eFinancialCareers

For about ten years of my life I was on a flight at least once a week. Quick hops to visit a local office for a day or two, 18 hour long hauls to run a conference, several weeks in multiple locations to launch an ‘initiative’ across regions. Offsetting the number of visits I made to check up on off shored teams alone would require several forests of trees to... Read more

Monday was Clifford Sacks’ first day as Ceo South Africa and head of Pan-African equities for Renaissance Capital, the Russian investment bank that is expanding aggressively in emerging markets. Before joining RenCap, Sacks, who is South African, was co-Ceo for SA and Sub-Saharan Africa at BoA Merrill Lynch, a well-respected investment banker with twenty years’ experience and a deep knowledge of African equities. His task is to open and staff a... Read more

Out of curiosity, and for your benefit, we have conducted a brief analysis of the backgrounds of 171 investment professionals at three leading private equity funds (Advent, Apax, Permira). The results suggest that if you want to work on the buyside in private equity, investment banking - rather than consulting, is the place to start. Of the private equity investment professionals we looked at, 49% were former bankers, while a smaller 32%... Read more

South Africa’s financial sector has been sheltered from the worst of the financial crisis, but the recession has hit results and bonuses. This week Absa, the first of the country’s “big four” banks to report results, has announced “substantial cuts” in the bonuses of executives and directors after a 36% fall in net income last year. “The cash bonus pools are down by 50% and the total variable pay component... Read more

An MBA is a question of timing: get it wrong and you’ll find yourself spending £40k+ on two years out of the market when pay is peaking; even worse you may then find it impossible to get back in due to a glut of recently redundant experienced analysts. Equally, however, if you’re determined to do an MBA and you put it off for too long waiting for optimal market conditions, you’ll... Read more

There was a time when it looked like South Africa may be slowly but surely bridging the skills gap. Last year the return from London, New York and elsewhere of many expatriates following the financial crisis and mass lay-offs in the City and on Wall Street was hailed as “the homecoming”. The return on the market of people with skills and precious foreign experience, together with a relaxation of limits... Read more

Last week we had a conversation with Annie Paydar, the new head of human resources for Europe and MENA at the Carlyle Group. Our questions, and Annie’s response, are below. The synopsis: Carlyle hires very few people in Europe. If you want to be one of them, you’ll need to be fairly exceptional. Here's Annie: Q: How many people do you employ in Europe? A: We have around 200 employees in the Europe... Read more

An MBA is a question of timing: get it wrong and you’ll find yourself spending £40k+ on two years out of the market when pay is peaking; even worse you may then find it impossible to get back in due to a glut of recently redundant experienced analysts. Equally, however, if you’re determined to do an MBA and you put it off for too long waiting for optimal market conditions, you’ll... Read more

After 20+ years of full time employment (largely with rating agencies), the start-up agency I was working for was suddenly closed in Jan. 2008. Since then, I have gotten some contract work but offers are getting less frequent now. I believe some of the CV issues I have are 1) too much time worked at rating agencies (unfortunately not seen as having relevant commercial experience in many financial services sectors)... Read more

Following the warm reception to yesterday’s suggestion that HSBC might have Goldmanite qualities due to its ability to turn a global markets profit in a down market, it seems only reasonable to apply the same logic to Standard Chartered. In common with HSBC, Stan Chart is a British bank which has most of activities overseas. And in common with HSBC its wholesale banking group pulled a profit in 2008. According to its... Read more

When you’re applying for a job, the temptation is focus all your energy on your CV and to leave the cover letter as an afterthought. Don’t! The three stages of recruitment Your CV is definitely the more important of the two documents, but let’s consider the first three stages in the recruitment process, when employers look at your CV and cover letter. First comes the quick scan through, where you are one... Read more

If you’re applying for multiple jobs, and doing so online, you may reach a point at which you start to question the value of writing yet another cover letter describing why you’re suited to yet another role that you’re applying for speculatively and may get absolutely nowhere with. Don’t go there. Although covering letters are time consuming, repetitive, can state the obvious, and may never be read, they’re probably still worth it. “CVs... Read more

A skills shortage in the financial sector in South Africa is keeping salaries high and forcing employers to offer ‘golden hellos’ in order to attract experienced staff. The key concern, according to a new salary survey from recruiters Robert Walters, is “the lack of qualified talent”, while “banks offering sign-on bonuses…secured the best talent in the market.” Despite the crisis, salaries in 2009 are therefore expected to remain the same... Read more

US blog site Business Insider has elicited crazy questions asked to candidates who’ve interviewed at Google. Separately, readers of the site have sent in suggested answers. As many of the questions are similar, if not identical, to the more obtuse questions favoured by investment banks, we’ve published a few of them, and the suggested responses, below. Let us know if you’d answer differently. How many golf balls can fit in... Read more