskowitz (formerly an analyst at Credit Suisse), Tanvi Gupta, (formerly an analyst at BAML) and Marcus Risland (formerly an analyst at Morgan Stanley). This year it also poached Hunter Dougherty from Credit Suisse for its NY office in March.

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Are you prepared for the June CFA exam? It’s less than a month away, so take a deep breath and work out how to best use your time and energy from now until exam day.

Stephen Horan, managing director of credentialing at the CFA Institute who formerly worked in the financial services industry and as a professor of finance, leads the development of the CFA Institute’s education programs, including the CFA Program. He agrees with the bare minimum of 300 hours of study to pass each of the three levels of the CFA exam line.

“Generally that’s what it takes for candidates to be successful, so you have to start early, create a schedule and a study plan and stick to them,” Horan said. “Presuming that’s been the case, it’s continuing on that and, when we’re about a month away, what you want to be able to do is start to wrap up your first curriculum run-through and revisions, because you want to leave time for practice exams.”

Here are Horan’s tips for getting through the exams.

Take mocks

There are plenty of mock exams online, either through the CFA Institute or one of the many companies that provide training for the qualification.

“A mock exam is going to surface the areas where you’re relatively weak, whereas if you just pick out some practice questions, you risk going to the areas that you’re comfortable with rather than the ones you really need to work on,” Horan said. “It simulates the natural test-taking experience – it is intended to replicate the actual exam as much as possible, right down to the two three-hour sessions.

“Once you know what your areas of weakness are, you can drill back down into practice questions in that particular area,” he said.

Harumi Urata-Thompson, the chief operating officer of the New York Society for Security Analysts (NYSSA), suggests taking a mock exam exactly one week before the date of the actual exam.

“That will give you a feel for the stamina and the pacing you’ll need,” she said. “At each level, you know what types of problems you will have to answer, and your performance on the mock exam will let you know if you have to review certain topics more than others.”

Get the right prep

While other materials and courses may help, it’s important to realize that everything you will see on the exam comes directly from the curriculum that the CFA Institute provides. Look at the exam prep materials and study tips on the institute’s website thoroughly.

“We recommend private test prep for people who respond to live instruction, and we have a list of recommended instructors, but it’s not necessary,” Horan said. “Candidates should be able to study and pass the exam based solely on the curriculum that we give them, which is the best place to get inside the head of the question writer.

“That said, sometimes candidates benefit from getting a different perspective on the material and live instruction, and we absolutely encourage candidates who want to study that way to do it,” he said.

Don’t poo-poo the ethics section

Get the ethics portion of the exam right, because it can make or break your chances of passing the CFA exam.

“Ethics is important to becoming an investment professional – we take this seriously,” Horan said. “The ethics section is not based on the candidate’s intuitive sense of right and wrong – rather, questions are based on what the CFA institute’s code and standards say and how they might be applied to behavior in various situations.

“Try to take your own sense of right and wrong out of it, which is important because it can make the difference between passing and failing,” he said. “If candidates do well on ethics who would have been just short of a passing score based on the rest of the exam will pass and candidates who would have passed just barely based on the rest of the exam will fail if they bomb the ethics portion.”

Don’t try to cram until all hours the night before

Prioritize a good night’s sleep the night before the exam rather than staying up late studying.

“Do something relaxing almost all day, and don’t go out and party or cram too late,” Horan said. “The actual exam ends up being an endurance event, with two three-hour sessions, so if you go into it tired or drained because you were pulling an all-nighter, you’d really be doing yourself a disservice.

“See if you can go to the test center at some point before the day of the exam to get the lay of the land, figure out the best route to the test center, get a feel for where you can park and where you will eat lunch,” he said. “It provides a sense of comfort if you’ve been there before, because you don’t want to have to make small incremental decisions on things you haven’t experienced yet on the day of the exam.”

Sweat the small stuff

Some people are more organized than others, and Urata-Thompson stresses the need to think through details in advance, even if they seem insignificant.

For example, make sure you have the right calculators, double-check your tickets, make sure not to write anything on your tickets, and either pack your lunch the night before or scope out a lunch spot within walking distance of the exam center in advance.

Also, plan on the exam center being either too hot or too cold – usually it’s too cold, Urata-Thompson said.
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Photo credit: demaerre/GettyImages
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Do you work for Deutsche Bank? Are you among the 61% of Deutsche Bank staff unhappy with last year’s (absent) bonus? Did you receive the DB retention bonus which is on track to be worth nothing at all? Do you want to do something about this?

Resign. And then be bought back.

Headhunters say Deutsche does have money to spend on its existing staff (alongside alleged guarantees for new hires), it’s just being very careful about how it spends it. If someone strategically important resigns for a role elsewhere, Deutsche has been known to better the new offer and maybe make a promotion along with it. In this way we understand that exits have been thwarted.

Nowhere is Deutsche’s need for sticky staff greater than in its U.S. investment banking business. The German bank has repeatedly declared its intention of “deepening” its relationships in M&A and equity capital markets this year and is making North America a priority. At the end of last week, Deutsche ranked 15th for U.S. M&A, down from 14th last year, from 10th in 2015 and from eighth three years ago. The trend is clear, and it’s moving in the wrong direction.

Deutsche declined to comment for this article, but buybacks or not, insiders say Deutsche’s whole U.S. investment banking business has been losing senior staff. Exits so far this year include Craig Molson, a senior leveraged finance banker who left for Barclays in March, Marc Habert, the head of restructuring who went to RBC, Greg Rinsky and Michael Siano from Deutsche’s gaming and healthcare banking groups respectively, who went to Houlihan Lokey, Marc Cohen, who also went to RBC, Lee Counselman, a senior software banker who went to Moelis, plus a handful of other exits from associate to director level.

Deutsche has also been hiring to bolster its U.S. M&A operation. U.S. recruits this year include Adora Whitaker, a managing director in FIG from Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Philip Pucciarelli and Robert Verdier from BMO Capital Markets for healthcare, along with Glenn Rewick for healthcare from UBS. They follow at least seven managing director or director level hires for the U.S. M&A business in the final months of last year.

