Thank you for all the valuable feedback on our newsletter!

I wanted to give you a quick update on the market for Q2. Hope you find this useful! We’ve also included a career tip for jobseekers at the end of this newsletter.

HTML5/JavaScript: We see a lot of our Investment Banking clients, Securities Firms and even buy side firms move on to building Front End UI in HTML5. A lot of them are moving away from VC++/C# WPF to HTML5. Going web-based seems to be the trend and we see a serious shortage of candidates who have this skill and are at the right calibre to be able to work in a banking environment

Quantitative Developers: A lot of firms, especially on the buy side want quants who can also code their own strategies. This is also becoming popular on the sell side. Basically, Quants who can code strategies in C++ and also have knowledge of scripting/python. A good quant with the tech skill-set is not easy to find

Data Scientists: Data Scientists is relatively a new terminology. Essentially, someone who can make sense of large amounts of data and come up with patterns that can benefit the business. This could be analytics or trading patterns (tick data). A lot of our clients are looking for candidates with knowledge of Big Data, Hadoop and ideally someone who has “been there, done that” in finance (with the relevant math skills and a finance degree or CFA)

� The number of tech jobs in the junior-mid/senior-mid level sector (AVP-VP) has tremendously increased. The number of senior level roles (ED+) in banking has remained fairly similar compared to the first quarter. The number of senior level roles in the Insurance Sector went up in Q2 compared to Q1

� Local banks/China-based banks are very active. More so than Western Banks. Developers (Java/C++/C#/J2EE/Mobile) who can speak Chinese in addition to good English have been in demand in the junior-mid/senior-mid bracket. Risk/Regulatory roles have been in demand in the Senior bracket (ED+)

Don’t apply to jobs with a one-size-fits-all CV!

� This seems rather commonsensical but as the saying goes, “common sense sometimes isn’t very common”. We usually get multiple CVs from the same candidate who would be applying to BA roles, PM roles and Development roles with the same CV. Upon speaking to this person, we’d come to know that this person has done a little bit of everything and hence the application to different kinds of roles. However, this does not help. A tailor made CV is like a bespoke suit. It fits better and makes the applicant look better. Take the time to get one done and when applying to recruiters, please send over the CV in Word format.

Hope you found this information useful. Please do contact us should you need more information.

If you are thinking about a change, check out our latest hot jobs!

Vince Natteri,
Managing Director

Candidate Salary Survey Results:

In Q1, we asked our candidates to complete our salary survey. Thank you to those of you who participated in the survey, we hope the lucky winners enjoyed their Starbucks coupon!

Here are the results of the top 8 questions asked: