Graduate jobs on the rise

6th Feb 2010

VACANCIES among grad­u­ate employ­ers are on the rise, par­tic­u­larly in the invest­ment bank­ing sec­tor, new research has shown.

Accord­ing to High Fliers Research, grad­u­ate recruit­ment lev­els have increased across the board by 11.8 per cent. Although recruit­ment dropped in invest­ment banks by half last year, tar­gets have been set to increase intake by one-third on last year.

The way into bank­ing is often paved by an intern­ship, which in itself is regarded as a 10-week interview.

‘Intern­ships are very impor­tant in the indus­try in gen­eral,’ says Mal­colm Hor­ton, global head of recruit­ing and pro­grammes at Nomura invest­ment bank. ‘Join­ing bank­ing is a huge com­mit­ment both per­son­ally and pro­fes­sion­ally. We need to know that appli­cants are committed.’

Accord­ing to Mike Hill, chief exec­u­tive of Grad­u­ate Prospects, there is a neg­a­tive pub­lic per­cep­tion of the indus­try, with many grad­u­ates believ­ing that there are no jobs avail­able in the bank­ing sec­tor. Invest­ment banks are how­ever not expected to have any trou­ble fill­ing their places – the ratio of appli­cants to jobs this year at Nomura were 20 to one.

Accord­ing to the High Fliers Research report the aver­age start­ing salary for an invest­ment banker is around £38,000, mak­ing the bank­ing sec­tor one of the most highly rewarded sec­tors in the job market.

Banks say the key to a suc­cess­ful appli­ca­tion is care­ful prepa­ra­tion and prac­tice, as well as an excel­lent CV – but that’s not all.

‘One of the most impor­tant things we look for is the abil­ity to sell your­self,’ says Hor­ton. ‘We see a lot of peo­ple with great CVs but, when it comes to the inter­view, they can­not bring this to life.