Rather than new hires, what Deutsche’s U.S. investment banking business really needs though, is stability. Deutsche has been investing in the U.S. for years but has little to show for it, possibly because the people it recruits have a tendency to leave again two or three years later. The U.S. healthcare team is a case in point. In 2014 Deutsche appointed two new co-heads of healthcare from Morgan Stanley; a year later they left for J.P. Morgan. Twelve months on, Deutsche’s new-new heads of healthcare (one of whom had been hired from Goldman Sachs four years earlier) quit for Barclays.

This matters, because M&A bankers are like a ripe cheese. They don’t reach maturity overnight. As Andrea Orcel said in February, building an M&A business takes time: “You need to attract the right people, give them time to embed with the culture and the place, give them time with the client to get them to agree they can deliver for them, and then get them to deliver.” Bank of America’s Christian Meissner was more specific a few years’ ago: he told the Financial Times that building an M&A business takes three to five years once the right people are in place. This is why Goldman Sachs, for example, is happy to leave its relationship bankers alone to schmooze.

It’s no good if you quit before the schmoozing comes to anything, though. Nor is it any good if you’re unreachable while it’s taking place. This being an alleged failing of Jeff Urwin, the former head of corporate and investment banking who joined Deutsche from J.P. Morgan in 2015 and left again earlier this year. “Nobody could ever get hold of him, not even John [Cryan],” says one ex-Deutsche MD.

With Urwin out the way, Cryan himself is now in charge of Deutsche’s U.S. business, aided by Mark Fedorcik who heads corporate finance for the Americas. As the two men try building Deutsche’s market share, they won’t want to see any more talent walking out the door – especially when it was hired at a premium from rival banks.

If you’re good at Deutsche Bank, you should therefore be able to threaten to leave and get a pay rise. And if you’re not? You can take your chances and move. The only problem with this strategy is that rival banks are reportedly making subpar offers in the knowledge that Deutsche didn’t pay performance bonuses last year. In the worst case scenario then, you’ll jump out of Deutsche only to be underpaid elsewhere anyway. This is another reason to stay put.

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Photo credit: exit by Jerome Olivier is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Hong Kong is constantly ranked among the world’s most expensive cities and banking jobs there generally still pay well.

If you want to be well rewarded in Hong Kong in the years after you graduate, it makes sense to go into a career in the finance sector.

Or does it? Front-office investment banking and to a lesser extent wealth management remain highly compensated, while compliance and even some risk and accounting roles also pay well.

However, if you’re a graduate looking for a career that will help you stay solvent over the long-term in costly Hong Kong, some parts of banking sector are best avoided.

We’ve looked through 2017 pay surveys from four finance recruiters in Hong Kong and identified the (non-technology) roles that pay the worst average salaries to people with about five years’ experience (i.e. those who are at, or around, associate level in investment banks).

If you’re rotating across different departments on an analyst programme, don’t get stuck in one of the jobs in the table below (which averages out salary numbers from the four surveys) when your training ends.

People in all 10 of these functions – including even sought-after roles like credit risk, internal audit, and onboarding – are still earning HK$500k (US$64k) or less five years after they graduate.

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Image credit: wrangel, Gettty

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Like most European investment banks, Credit Suisse continues to hire in the U.S. even as it reshapes it London operation. Senior bankers take time to bed in, and just about every European bank – including Rothschild, which has just poached from Credit Suisse in California, and Deutsche Bank – are competing for talent as they seek to grab more market share from domestic firms.

But while Credit Suisse has been hiring front office bankers in New York and San Francisco, it’s also tapping into another Wall Street trend – moving jobs out of New York. Credit Suisse is creating 1,200 new jobs in Raleigh, North Carolina. Some people will be hired locally, others in technology, finance and operations will be asked to transfer from New York.

Big banks are offered tax breaks to create jobs in locations not readily associated with financial services, and it’s decidedly cheaper to house employees outside of New York. Goldman has been rapidly building its office in Salt Lake City, which includes tech, operations and, now, even some investment banking roles. Morgan Stanley has an office in Maryland, while J.P. Morgan has tech hubs in Tampa, Dallas, Delaware and shifted over 2,000 jobs from New York to New Jersey back in 2015.

Credit Suisse already has around 1,500 staff in North Carolina, and will invest $70.5m as part of the expansion. However, it’s also eligible for a $40.2m in reimbursements as part of a government grant programme. Credit Suisse said in December that it was cutting $1bn in costs, so this is a drop in the ocean. But perhaps it’s also part of its stated aim to “protect” its full-time staff even if they have to work in cheaper locations.

Separately, if you think crowd-funding your own business at university is the way to impress banking recruiters, stand back and admire the story of Ismail Ahmed, CEO of London fintech firm WorldRemit, which has 300 staff in the capital. Ahmed fled war-torn Somalia in 1991 for the UK and had to provide for his family back home while also studying for an economics degree at the University of London. He worked three jobs at once during this time, including picking strawberries outside of London, so he could send money back home.

“My family had lost everything,” he told Bloomberg. “So now I became the one who sent money back.”

After studying for a PhD, he started a job in the UN helping money transfer firms with counter-terrorism finance rules, but soon discovered that his boss dodgy – awarding contracts to firms where he had a business interest. He blew the whistle and eventually landed a $200k settlement with the UN, which he then used to get WorldRemit off the ground.

