eFinancialCareers

Gavin Houchell, managing director of recruitment firm Ambition Finance, on how to put yourself in line for promotion. Plum jobs such as group financial controller and CFO can be very rewarding, both in a financial and a career sense – and almost everyone wants one. However, making that leap from middle-level finance to a senior role is almost always a challenge. As a result, career management is more important than ever before,... Read more

Julia Payne, chief executive of the Centre for High Performance Development, looks at the new methods of measuring cognitive activity used to identify top traders. If trading firms managed money as scientifically as they conduct their hiring, most would soon be out of business. The problem is prevalent throughout the business world. We have sophisticated tools for accounting, process control and marketing, but hiring practices remain stuck in the subjectivity of personal... Read more

It may well be a hot market as Australian banks compete for staff, but that’s no excuse for getting ahead of yourself, says Nick Deligiannis, senior regional director of Hays Banking. The Australian banking employment market remains very tight and specialist skills are in great demand, creating numerous hotspots across the industry. These hotspots are being found in investment and business banking, home lending and financial planning. But despite the huge... Read more

Guy Day, managing director for Asia at recruitment firm Ambition, advises how to react if your bonus doesn’t measure up to expectations. The discussion of bonus is an extremely contentious subject. It’s also an emotional one and quite rightly so. The prestige of working in high-profile financial institutions comes at a price – intensive hours, heavy travel schedules, and stress. At the end of a long year, employees look for their... Read more

Australian accountants are sought after the world over, says Kevin Moultrie, regional associate director at Think Global Recruitment. A global shortage of accountants means it's increasingly easy for Australia's accountancy professionals to find work wherever they fancy. Accountants have the advantage that most roles within the industry are easily transportable. Audit procedures are similar around the world, so experience dealing with international financial reporting standards (IFRS) can be particularly beneficial when... Read more

Working in M&A is sooo yesterday, says William D. Cohan, author and former MD at JPMorgan and VP at Lazard. With US$5 trillion worth of transactions likely this year, the global M&A market is booming and on track to have its best year ever by a wide margin. But does that news bode well for those aspiring to a career as a Wall Street M&A advisor? The answer, alas, is "not... Read more

Complaining when work's dumped on you isn't a good idea, says Hugh Karseras, author and banker. That doesn't mean you can't get away with it. A few months ago there was an email exchange posted on eFinancialCareers between an analyst and an associate that stimulated substantial debate. The nub of the issue was that an analyst, tired of having work dumped on him, complained to an associate who responded aggressively and... Read more

Want to ensure you move on from analyst to associate? Hugh Karseras, our banker on the inside, advises how it's done. Being a great analyst is not complicated. You need to get your 'stuff' done and you need to get your 'stuff' done well from day one - no matter what. Even after the months of the training programme, you are, let's face it, pretty clueless and the first several months... Read more

Once upon a time, the people at the top of the banking hierarchy were nice, says ex-banker and author David Charters. Not any more. What kind of people make it to the top in investment banking? As an industry it certainly produces great egos. Everyone who makes it to managing director is either a star or a super-star; if in doubt, just ask them. But are they good leaders? The rewards in... Read more

Promoted from analyst to associate this year? Our resident banking insider, Hugh Karseras, offers pointers on how to get ahead in your new position. I'm in the fortunate (or not) position of having two director-level friends who manage the analyst and associate pools at different investment banks. I asked them what it takes to progress as a newly appointed associate – and guess what? They came up with identical answers. According... Read more

Life as an expat banker will be much simpler if you go into it with your eyes open, says Griselle Cardozo of relocation specialist Reloglobe. Until a few years ago, relocations were a relatively simple business. Banks selected their most career-oriented employees and got them to pack a few belongings and move with their family to the other side of the globe. The relocations and international assignment business has come a long... Read more

David Bledin, ex-banker, now author and MBA student, on why he wouldn’t go back into banking if you paid him. I’ve just started an MBA programme and it’s amazing the number of people coming from non-banking industries who have somehow managed to maintain a startling innocence regarding the Street – despite the bleak stories they must have soaked up from their acquaintances. They seem to focus on that starting salary and... Read more

You’ll turn your boss off with slavish devotion and turn him on by doing his bidding. It’s a hard life, says ex-banker and author David Charters. Life at the bottom of any corporate food chain is tough. In investment banking it’s particularly so. Brownie points are hard to come by; excellence, timeliness and hard work are taken for granted. Beneath the gloss of high pay and high living, investment banking has a... Read more

Whether your bonus is big or small, it is at least a kind of closure, says David Charters. Make the most of this. Everyone is smiling. In the words of the song, it’s another year over, and you’re smiling through the hangover from the team Christmas party, trying vaguely to recall if you really did say to the cute girl from the presentations team what your friends are swearing you did,... Read more

Work hard, network hard, and don’t complain about your bonus. Happy New Year! It’s 2008 and hopefully we can put all of the turmoil of 2007 behind us. Or can we? Although many have made it through the redundancy rounds unscathed, the business environment and recruiting situation in 2008 could also be tricky. So what can you do to make sure that you don’t lose your job in 2008? Work hard... Read more

Times are tough, but they are going to get tougher, particularly for junior staff, says Hugh Karseras, author and senior banker. In case you hadn't noticed, there has been a torrent of bad news in recent months. Banks’ bonus pools are down and hiring plans for the next year across the Street are being reined in. One consolation is that it does not, for now, look like we are going... Read more

You may be busy, but are you in control? Now’s the time to get a grip, says ex-author and banker David Charters. It’s back to work time. The holidays are over, the end of year celebrations long forgotten, and the only thing that’s certain in everybody’s mind is that there’s an ambitious budget for the year ahead. However well (or badly) you did last year, this year has to be better.... Read more

Career breaks are a growing phenomenon in the financial sector, especially in sales and front-office areas of investment banking and global financial markets. Even though Asia-Pacific is not where the brunt of the credit crisis is, the softening of the markets and a fall-off in deal flow here has resulted in some banks quietly staff letting go, in addition to taking a more cautious approach to hiring. For those... Read more

Singapore has openly positioned itself as a private banking hub in Asia, aiming to tap into the region’s population of approximately 2.4 million high-net-worth individuals (ie, people with at least US$1m-worth of fluid assets), who own an amassed fortune of US$7.6 trillion-worth of assets. With these figures exponentially higher than just a few years ago, personal assets within the region are set to further increase with the forecasted growth of... Read more

The events of this past weekend – coming six months after Bear Stearns was thrust into the arms of JPMorgan – leave America's financial system in tatters, but not without hope for the emergence of a new order on Wall Street, that will once again return to its main purpose of efficiently allocating capital on a global basis. While the demise of Lehman could have been foreseen in the... Read more