The GAAPweb blog

Don't worry, jobseekers - a recruiter speaks...

In the current climate, it'd be easy to think it was all doom and gloom for anyone wanting to find a new job. But the truth is much more encouraging, according to Philip Marks, Managing Director of Huntress Finance. Plenty of jobs are out there, as long as you look in the right places. 

Here he shares his thoughts on how you can defy the credit crunch and get your next role:

1. How has the credit crunch affected the finance recruitment market and what are your predictions for the future?

The crunch has affected the focus of the recruitment market, not the volume of business so far. 1st tier investment banks are recruiting less in their largest recruitment areas e.g. Operations and front office but there has been an increase in recruitment in mid tier banks upgrading staff, private banking and advisory work.

2. Everyone is talking about the recruitment market suffering due to the current financial climate but what do you think are the current emerging financial roles and financial growth sectors?

There has not been a decrease in the volume of business. Emerging roles have been in private banking, advisory as well as roles in business recovery, liquidation and insolvency. 

3. Last year the skills shortage was making headlines. Is this still an issue? What effect has the credit crunch had? Is there an end in sight?

There is still a skills shortage. High calibre candidates are always in demand. However, there are more good quality candidates interested in looking at high quality opportunities but not enough to ease the shortage in general. There is no end in sight to the shortage due more to demographics and lack of foresight on behalf of employers to train and broaden their criteria.

4. Do you have some essential CV and interview tips for our candidates?

Highlight achievements in their careers more not just job activities listed on their CV. What makes them different to someone else doing the same job?

5. What can a candidate do to make themselves really stand out when they send their CV to someone like yourself?

As question 4. Also, use a recruitment consultant that their ‘gut feel’ tells them they can trust. Refuse to be represented by a consultant who does not service their needs well.

6. What do you need to do to become successful in senior finance?

Difficult to generalise but make sure that career progression is clearly seen on their CV and logical steps have been taken to enhance their careers rather than erratic moves in different directions. Be focused on what their company is trying to achieve and tailor their approach to reflect that.

7. If you were a graduate looking to embark on a career in finance what would you be thinking about?

Start with the end in mind. Work out what you believe your end game is and work back from there to achieve it. Goals are important to focus attention. Try and understand what motivates them and use their strengths to assist in their choice of career. Decide whether they are better at client facing roles or back office analytical roles, etc and plan from there.

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Penny Millionaire Project - Week 63

Thursday, Iain wandered over looking really pleased with himself. He never comes over to my desk for work-related reasons, our paths don't really cross in that way, so I knew it was something good instead.

He reached in his pocket and held his palm out to me, almost like he was offering me a tray of Ferrero Rocher. There on his palm sat something just as round and shiny, not as chocolatey, but more exciting - a glorious pound coin.

There's not much that comes close in the satisfaction stakes to being given a pound coin. I think it's probably more exciting than being given notes. There's something about that chunky, shiny solidity that makes you feel you're being given a real nugget of gold. If the world of money made more sense, you'd be able to buy a car with a pound coin. Maybe you will soon.

He said he'd seen it on the steps of Tesco at lunchtime and at first walked past it. Now, he reads this blog, and knew full well that that wasn't the thing to do at all. He climbed back up the stairs and scooped it up.

Later on in the afternoon, the Web team fancied cake. Sometimes, we just do. A couple of us took orders and went down to our little campus cafe, the Village Fayre.

Turns out, the Village Fayre didn't have much in the way of cake left, so we sneaked off campus, giggling like truanting schoolgirls the whole time, before reaching the more illustrious Cafe Continente. We bought various slabs of cake, Victoria sponge, lemon drizzle and carrot, and laughed all the way back to Kensington Village.

Feeling bold, I decided that it was no use taking cake back into work without a coffee to wash it down, and if we were going to be reprimanded, we may as well feast as we were being berated (confiscation not really being an option in the world of work).

We stopped by Village Fayre again to get cappuccinos, and found a penny on the floor.  Hee hee. Cake, coffee, laughter and money. And we didn't even get told off.

Week Sixty-three

How much found: £1.01

Total found so far: £50.39

How it could now be spent: a Fal Pro Saturn Pony Snug.

Penny Millionaire Project - Week 62

Monday - now, this hasn't happened for a good while, and it's something I'd really like to encourage, so I'm hoping by telling you all about it you'll want a piece of the action...

I received an envelope at the office. I'd been away on holiday (well, as much as you can call house and cat-sitting a holiday), and came back in to work to find it sat on my desk.

I opened it up and found this:

And best of all, this:

So thanks very much Ian from Phillips & Feeley Ltd. It's good to see that even now, as we stand on the brink of a (whisper it) recession, people can still find it in their hearts to give.

And as if to prove it, what followed was a veritable avalanche of money, all on Monday.

I came back from lunch to the now-traditional Post-it note, this time from Nix. She'd found a 5p on the floor of Vision Express and picked it up, she said, without anyone spotting. I liked that. There's a certain irony in her not being seen by any of the people shopping for new glasses.

Later on in the afternoon, I went off to make tea and came back to a one inch-high pile of coins plonked on my desk, totalling an impressive 49p. Our now-departed MD Graham had been clearing out his desk and came across it in his desk tidy. So long Graham, and thanks for all the pennies.

Week Sixty-two

How much found: 75p

Total found so far: £49.38

How it could now be spent: Philips TRESEmme Proceramic Breeze Hair Straighteners.

Recession schmecession! GAAPweb's got loads of jobs.

Credit Crunch Conquered?

As we veer towards winter, it feels like there isn’t a great deal to be cheerful about - banks are in crisis, businesses are facing bankruptcy and we’re all feeling the pressure financially.

Nothing is ever all bad though – whilst we hear a fresh financial horror story each day, there have been some who have benefited from the current economic climate.
This may or may not make anybody feel better, but I think it’s about time we had a positive credit crunch story.

Comfort eating

The rise in food, heating and energy costs have made cooking at home more expensive and people are seeking a cheap solution. This is good news for fast food retailers who are seeing a surge of business at the moment. McDonalds is struggling to cope with demand as an additional 2 million customers flock to them in seek of comfort and refuge every month. Consequently, they are one of the few retailers extensively recruiting at the moment with a reported 4,000 jobs being created around Britain. This is good news in other ways too…perhaps this all means that the insane pursuit of a size zero is on the way out. Hurrah. Bring on the Big Macs.

Staying in is the new going out

On a similar note, takeaway outlets are also seeing a huge rise in custom. It would seem that people are thinking twice about eating out in restaurants and are opting for a night in to save the pennies.  That’s been good news for pizza delivery companies like Domino’s. Business is also booming for online DVD rental company lovefilm.com - to round off the perfect night in, people are hiring a DVD to go with their takeaway rather than spending more than double on cinema tickets. I don't think there is anything to be feeling deprived about here. I've just described one of my favourite kinds of Friday night.

The Lidl effect

This isn’t really news as it’s been all over the press but it stands to reason that consumers are downgrading their weekly food shop. This has been terrific news for bargain retailers such as Lidl and Aldi.
Poundland, another high street retailer that prices all of its goods at a £1 flat rate has also met with success this year. I can’t really think about these kinds of shops without bringing to mind the naughty people who go into such establishments just to torment the poor staff by picking up various bits of merchandise and asking how much in turn each individual item costs. Hours of fun. However, the people of Poundland are the ones laughing now, having seen profits to March 2008 up 122%. ( I'm delighted to see that Poundland are also online now..may find myself some bargains later)

The Environment

It’s not just companies for those on a budget that are triumphant.
The environment may just be onto a winning streak too…With all that expensive petrol, people have been driving less and also driving slower to save petrol (cut your average motorway speed by 10mph and see for yourself).  All those ineffectual political ideas on how to change behaviour and get people out of their cars and on to public transport have been superseded by the jump in the price of the black stuff.

First time house buyers

So that’s companies and the environment.  But what about people?  Well, they aren’t all worse off either.  Think about those who want a house but haven’t bought one yet.  The bubble in the prices of homes first time buyers want to buy has burst, and if they are lucky enough to get a mortgage (lenders almost, almost reduced total mortgage lending in August), when things calm down and markets bottom out they’ll be better off than they were back in the heady days of early summer 2007.

There’s actually more than a single blog’s worth of material for this subject…if you’re very lucky I may revisit the subject in a couple of weeks.
In the mean time I hope I’ve cheered everyone up a bit.
If not, please feel free to give me some ideas...

The Crash of 1929 and the Crash of 2008

I think most of us have some sense of concern over the state of the economy at present. Over the past few months, the problem has shifted from merely being an issue affecting banks to an issue affecting us all, whether this is because of dropping house prices, soaring interest rates, or the unavailability of mortgages.

Perhaps you have swopped Waitrose for Lidl, or maybe like me you will have found that Sainsbury’s Value bran flakes are actually pretty good. Maybe you’ll have been thinking for a while that Pret a Manger don’t put enough pickle on their cheese sandwich, and you enjoy not only putting on as much pickle as you like, but also varying between Branston pickle and mustard pickle? History tells us, however, that we are not experiencing a new phenomena (du du, di du du)*.

In 1929, a very similar thing happened in the USA. Almost 79 years ago, in October 1929, the New York Stock Exchange collapsed. This occurred after a period of prosperity, “the Roaring Twenties”, not unlike the way things were in London in 2006/2007.

The human effect of the Wall Street crash is well documented, and from reading about the Great Depression I really hope it doesn’t come to this for us – but let's not lose sight of the fact that over the past few years in the UK alone repossession rates have risen – for example a recent 2008 forecast is that repossessions will be 23% more than in 2007. This means around a hundred families a day.

To find out more about what happened back in 1929, there is a documentary on The Business Channel this week. Tune in to Sky channel 547 at 20:00 on Thursday 9th October 2008 (repeated again at 23:00 the same day, and at 10:00, 14:00 and 17:00 on Friday 10th October). For more information on the channel and to see the other business related content that is on offer, visit http://thebusinesschannel.com

Meanwhile, time will tell how Gordon Brown compares to Herbert Hoover, as well as what effect (if any) forthcoming elections in the US and maybe here too will have.

* I see these strange creatures every time I say the word “phenomena” – Kermit the Frog and Sandra Bullock – see here – we’ve got to have something to smile about in these hard times.

So long, and thanks for all the cupcakes

I never thought this day would come, but after over two years of job-editing joy it’s finally time for me to leave GAAPweb and try something new.

In all the excitement of finding a new job it’s easy to forget about all the things you’ll miss about your place of work but as my last day gets closer I can’t help thinking of all the things I’m giving up…

Hell Pizza for instance – I’ll now be out of delivery range at my work address as well as my home address – I’ll have Brimstone withdrawal symptoms by the end of the month.

And, even more heart breaking, I won’t be able to pop over to The Hummingbird Bakery in my lunch break anymore and so will miss out on a regular supply of the best cupcakes in London. Actually though, I won’t miss the question I get asked every time I order a box of cakes for the team – “Are these to eat in or takeaway?” There’s nothing makes you feel quite so much of a chunk as someone assuming you could eat your body weight in cupcakes in one sitting.

But back to the last day ramble…

As well as thinking about all the things you’ll miss, as your final week heads to a close, you’ll also want to consider how to handle your last day. You might just want to slip out unnoticed but then you run the risk that the following Monday your ex-colleagues find themselves staring in confusion at your desk trying to remember if anyone used to sit there – it’s nice to be remembered for at least a week after you’ve left.

Of course, you should also be careful of going to the other extreme. Anyone who regularly utters the phrase ‘well they can’t sack me – can they?’ after handing in their notice is probably worth paying attention to on their last day as they’re likely to be making a Desperate Housewives style dramatic exit. I’ve been trawling the net for inspiration (I didn’t even have to pretend I was actually doing work this time) and here are a few tips for last day etiquette:

Some things to avoid:

Stealing office equipment – Not just paper and pens like you usually do, your last day is the day to really make up for being underpaid for the last few years – right?’ Hmmm – though it’s always nice to feel you’ve got your money’s worth I wouldn’t get carried away and try to take your computer or anything like that. You can’t be sacked. You can be arrested.