Meanwhile:

U.S fund managers are setting up in London even after Brexit (Financial News)

Lloyd Blankfein would like to roll back Volcker (Bloomberg)

The problem with never ending assessments: “We would kind of start to sit down…and not really know what the check-ins were meant for.” (WSJ)

“The more complex the organisation, the longer it is going to take to create workable contingency options, and so investment banks in particular are putting their plans on record.” (Financial Times)

How the City works: 800 Aberdeen and Standard Life staff lose jobs post-merger, while advisers take £97m in fees pic.twitter.com/ef9KMaksyP

— Harry Wilson (@harrynwilson) May 9, 2017

More bankers coming to a government near you (Dealbreaker)

Time to join a family office (Finalternatives)

Credit Suisse has hired Tim Joyce as head of FX options trading in London. He comes from Deutsche Bank (Finance Magnates)

Canadian investment banks want to crack the U.S. (Bloomberg)

Jes Staley needs to rein it in: “He has a highly developed level of moral outrage . . . he’s got to take a cold shower when that happens” (Financial Times)

Five words in a chatroom got a Citi FX trader fired. He’s claiming unfair dismissal (Bloomberg)

Compliments and attention, how to handle narcissists at work (Quartz)

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If you’re looking for a banking job and are persistently unsuccessful, either at the interview of the application stage, you might want to adopt some different tactics. Yes, you can redo your CV. Yes, you can use the STAR interview technique. You could also set out to actively ‘reframe’ the way the way you’re perceived.

This latter technique is called ‘impression management’. Fundamentally, it means dropping explicit markers to steer how people think of you. According to a recent academic study, it really works. – Especially if you happen to be someone subject to age discrimination.

“Impression management means contradicting stereotypes,” says Franciska Kings, one of the study’s authors at the University of Lausanne. “The challenge for older workers is that they’re perceived as less competent – even though this has been proven not to be the case. The assumption is that they’re more rigid, lower in flexibility, and less adaptable. The challenge is to counteract that.”

King and her colleagues asked 515 undergraduates to evaluate transcripts from fabricated interviews involving older and younger candidates. Sometimes the older candidates used impression management and sometimes they didn’t. In all cases the older candidates were ranked lower for hireability than the younger ones, but in the scripts where impression management was used the discrepancy between the two was reduced by as much as 80%.

We’ve included some examples of the academics’ use of impression management below. They don’t concern banking directly, but the finance industry is notoriously youthful (at PwC, a professional services firm, the average age is just 28), and the generic tactics used by the researchers apply as much to an application for a job in M&A as to a job in retailing or technology.

The fundamental formula is simple: first you identify why the person hiring you might be prejudiced against you; then you set about to actively contradict that. This can be done multifariously. For example, you can avoid behaviours associated with the “devalued social identify”. You can emphasize how similar you are to other groups who are identified with more positively. You can communicate the more favourable attributes associated with your stereotype (for example, older workers might be perceived as more knowledgeable.) Or you can explicitly negate likely prejudices with language that contradicts them.

In the study, the academics set about to refute five proven negative stereotypes of older candidates: the perception that they can’t handle pressure as well as younger ones; the perception that they don’t learn as quickly; the perception that they’re less achievement oriented; the perception that they’re less adaptable, and the perception that they have fewer technology skills. Impression management had a positive impact on all dimensions but technology skills – here, there was nothing that could be done to disprove the stereotype. If you’re older, you may just have to accept your perceived technical inadequacy, fair or not.

Technological bias aside, the examples below demonstrate what works according to the academics. Impression management is simple, but effective. You might want to try it next time you write an application letter or attend a finance interview.

When you’re asked: “How well do you deal with stress and working under pressure?”

You can answer: “I believe I can manage pressure well. In my previous job, I often had to finish tasks under short deadlines, so I am used to working under pressure. As a travel you constantly deal with customers and there is a lot of pressure to address customers’ queries while also completing administrative tasks. While I generally prefer to take my time and do the task thoroughly to avoid mistakes, I understand pressure is sometimes necessary.”

Or, you can use an impression management response: “I believe I manage pressure very well. In my previous job, I often had to finish tasks under short deadlines and actually I have to say I prefer it in several ways. As a travel agent you constantly deal with customers and there was a lot of pressure to address customers’ queries while also completing administrative tasks. When I work under pressure I tend to be more focused and motivated. It keeps me alert and helps me complete my tasks on time and effectively. I must say this kind of drive, keeps me going.”

When you’re asked: “How open are you to learning applications and procedures? Can you give me an example of a situation when you learned something new?”

You can answer: “Sure. I am open to learning new things and I think I’m good at it. One example? Yeah, in my last job I had to learn how to use the company’s in-house web application to track the status of my sales and the best travel deals for the region of the world I was acting as an agent for. It was very difficult at first because the application was not very user friendly and I had to invest a lot of time familiarising myself with it. It was a challenge but after a while I was able to use it as well as the rest of my colleagues.”

Or, you can use an impression management response: “Actually, I’m quite open, learning new things comes easily to me. For example, in my last job I had to learn how to use the company’s in-house web application to track the status of my sales and the best travel deals for the region of the world I was acting as an agent for. It was hard at first because the application was not very user friendly but I enjoyed the challenge and soon I found I was able to use the application’s algorithms to do tracking that even my colleagues weren’t sure how to do.”

When you’re asked: “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?”

You can answer: : “Hmm…I see myself five years from now being in a good position, where people can recognise me as a good employee and as an asset of their organisation. Although the future is unpredictable, what I can say for sure is that the day I will join the firm, I will try to understand my role in the company, and will give my 100% to make my work productive and whenever to contribute fully to the development of the organisation.”

Or, you can use an impression management response: “Hmm…I see myself five years from now being in a managerial position. Though it is quite ambitious I believe that with hard work and a well set plan, it can be achieved. I see myself progressing, learning new skills, and having more responsibilities. My goal is to improve clients’ experiences while contributing to the development of the company. I can see many challenges lying ahead of me, but I am eager to experience them.”

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Are you looking for an investment banking job in the U.S.? Here’s a roundup of the open roles in New York and across the country at the heaviest hitters among Wall Street banks.

Goldman Sachs

While Goldman Sachs’s commercial mortgage platform is based in Irving, Texas, the firm is currently looking to add headcount to its real estate financing group in its New York headquarters. Open roles include commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) specialists, origination professionals, commercial real estate (CRE) warehouse specialists and structurers.

