"The more things change, the more they stay the same."

Opening Note:

Hello and welcome dear readers, firstly, thank you all for the kind notes following the first addition of my newsletter. There was a slight technical hiccup (I didn't post it originally to the Newsletter) but the engagement was still amazing. As always, I hope this provides some value, and if you have anything you would like to see, feedback is not only appreciated, but encouraged.

Intro - "The more things change, the more they stay the same"

For those of you who read my previous edition, you seen me discuss how things have changed in recruitment over the last year. When observing the market recently, I've come to notice that things have remained surprisingly similar, even with all the pandemonium in the News cycles. SVB, Credit Suisse and UBS. This was seen as the end mere weeks ago, but that was not the case thankfully, or at least, that's so it would appear.

Recruitment Trends:

In this section I will be discussing recruitment trends from the perspective of the Hire-ee (Candidate) and Hire-er (Client).

Candidate (Looking for a Job):

A lot of this advice can be found on my own LinkedIn feed from over the years, it's something I've always been passionate about, however, some updates from what I've been seeing:

1) Things are heating up: Contrary to public opinion, the recruitment market has started to heat up over the last few weeks. This is the first time in a few months I've had multiple candidates with multiple competitive offers. This is a GREAT sign. From speaking candidates, it seems that across the board processes are starting to quicken and move along.

2) Stability is Sexy: Everyone wanted to work for the cool new technology firms on the block over the last couple of years, primarily B2C FinTech. Payments, Crypto, consumer brokerage apps etc etc. They were exciting, had killer branding, and were going to "Change the world of Finance". For the vast majority of firms, they did not do this, and if their doors are still open it's with their tail between their legs. This is a risk averse market. Look for firms that have been around for a while, have a solid enterprise client base, and a mature experienced leadership team. These are the firms that are not panicking at any of the current or impending headwinds.

Client (Looking for Talent):

1) There's lot's of talent, but not much perfect talent: In Q1 firms pulled back agency spend figuring it easy to hire. For some, this has been the case, for others it was "Water water everywhere but not a drop to drink". There's dozens if not hundreds of people who could "probably" do the job you're hiring for. I could "probably" do your job given enough time, training, and resources. However, at this level, there are very few who are a perfect fit and time is quite literally money.

The best talent are generally getting approached pro actively or don't follow the sector super closely so don't know your firm exists. There is a strong likelihood you're missing out on them if you're just relying on in-bound applications. You're still going to have to tap agency or your network to bring in perfect fits. It's a trade off: cost of spend vs quality of hire vs time to hire.

2) Candidates are finally beginning to temper expectations: I spoke about this in the previous news letter (more so how candidates had yet to do this), this is beginning to actually take hold. Candidates are becoming more accepting of longer processes, similar or even lower comp to take a new job, they're starting to be a bit less entitled and demanding in a process in general. This is good for everyone. I seriously disliked some of the entitlement candidates began showing over the last couple of years and it's good to see it reverting to the mean.

What are people doing Right/Wrong:

Right

The people making good headway looking for their new role, are doing so by being opportunistic networkers. They are taking calls with interesting people that may lead nowhere or may get them hired. This is a time to build up your network and get to know people in your sector. Find a good (experienced) recruiter and reach out to them for a chat. They probably have roles coming up or they're currently working on that they're not actively advertising, or they already have people from their book interviewing. Same goes for senior leaders. People are far more likely to hire someone they know or who comes recommended from someone they trust.

Wrong

If you're hiring or interviewing, you need to be acting completely transparent when speaking with people. Is your process going to drag? Are they asking for more money than you are prepared to pay? Do you need a Visa? Do you actually have that language you said you did or did you just use it once in college? Candidates and Clients alike have been burnt pretty badly over the last couple of years, and there's a lot of distrust out there, with people being more skeptical than usual. You will lose that job, or that candidate, if you're withholding information or bending the truth.

Firms that have caught my eye:

Last time around, I spoke about Private Markets and Alternative Investments, this time around it's all about AI and Data. ChatGPT has really brought this to the worlds attention over the last few months. I'm still wrapping my head around it, but here's so firms that have caught my eye in it:

Boosted AI:

"We make Boosted Insights - an artificial intelligence software for investment managers to create value in their equity portfolios.

Based on your capital markets expertise, the Boosted Insights platform learns and identifies patterns that generate additional opportunities for institutional investors. No background in coding or data science needed."

I think as ML/AI/Data Science becomes more mainstream, the gap to fill will be to make these technologies accessible to people who aren't the most technically minded. Which is what Boosted are doing.

Along with that, the Leadership for this firm is Tier 1:

Founding CTO with a Cornell PHD who used to work in Bloomberg's research division, CEO with a similar background (Minus PHD) and a CRO who ran Front Office Sales for FactSet.

As I said, Tier 1.

BloombergGPT:

Not a firm catching my eye per se but this is all my feed has spoken about the last few days (along with ChatGPT as a whole).

"This model will assist Bloomberg in improving existing financial NLP tasks, such as sentiment analysis, named entity recognition, news classification, and question answering, among others. Furthermore, BloombergGPT will unlock new opportunities for marshalling the vast quantities of data available on the Bloomberg Terminal to better help the firm’s customers, while bringing the full potential of AI to the financial domain."

This is absolutely huge. With Bloomberg's resources and computing power, they will really begin bringing this technology to the forefront.

Very excited to see the impending GPT/LLM arms race. It really feels like this is a new frontier and firms are really beginning to innovate at a crazy pace. This kind of competition is super healthy for innovation. Exciting times lay ahead.

Closing Thoughts:

A few weeks ago when I sent out the first edition of my newsletter, the end of the world was neigh, or so was thought. It was just when SVB had shuttered and everyone was freaking out.

Funnily enough, 3 weeks later, and it really hasn't caused much broader market impact. Aside from a week or so directly afterwards where some firms couldn't access their money, it's pretty much been business as normal.

Firms are still firing, firms are still hiring, and the world's still spinning.

Overall, I take that as a lesson to remain calm and ignore the noise. Things tend to work out in the end.

If it hasn't worked out, then it isn't the end :)

This, however, is the end. Thanks for reading. - James