Leaving speech honesty – Ok so it’s the moment you’ve been day-dreaming about every time a colleague annoys you, but actually it’s not a great idea to turn on everyone the second your leaving present is in your hands. You might need a reference, you might end up working with an ex-colleague in the future, or maybe you’d just be happy in the knowledge that there’s not an entire office of people somewhere who think you’re a prat.

Refusal to let go – Everyone knows one of these people – the kind who are still emailing to ask how a project is going and offering suggestions four weeks after they’ve left. Perfectionist is a polite term – control freak is more accurate.

And a few things you should definitely do:

Make good use of your security pass – Everyone has a local crazy person. If you live in London you probably know several. The end of your last day is the time to thank them for the years they’ve dedicated to rambling at you in a well-meaning but incoherent way - by giving them your security pass. Explain to them about the free tea/biscuits/sofas/access to a fresh audience and let them loose on your ex-colleagues. This is a prank that everyone can enjoy – your ex-colleagues will enjoy the break in routine that the disruption will cause and the Security Guards will finally have a reason for being there.

Share the wealth – If you’ve been in your job for any length of time you’ll no doubt have acquired a selection of trinkets that sit around your desk. There are usually one or two things you’ve inherited from ex-colleagues, something out of a cracker from the Office Christmas party, or in my case a selection of toys representative of the Kinder Egg collection 2007-8. Taking these things with you to your new job is the equivalent of still having all your childhood toys on your bed at 30 – it’s time to pass them on.

Prank your replacement – I’m not suggesting you do anything really horrible but it is wise to take a few precautions to ensure the ‘new you’ doesn’t fit in too quickly. The best thing to do is to kindly offer to pass on your induction pack – but a slightly updated version. Inform them that it’s fine to get in anytime before 11 and that the term lunch ‘hour’ is more a suggestion than an actual time limit. Don’t make it too extreme or they’ll never buy it – nobody is going to believe you when you insist that every Friday is ‘Dress like a Dinosaur Day’ (everyone knows that Friday is ‘Come as a Condiment Day’).

Obviously I’ll be on my best behaviour on my last day, partly because I expect my security pass to be confiscated the second this blog is published. But also because I’d like to be invited back to join the Web Stars in their pub quizzes (I’ll revise, I promise) and I’m lucky enough to work with lovely people who I’ll actually miss (which is actually quite worrying, because they do say that if you don’t think there’s an office weirdo – it’s you).

Well that’s all from me – I’m off to revise for Thursday’s pub quiz – I’ve got to earn my place on the team now!

Penny Millionaire Project - Week 61

As in life, so in the project this week. A few littl'uns trying their hardest with their tiny efforts to contribute to the project, and one big loud one getting all the attention.

Monday, Maz came into work and straight over to me with a 50 pence piece. The self-service checkout at Sainsbury's had coughed it out in addition to her legitimate 1p change.

Defective equipment? Or Sainsbury's doing its bit to ease the pain of the credit crunch? Who can say? But worth investigating...

Tuesday, we had a couple of 'ooh, look' moments in quick succession, as Maz found a 2p under her desk, then Kirsty found a penny under her hard drive.

Thursday morning, Maz brought in a penny from somewhere, "from the weekend". Now usually I like my finders to be a little more vigilant about remembering details, but since she's leaving this week and we're all going to miss her, I'll let it slide.

Thursday afternoon, Kirsty 'Hawk Eye' Lennox was returning to her desk from a trip to the loo when she stopped suddenly in her tracks - she'd spotted a 5p on our office carpet.

Week Sixty-one

How much found: 59p

Total found so far: £48.63

How it could now be spent: an African Bullfrog, a chocolate millipede and a nice DVD of Conan the Destroyer for them to watch together.