The broader financing group, which is part of the investment banking division, is looking for an industrials specialist for its leveraged finance team.

In addition, the bank is seeking IBD financing group and knowledge management analysts; merchant banking division (MBD) finance and fund & operations team associates; securities division equities management associates and VPs; and data investment research VPs.

Goldman is also hiring finance associates in both New York and San Francisco, as well as Salt Lake City-based IBD analysts for its data resources group and knowledge management (KM) team.

It is also hiring developers, including Java programmers, for its Jersey City, New Jersey, office.

J.P. Morgan

J.P. Morgan is hiring for its corporate and investment bank (CIB), primarily in its Manhattan and Brooklyn, New York, offices, but also in Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Newark and San Francisco.

Focusing on open jobs based in its New York City headquarters, J.P. Morgan is hiring VP-level M&A investment bankers; associates and vice presidents with Treasury experience in its global clearing division; investment banking senior associates and junior VPs to bolster its financial sponsors coverage; equity financing analysts in its prime brokerage; associate- and VP-level data specialists for its custody and fund services group; business analytics digital intelligence VPs for its markets execution team; and liquidity product management VPs for its custody fund services (CFS) Americas team.

Open positions at the bank’s global HQ also include derivatives clearing client services VPs for its investor services team; strategy senior associates and VPs; experienced real estate IB analysts and associates; diversified industries IB associates; power and utilities associates for its energy investment banking team; and media and communications IB associates.

Morgan Stanley

The vast majority of the roles that Morgan Stanley is currently looking to hire for are based in its New York HQ, with a notable exception being investment banking associates for its Los Angeles office.

In New York, the bank is seeking to hire salespeople for its Morgan Stanley Electronic Trading (MSET) quant coverage team; equity research quant associate with financials experience; associate- and VP-level investment banking salespeople, traders and researchers; middle-market loan analysts; quantitative researchers and developers for electronic market making; equities electronic trading risk associates and VPs; U.S. Treasury and agency MBS trading and portfolio management associates; and securitized product group (SPG) salespeople.

In addition, the bank wants to hire associate-level product specialists and equity researchers with hardlines retail experience, as well as for its analyst solutions team; and product development associates for its fund services group, although the majority of the latter roles are based in Purchase, New York.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch

In addition to actively recruiting for its relationship manager and financial advisor development programs and global wealth & investment management (GWIM) team, Bank of America Merrill Lynch is doing quite a bit of recruitment for investment banking and markets roles at its New York HQ.

The bank is hiring technology, media & telecom (TMT) and financial institutions IB VPs; investment analysts, quantitative finance analysts, including some with pre-provision net revenue (PPNR) modelling experience, and senior quantitative financial analysts with fair-lending experience; global principal investments (GPI), family office and quantitative strategies group (QSG) associates, as well as financial sponsors IB associates for its transaction development group; alternative investments salespeople; and various product specialists.

Citigroup

In addition to recruiting for its New York HQ, Citi is looking to fill investment banking roles in Chicago, Houston and San Francisco, primarily analysts and associates, but also industrials IB VPs.

Focusing on its open jobs in New York, the bank wants to bring in senior assistants to its financial institutions group (FIG); relationship associates for its Global Capital Network & Management team; corporate and investment banking relationship analysts; senior analysts for the Latin America IB team; and healthcare IB associates.
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Once upon a time, the City couldn’t get enough of graduates of Nicole Karoui’s Masters in Probability and Finance at Paris’s at University Paris-VI. Back in the day, Karoui’s students were pursued to be derivatives structurers and quantitative risk managers by banks in London. Many of them still occupy senior positions in the City today. However, Karoui retired in 2004 and top French quants say her course has been displaced by contenders more suited to banks’ needs of contemporary mathematicians. .

Today’s Karouis are Nizar Touzi, professor of applied mathematics at Paris’s École Polytechnique and Nicolas Vayatis, director of the, ‘Centre de mathématiques et de leurs applications (CMLA)’ at the École normale supérieure Paris-Saclay (formerly known as ENS Cachan). The course in question is the masters in applied maths (MVA). Its appeal? It equips France’s new best mathematicians with the techniques necessary to work in data science or artificial intelligence.

“The best mathematicians don’t want to do derivatives any more.” says Edouard D’Archimbaud head of the data and artificial intelligence lab at BNP Paribas in Paris. “The MVA at Cachan is becoming the most famous preparation of a career in machine learning.”

D’Archimbaud should know. A graduate from École Polytechnique with an MVA in applied maths, he runs BNP Paribas’ data and artificial intelligence (AI) lab. While banks like Citi have comparatively small AI teams, BNP Paribas is ambitious to grow. Right now, the French has 25 people in its lab, spread between Paris and Lisbon in Portugal, ultimately it expects to have 100. D’Archimbaud is therefore hiring – slowly. “We’re recruiting around 10 people a year,” he says. “We’re very careful and only like to hire the right people.”

In Paris, those people are highly likely to be students of Touzi and Vayatis. Thanks to their endeavours, French graduates looks likely to retain their position at the helm of quantitative finance as the sector embraces machine learning. “The English are good at law, the Americans are good at history and the French are good at maths,” jokes D’Archimbaud’s colleague.

In Portugal, D’Archimbaud’s unit is more likely to hire from the Universities of Lisbon or Porto. While banks like Morgan Stanley are building quant units in Hungary, D’Archimbaud says Portugal suits BNP Paribas best: “We find great profiles there, it’s close to Paris, and it’s cheap.”

Speaking at this week’s AI summit in London, D’Archimbaud said his unit is developing new interfaces between clients at the bank. So far, it’s worked on a translation program for finance which he says is more accurate than Google’s own.

