Financial job market news Netherlands | Finance news for recruitment in the financial markets

On one hand, working in M&A is clearly a nightmare. One newly signed-up analyst tells us he’s been working ‘insane hours’ until 3-4am every day, including weekends. On the other hand, the excitement of working on a live deal is difficult to replicate in the corporate world, even if you happen to be working for a go-getting, fast-paced new media company (or the online offshoot of an old fashioned publishing house). This... Read more

Your responses to our call for authentic financial services interview questions revealed the weirdness of financial services interviews in London. However, responses from readers on our French site suggest the interview process in Paris is far more bizarre than that in the City. Most even vaguely French people are now on holiday until September, so you’re unlikely to come across any of these situations for a while. But if you are interviewing... Read more

Pay may be looking a little lacklustre globally, but this doesn’t appear to be the case in Asia. According to Reuters, banks have been paying some enormous guarantees to secure senior bankers in Asia. Some people are reputedly being paid $10m for one year and $15m over two years. In the UK, guaranteed bonuses are now frowned upon, and the FSA has outlawed guarantees lasting more than 12 months. Daiwa wants to... Read more

While we all wait on tenterhooks for Morgan Stanley’s results at 1pm (GMT), further reflection on yesterday’s Goldmanesque revelations suggests that Goldman Sachs may no longer be the world’s best investment bank. Instead, it may be the world’s worst. Analysts at Nomura have produced *clean* results for all the investment banks to have reported so far. They show overall revenues at falling 40% year-on-year at JPMorgan, 37% at BofA Merrill, 49%... Read more

Regardless of the debate around the number of people currently pursuing financial services positions, two things are certain: there are thousands of financial services CVs available on CV databases, and any recruiter advertising a job has to trawl through many hundreds of them every single day. This being so, how can you ensure that your CV isn’t consigned to a life of oblivion? 1) Use key words If you send your CV to... Read more

It won’t seem sufficient to readers of the Daily Mail, but compensation at Goldman Sachs is falling, and will probably fall even more before the end of the year. Thanks to a reasonably disastrous set of results, made worse by the bonus tax, the SEC settlement and a truly calamitous quarter in equities trading (revenues down 89% year on year and 84% quarter on quarter), pay prospects at Goldman Sachs are... Read more

Unfortunately, our win-an-iPad competition is now closed, with the winner to be announced later this week. In the meantime, here's the final instalment of the real life interview questions you sent through. Previous instalments can be viewed here, and here. Click on the questions below to view the answers and to find out something about the situation they were asked in. All organisations have rules, all markets have rules, and sometimes these... Read more

To listen to Jamie Dimon on today’s conference call, anyone would think JPMorgan is about to go out and grow global headcount crazily very soon. Dimon said JPM investment bank is all about having, “more bankers, more countries, more coverage, and more research.” Pressed on this, Dimon said that they want, “more bankers, better bankers, more services, more coverage and more clients.” And this doesn’t only apply to emerging markets. He also... Read more

Mervyn King has weighed in on the bonus debate. The guvnor says big payouts have encouraged too many talented people to squander their lives in banking when they could have been doing something more constructive instead. King made his comments to the Treasury Select Committee. According to the Telegraph, King says young people look at City compensation packages and think they “dominate almost any other type of career ... It's... Read more

As a headhunter, I am a parasite who will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes. I know this to be true, since Geraint Anderson, the former Dresdner analyst now known to be City Boy, says so. It's the latest of many attacks upon my profession. Are we really that bad? Yes. How do I know? Well, at the Global Derivatives & Risk Management conference in Paris, our... Read more

I'm going to retire before I'm 30. I'm currently 25, and since graduating from Cambridge in 2004 I've already earned over £1m after tax, and have paid off the mortgage on a flat in South Kensington and country house in Surrey. Even in this new world we enter of deferred bonuses, lower payouts and tighter municipal regulation, I'm still absolutely convinced I'll have retired within five years. When I first said... Read more

Recruiters are not liked. On these pages, readers frequently describe them as ‘estate agents in pointy shoes.’ However, this may not be entirely fair. The source of recruiters’ unpopularity appears to be their failure to explain why you didn’t get the job. But for reasons listed below, expecting this kind of feedback is totally unreasonable. 1) Recruiters are still drowning in candidates The CEBR estimates that 39,000 jobs have gone across the City... Read more

With jobs harder to come by, bankers are behaving badly towards recruiters and headhunters, who are suddenly unable to slot them into comfortable new positions. “We’re starting to get a lot of angry emails,” says one structured credit headhunter. “Bankers are approaching us and questioning why we can’t place them in hedge funds or commodities businesses. They’re venting their spleens, but there just aren’t the jobs.” “Candidates are more rude... Read more

Quants are at the centre of the vortex as banks go down the plughole, with some feeling pretty sorry for themselves. Much of the collapse in morale is down to Quanting being a young profession: most have never been personally affected by a recession before. When Paul Wilmott started teaching Quant finance at Oxford in the 1990s, it was an obscure specialisation. Quants are part of the furniture But although the... Read more

You may not like recruiters. You may think that they are like estate agents or journalists. You may even accuse them of being parasites. But if you want a new job, it’s counterproductive to antagonize them and productive to get them on your side. Here’s how to do it: • Put yourself in their shoes All the recruiters we spoke to would like to point out that they make their money... Read more

So, let me get this straight. In simplistic terms: 1. Shanice, a single mother of four (by four different fathers) from Alabama who has never had a job in her life, is granted a $180,000 loan for by a mortgage broker spiv for her first home, in true 'American Dream' fashion. 2. Mortgage-broking spiv mis-sells such applicants to lenders, as ifShanice actually has a hope in hell of paying off her... Read more