Time Taken to Hire Shifts Dramatically Post-Lehman

• Recruiting times increase by up to 33 days, despite notice periods more than halving
• But banks still compete to secure top talent in key roles necessary to weather recession

The average time taken to find a new job within the financial services sector has increased by as much as 33 days (over a month more) since the demise of Lehman on September 15th signalled the full impact of the credit crunch. This comes despite falling notice periods as a consequence of redundancies.

 Joslin Rowe, the financial services City recruitment specialist, analysed 3010 recruitment times pre-Lehman (from March to September 2008), and post-Lehman (September 2008 to March 2009) as well as notice periods within this time frame. Figures show that companies have increased the length of their actual recruitment processes including CV assessment, the number of interview rounds and the final decision time required, in a bid to cherry pick the very best candidates available on the market. A recruitment process that used to take, on average, 3 weeks in 2008 is now taking at least twice as long.

Figure 1: Time to Hire Table

* Time to hire is counted from the day a vacancy is registered to start date (eg: includes notice period)

Tara Ricks, managing director of Joslin Rowe, the City of London recruitment consultancy explains:

"Obviously, there's a larger than usual number of redundant candidates on the market who are immediately available. But that's not all.  City employers are also being incredibly flexible when members of staff choose to resign. It's rare that 3 month notice periods are enforced now and even those on 4 weeks are often allowed to depart a week or so earlier. Within some departments it's clearly a relief to move employees on and ease the pressure of salaries on the bottom line."

"That said,  in some disciplines there's an opposite force at work. Compliance, risk and audit are vital to ensure post-credit crunch stability and control - so it's no surprise that  time to hire has been least affected within these disciplines nor that employers are keen to hang on to these members of staff for as much of their notice period as possible."

However, the picture changes dramatically when looking at support roles such as HR, marketing and secretarial/administration. These positions have seen hiring times slow significantly. Secretarial jobs are suffering the most at up to 33 days more.

"Support positions are often seen in a bad market as optional extras and are bearing the brunt of delays," comments Ms Ricks. "HR is the least affected within this band of disciplines and ironically much of this has been fuelled by an increased demand for compensation and benefit analysts. In these times of adverse publicity around risky bonus cultures, firms are keen to revamp their remuneration strategies and need to get these people on board to effect this change ."

It's not just the banks which have been impacted. Investment management firms have also seen big changes to hiring times. Investment now has one of the longest time to hire processes within the market at 90 days (over 3 months including a 13 day average notice period). This is a consequence of the re-approval process that many firms have implemented - meaning that hires taking longer than 6-8 weeks must re-apply for budget sign off, in case the rapidly changing market no longer warrants the recruitment.

Temporary recruitment has also shifted. Pre-Lehman, the average time to hire was 6 days but recently this has risen to 9 days. In fact, since September 15th some temporary positions are taking as long as 37 days to recruit for. Again, these have been typically within disciplines such as HR and office support.

Tara Ricks adds: "At the height of market conditions in 2007, we would sometimes place candidates in a role on the same day it was released - a 24 hour recruitment turnaround. Now a week is more common. Certainly, tracking the time to hire of temporary staff is an excellent temperature gauge. If  temporary recruiting speeds up it's a strong indication the market is on the turn."[1]

[1] Joslin Rowe will be analysing time to hire/notice period stats every quarter throughout 2009