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You might think that banks like J.P. Morgan have no problem in attracting exemplary talent in artificial intelligence (AI). After all, the U.S. bank successfully hired Geoffrey Zweig, a top natural language processing (NLP) scientist from Microsoft as head of global machine learning in February. One month later it also recruited Jeffrey De Jong, a specialist in experimental particle physics who’d been working for King, the games development company behind the Candy Crush Saga. But for all the Zweigs and De Jongs who come in-house, it seems there are plenty of other top technologists who want to remain unfettered by a big corporation.

“Some of the best technology talent doesn’t always want to work in banks,” said Daniel Drummer, a VP in fintech at J.P. Morgan’s corporate and investment bank. A lot of people want to be entrepreneurs, he added.

J.P. Morgan hasn’t given up. It’s still working with the world’s top AI professionals – on their terms. Rather than assimilating them into its investment bank, it’s inviting them into its offices and helping to develop their start-ups as much as it can and – notably – not necessarily investing or demanding anything in return.

“Our objective is not necessarily to acquire or invest in [a company we work with], but to make it industry-ready,” said Drummer, speaking at the AI Summit in London today. Instead of investment, Drummer said machine learning start-ups in the wholesale banking space often need access to data and knowledge about how the finance industry works, along with an enterprise to test their ideas out on. This is what J.P. Morgan offers (although it’s not averse to investing too if appropriate).

Skittish machine learning technologists seem to like this deal. J.P. Morgan launched its “In Residence” program for fintech start-ups in June 2016. Since then, Drummer says it’s met with well over 100 companies using data science, machine learning and AI. Of those, it’s chosen to work with a “handful.”

Drummer didn’t say who those firms are, or exactly what they’re up to at J.P. Morgan. The bank has said publicly, however, that it’s using artificial intelligence to automate tasks done by its lawyers and to identify opportunities for its investment banking business.

Some of the forthcoming AI initiatives coming out of J.P. Morgan might therefore originate with interesting companies brought under the bank’s wing on a relatively informal basis.

What if the AI companies J.P. Morgan nurtures go on to become successful and to tout their wares to competitor banks? Drummer suggested this is just anachronistic thinking: “It’s not about being isolated and hoping that no one will find out what you’re doing.” The future is about companies working collaboratively on AI projects said, Drummer, pointing to Google’s approach with TensorFlow.

This may be so, but it also seems that J.P. Morgan’s In Residence programme gives it the best of both worlds. It gets to pick top machine learning talent with no commitments either way, and if things work out, JPM can be the first to invest.

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After the first quarter, Wall Street compensation consulting firm Johnson Associates is projecting mixed incentive pay across financial services, with a generally more upbeat business environment and compensation outlook compared to recent years. There’s a long way to go until the end of the year, though, with political and regulatory uncertainty, rising interest rates and ongoing challenges in global markets keeping full-year pay projections cloudy. That said, in general stronger performance has led to optimism that pay will be higher this year compared to 2016.

Johnson Associates expects asset managers’ incentive compensation to be flat, with private equity professionals riding record assets under management to 5% to 15% comp increases.

Major investment and commercial banking firms have achieved better results overall so far this year but with disparities in bonus outlook based on the business unit in which you work.

Investment banking incentives are up substantially, most significantly in debt and equity underwriting, which Johnson projects to earn bonuses at least 10% to 20% bigger than last year. That good news is dampened somewhat by a decline in advisory revenues, leading to a projected bonus shrinkage in the -5% to -10% range for that business unit.

Fixed income trading incentives are trending up moderately on stronger performance, leading to expectations of a 10% to 15% bonus increase, whereas equities trading incentives down slightly – perhaps -5% or so – due to lower levels of activity.

Banks continue to focus on cost cutting by making strategy shifts to realize technology efficiencies, keeping a conservative hiring outlook and moving headcount to lower-cost locations. They continue to increase staff in their regulatory and cyber-security departments.

Johnson Associates noted that shareholder advisory groups are stifling incentive design at the executive level by calling out instances where prescriptive mandates may not align with business strategies.

Banks have made considerable improvements in performance management using data analytics and technology, but that has led them to hire a smaller number of better-qualified professionals.

In addition, the industry has demonstrated a more nuanced use of market data to benchmark compensation for key positions.

Johnson Associates expects wider differentials in pay for banks to retain top talent, with broad turnover accepted and generally considered healthy.

Banks have increased their focus on cost-of-living differences between New York and California and the rest of the country, leading many to move headcount to lower-cost locations.

Taking into consideration the cash-flow needs of mid- and junior-level professionals, some banks, including many of the elite boutiques, are offering bonuses with more cash up front and less deferred.
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The sudden addition of scores of expensive Barclays bankers to its ranks has helped increase staff costs at OCBC and pushed up pay per head.

OCBC-owned Bank of Singapore acquired Barclays’ Asian wealth unit in November and more than 60 Barclays relationship managers (as well as other staff) joined OCBC’s headcount as a result.

Operating expenses at OCBC for the first quarter rose 5% year-on-year, according to the bank’s Q1 financial results. This was “driven by an increase in staff costs partly associated with the consolidation of Barclays”.

Staff costs rose 4%, “largely from higher base salaries”. And staff costs per head – total employee expenses (such as salaries and bonuses) divided by total headcount – went up by 5.2% year-on-year (or S$1,010), as the first table below shows.

Barclays RMs got about 10% to 15% more base pay when they moved to BoS, according to a headhunter with knowledge of the deal.

BoS is paying competitively in part to prevent its newly acquired bankers from joining Standard Chartered, the firm which poached several Barclays RMs before the takeover.

RMs at Bank of Singapore are earning their keep for their parent company. OCBC’s 14% rise in quarterly profit was largely led by growth in its wealth management business.

Despite the Barclays acquisition, however, overall headcount at OCBC fell by 312 year-on-year.

Fellow Singapore bank UOB has also cut its workforce since Q1 2016, as the second table shows. DBS bucked the trend by taking on 249 people over the same period, but the increase was purely driven by its decision to hire technology staff who had previously worked for its IT vendors.

The hiring spree that saw Singapore’s three local banks increase their combined headcount by 1,272 people in 2015 appears to have ended.

While Singapore banks haven’t made large-scale layoffs over the past year, they have reduced their recruitment rates in response to deteriorating economic conditions and they haven’t always replaced staff who’ve left of their own accord, say recruiters.

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Anna Vanessa Haotanto set her sights on a finance career even earlier that most aspiring bankers do. And one of her main motivations for joining the sector was also different from the norm: she wanted to earn enough money to buy her family a property.

“During the Asian Financial Crisis my parents’ business struggled and they made some financial mistakes,” says Haotanto, a former UOB banker who now runs The New Savvy, a Singapore fintech firm targeting female investors.

“So when I was at school I was determined to get out of the cycle of living pay cheque to pay cheque. I even started reading Warren Buffett as a teenager,” she adds.

Haotanto decided to study finance instead of law at Singapore Management University. “And the more I learnt, the more I loved it. I would even sit in on some finance classes that I wasn’t getting a credit for, just because I was interested in the topic.”

At university it soon became clear to Haotanto that she didn’t want to work in operations. “I wanted to be in the front-office. I’d become fascinated with how to generate greater rates of return.”

After graduating in 2008 Haotanto received offers from three banks, but instead joined BMI Research as an Asia Pacific account manager. “I was only 24 and I already had a regional role involving lots of travelling and meeting senior executives,” she says.

Haotanto joined UOB in 2010 as a client advisor in wealth management, dealing with offshore clients – from Indonesia and Malaysia to Europe. “I had no bank-sales experience and was thrown into the deep end. I often worked from 8am to 11pm and did a lot of cold calls. But I developed sales, product and relationship management skills.”

The UOB job also helped Haotanto achieve the objective she’d set at university: purchase a property for her family. “With that goal in mind, I became one of the top client advisors at the bank and I saved enough to buy one before I was 30.”

She then turned her attention to what she perceived as a wider problem in Singapore: a shortage of accessible financial advice to meet the needs of women. “There are women’s magazines – which have hardly any financial content – and at the other extreme there’s a site like Bloomberg, which is very technical.”

Haotanto decided to do something about this problem when she was in between jobs in 2015. Rather than return to banking, she set up fintech company The New Savvy, which provides content to help women make better informed investment decisions.

“Women in Singapore are earning more money, but most of them don’t invest it – they put it in the bank,” she adds. “And financial services is also a male-dominated industry.”

The New Savvy now has about 30,000 subscribers and five full-time staff. But it would be “premature” for the firm to start managing people’s money, says Haotanto. “Instead of investing in robo-advisory technology, we want to focus first on educating female consumers and building our brand.”

“The main challenge for me personally over the past two years has been learning SEO, and digital and content marketing as I had no prior knowledge,” she adds. “In a fintech start-up, every day is a struggle because there are no limits on what you can do – you don’t have a tight job description like at a bank.”

Haotanto now wants to help more female entrepreneurs enter the local fintech sector.

She’s the head of the women in fintech group at the Singapore FinTech Association, a non-profit organisation that encourages industry collaboration. “We have a clear objective of increasing the visibility of women in fintech, whether they’re entrepreneurs, or work for banks or regulators.”

But Haotanto admits that there’s a lot of work to be done. “I grew up in an environment where not many women got involved in technology. And even today, there are only three women in a list of the top-30 influencers in Singapore fintech. That makes me upset.”

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Now that it’s got €8bn in new capital and another strategy reconfiguration, Deutsche Bank has supposedly turned a corner. The second half of 2017 is the new dawn in which the German bank will be skipping after corporate clients and rebuilding its market share in fixed income trading.

This may be so, but a dark uncertainty lingers in the wings. Its name is Brexit, and it threatens to cause particular problems for Deutsche – recapitalization or not.

Brexit’s potency for Deutsche Bank comes from the fact that DB’s London business is presently operated on a branch basis only. As things stand, Deutsche’s fully regulated – and fully capitalized European head office – is to be found in Frankfurt. This is fine, so long as the UK is a member of the European Union, but clearly this is about to change.

Post-Brexit, Reuters points out that it’s likely that Deutsche will either need to set up a fully capitalized UK subsidiary, or to ship a large proportion of its London activities off to Frankfurt.

The first option could be costly. A report from Boston Consulting Group suggests the European banks currently operating branch structures in London would need to raise a combined €40bn in capital if they’re to switch to fully-capitalized post-Brexit UK subsidiaries. “If Carney (BoE governor) decides to make EU banks create subsidiaries … I will buy a one way train ticket out of London and take everyone with me,” one senior executive at a European bank tells Reuters, ominously.

Deutsche isn’t the only bank with this issue: BNP Paribas and Societe Generale are fellow sufferers. Deutsche is, though, the bank with the biggest problem and with the greatest number of London staff at risk of upheaval. It has 9,000 staff in the UK (of which 7,000 are in London), compared to 6,400 at BNP Paribas and 4,000 at SocGen.

The reminder of Deutsche’s precarity follows a recent warning by Sylvie Matherat, its chief regulatory officer, that the bank could be compelled to move 4,000 jobs including 2,000 front office sales and trading jobs out of the UK post-Brexit. Unless some kind of unlikely “back-to-back” arrangement can be arrived at whereby trades continue taking place in London whilst being mirrored and booked in Frankfurt , Deutsche’s traders might want to start learning German.

Separately, 8,000 Hours, an organization that encourages recent graduates into careers where they can have a positive social impact, has been conducting some detailed analysis into how much you can earn working for a hedge fund. While everyone knows about the hedge fund billionaires, 8,000 Hours’ analysis is interesting for its examination of the lifetime earnings of more median performers in the hedge fund industry. Some of the assumptions are questionable (eg. a 10% hurdle on returns before bonuses are paid), but the analysis is full of interesting points. Over a 20 year career, the suggestion is that a successful hedge fund trader earns $20m. 8,000 Hours suggests that half of this is donated to charity.

