We saw hiring volumes remain consistently good throughout Q4 across all of our clients, which is unusual for this time of year, as most managers are winding down their budgets for the year. This could be because, in general, the markets have been relatively less volatile throughout this year; investment banks who have invested in Equities have committed to their hiring plans; and the overall economy has picked up compared to 2013.
In Q4, we saw an increase in development and infrastructure roles across our investment banking and commercial banking clients, and salary increases for junior-mid level roles were in the range of around 15-20% for Investment Banks and around 10-15% for commercial banks.
Project Managers and Programme Managers were in demand in the Insurance sector. The ones who were successful typically had experience across Regional Projects and budget management responsibilities.
Expertise in FX was a common theme across both Support and Development roles. We saw more demand for Developers and Support candidates with domain knowledge in FX trading platforms.
Both our Banking clients (Commercial/Investment Banks) and Commerce clients have told us that they expect a higher uptick in hiring in 2015. We expect the same from our clients in the Insurance sector.

Compared to the Finance Sector, the Hi- Tech/Commerce sector was less active in terms of hiring.