Meanwhile:

Lloyd Blankfein is complaining about the persistent low volatility. Does this mean Goldman’s Q2 results will be poor too? (CNBC)

Meet Wall Street’s new regulator: “Mr. Noreika is an unvetted attorney who lacks the experience to serve as an independent Wall Street watchdog.” (Bloomberg)

Reasons not to quit M&A for a boutique: ‘Free from the regulatory pressures piled on big banks, he said he nonetheless felt “a little naked” not being able to turn to colleagues in a markets business for advice on financing transactions.’ (Financial News)

RBS is outsourcing 92 UK technology jobs to India. (Register)

Jes Staley as protector: “I was trying to protect a vulnerable colleague.” (Financial Times)

Jerry Del Missier keeps hiring for his new fund above a plumbing shop called Flush Gordon. (Reuters)

A former special forces soldier who became a banker and joined Credit Suisse has defected to Rothschild. (FiNews)

Students from these elite schools dominate top UK companies’ graduate recruitment programmes.(Telegraph)

Five methods of getting noticed at work. (HBR)

A Deutsche Bank spokesman has written a novel titled “Murderous Menu.” (Facebook)

Descartes had a bulging frontal cortex. (Sciencemag)

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Photo credit:Winchester Street, Deutsche Bank, – 4 by Gideon Benari is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

The theory goes that the young these days aren’t very bothered about money. Millennials and Generation Y are supposed to be more interested in flexibility, coaching and culture than in cold hard cash. This may well the case. However, it doesn’t seem to apply to students who want to work in financial services: they’re still after the money.

eFinancialCareers’ research into the ‘Ideal Employers‘ of the students who come to this site suggests the standard Millennial preoccupations don’t hold with students who want to work in finance. Their preferred employers aren’t known for short working hours, corporate social responsibility and a touchy-feely work environment. – They’re known for paying well and offering challenging work.

This is why Goldman Sachs tops our 2017 ranking of the companies our students want to work for. Goldman ranked above the likes of Google and PWC, even though the latter were rated more highly for manageable working hours. For finance-oriented students, a lack of flexibility doesn’t seem to be a turn off. What finance-oriented students want is pay: big salaries, big bonuses. And it’s here that Goldman Sachs, and J.P. Morgan, and Morgan Stanley – the top three banks in our ranking – excel.

Students’ preoccupation with pay may not come as surprise to banks themselves. Goldman Sachs surveyed its own summer interns last year and found that they were steady, thrifty, types whose priority was saving a deposit for a house and getting lots of exercise. The portrait painted was of a group of students who worked hard and looked after their health. A flexible job and participation in corporate social responsibility programs was not the priority. Similarly, research by the UK Resolution Foundation in February found that Millennials are primarily interested in security. For a generation facing high house prices and with high debts from education, this is hardly surprising.

Young people’s perception that Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan are the big payers in banking may not be mistaken. The most recent figures for top staff in the City of London suggests the two banks are far more generous than the rest. During the first three years of an investment banking career, however, the Dartmouth Partners bonus survey suggests that Bank of America Merrill Lynch also looks like a good bet.

So, does students’ overwhelming interest in money mean that banks can drop their initiatives for reducing working hours and return to the bad old ways of working juniors day and night, irrespective of the risks to their health? Does it also mean that all those trips to muck-out urban farms and paint local schools can be dispensed with? Almost certainly not. Students who aspire to work in finance may be primarily interested in pay and challenging work, but banks still need to compete with funky technology firms and the lure of entrepreneurialism. All students who want to work in finance may be in it for the money, but the best will have other options and want a good life as well.

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It’s a tough job market for finance professionals right now, which means your chances of getting called back by recruiters deluged by resumes are diminished, but there are other reasons why you keep striking out.

Sometimes a talented individual with great experience just isn’t a good fit for a particular role. On the other hand, sometimes it is you – something you said, did or failed to do could have disqualified you from the process.

“The most common reasons you aren’t called in for an interview are GPA not above a 3.6, caliber of school, too many jobs without significant deal experience, the firm you are at has a reputation for doing deals that aren’t solid investments,” said Ahmad Popalyar, executive senior partner at Lucas Group. “Or they have already hired someone or put the job on hold.”

If none of those apply to you then bear in mind that many financial services firms get 250 to 300 resumes or more at a time per search and sometimes hiring managers miss a qualified candidate’s profile.

Here are some dos and don’ts ensure you get over the first hurdle:

1. Make sure your resume isn’t ‘weird’

While it’s obvious that you can’t have any typos, misspelled words or incorrect grammar in your resume and cover letter, sometimes something relatively minor like a formatting error, strange or tiny font, or overuse of all capital letters can annoy a hiring manager.

“Formatting errors or illegible font on your resume shows a lack of attention to details,” says Brianne Toole, principal consultant for the investment banking team, Americas, at Selby Jennings. “I’ve seen hiring managers not want to bring a candidate in because the formatting or font made the resume difficult to read.”

2. Make sure your job titles hit the right note

It might seem obvious, but getting the right job title is key. If you have a funky job title, say your company has something quirky for your role, in parentheses say the more common job title, thinking about what people would search for.

3. Ensure that you’ve provided enough details about deals

Make sure that your resume fits the job that you’re applying for, highlighting the skills that are in the job description that you have. It has to be clear that you’re proficient in the requisite areas.

On the investment banking side, that means highlighting the M&A deals that you’ve worked on.

“Hiring managers need to know what deals you’ve actually worked on – from research and due diligence to negotiations and close – to make sure you have the skills necessary to succeed in the role,” Toole said.

4. But keep your cover letter concise

Length is the first thing recruiters and hiring managers mention when it comes to cover letter errors. Decision-makers don’t have the time or patience to read a novel.

A good cover letter should be made up of three fairly short paragraphs containing between 300 and 500 words.

5. Don’t stretch the truth

If there was a particular deal that you were a part of and you list on your resume, it’s natural to want to make yourself sound good. However, if you claim an important role in a transaction but can’t talk through the strategy or many specifics, then you will be found out in the phone screening or in-person interview, if you do eventually make it that far. Recruiters serious about hiring a candidate will always do a thorough background check that will expose any egregious truth-stretching.

“Be honest in the level of involvement in each deal,” Toole said. “What did you do in the pitch phase, how heavily involved were you involved in the financial modeling, did you see it through to close?

“Recruiters want candidates who have worked on at least a handful of deals from start to close,” she says. “They don’t want candidates who have worked on deals in bits and pieces.”

If you were involved in a huge transaction that would be a huge resume booster, by all means list it on your resume, but acknowledge that you were only involved in the pitch phase, for example.

“When it comes to third-tier skills and experience, if you’re honest, ‘I included it on there but put it lower down because I didn’t see it through to close,’ they might look past it, if you show enthusiasm and have other good experience,” Toole said. “They don’t want people who aren’t up front.”

6. Do demonstrate your tech-savviness

Turning to the technology and operations sides of the business, it is important to demonstrate fluency in various in-demand programming languages. Having knowledge of C++, Java and Python, among others, will help you get a call back from recruiters and hiring managers.

“Hiring managers are looking for candidates with strong programming experience,” said Ryan Mazza, senior consultant in the quantitative analytics team, at Phaidon International. “It’s harder for banks to teach them the skills they need, so they want candidates to walk through the door with experience in particular programming languages.”

7. But don’t fake it

Make sure you can talk the talk on the screening call. If the hiring manager asks a question about one of the programming languages that the candidate has listed, you better be able to demonstrate your mastery of it.

“If you list C++ but can’t really speak to it, that’s frustrating,” Mazza said. “It’s a pet peeve of managers, because it’s a waste of time.”

8. Context matters

When presenting their on-the-job accomplishments, people often throw in numbers and feel that takes care of quantification, but you have to provide context and include results so people understand what you’re talking about. Saying that you grew revenue by 250% is great, but anytime there is a percentage increase, the questions are “From what base number?” and “Over what period of time?”

9. Project the right personality

Researchers found that perceived personality, as inferred from your resume and cover letter, influences your likelihood of getting hired. Be aware how recruiters might make personality judgments based upon your résumé and seek to balance these out.

For example, if you have mediocre academic grades, you will need to project conscientiousness through consistent work experience and supervisory roles. If you describe a lot of managerial roles, you need to make yourself seem more agreeable with some interesting team-based extra-curricular activities.

10. Never draw attention to your shortfalls

There’s never a perfect candidate. While you may be missing some elements of what the recruiter is looking for, the chances are that other applicants will also have gaps in their experience. However, employers do want someone who can slot in immediately. Explain why you’ll be able to get up to speed right away without relying on cliches like “I’m a quick learner.”

11. Do follow up

While you don’t want to pester, being proactive in following up – within reason – typically doesn’t hurt and can get you back on the radar screen.

“My suggestion to you is resubmit your information, and try to contact a hiring manager to introduce yourself,” Popalyar says. “HR teams sometimes don’t know the technical aspects of the investments you did, and being able to sell yourself to a hiring manager that actually does the investments increases your chances quite a bit.”
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Investment banks’ employees simply don’t have enough “digital savoir faire”. So says Boston Consulting Group, which believes technology should be seamlessly integrated into banks business models and that scarce technologists should be carefully recruited and nurtured.

There’s just one problem – investment banks are lagging hedge funds, mutual funds and other capital markets players when it comes hiring the best technologists and are losing market share as a result.

The new skills needed across investment banking, hedge funds, mutual funds, information providers and exchanges are, says BCG, machine learning, predictive analytics, cloud computing, robotics and automation.

Investment banks like to say that they’re now technology companies. Goldman Sachs says that 25% of its staff work in technology and J.P. Morgan has 10,000 IT staff attached to its investment bank. But, as a group banks have just 5% of people with ‘digital skills’, says BCG. This includes developers, data analytics and ‘emerging’ technologies. This is by far the smallest proportion of any capital markets firms in BCG’s study.

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This is a problem. Digital skills are the key to increasing shareholder returns, believes BCG, which points to a positive correlation between talented technologists and returns. Investment banks’ revenues shrunk by just 1% last year, but buy-side firms are still generating more revenues. Banks now account for 34% of industry revenues, down from 47% in 2006, the study suggests, whereas buy-side firms comprise 46% – up from 40% before the financial crisis.

Investment banks need to ensure that compensation is “compelling when compared to packages offered by competitors” to attract more tech talent, but they should also ensure “seamless integration among business and IT functions”, it says.

J.P. Morgan has technology ‘hubs’ in 14 lower cost destinations like Dallas, Delaware and Mumbai. Morgan Stanley’s centres of excellence include Glasgow and Budapest. Even tech teams in New York and London are often housed in separate offices to encourage more collaboration between the IT professionals.

In other words, this arrangement doesn’t exactly scream ‘integration’, and this is another challenge for banks hoping to hire and retain scarce technology talent.

A new study from academics at Washington State University and University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh – featured in the HBR – suggests that employee satisfaction stems from being a ‘lynchpin’ in the organisation. In other words, programmers want to work for an organisation where technology is the product.

Even if they’re considered a core employee – namely, banks calling themselves technology companies and talking up IT publicly – they’re still considered to be peripheral to the organisation.

Follow @paultclarke

Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com

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When you’re asked: “How well do you deal with stress and working under pressure?”

When you’re asked: “How open are you to learning applications and procedures? Can you give me an example of a situation when you learned something new?”

When you’re asked: “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?”

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1. Make sure your resume isn’t ‘weird’

2. Make sure your job titles hit the right note

3. Ensure that you’ve provided enough details about deals

4. But keep your cover letter concise

5. Don’t stretch the truth

6. Do demonstrate your tech-savviness

7. But don’t fake it

8. Context matters

9. Project the right personality

10. Never draw attention to your shortfalls

11. Do follow up

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